美国国家公共电台 NPR A Wounded Warrior's 80 Surgeries — And Record Of Resilience

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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

An Army major named DJ Skelton retired¹ on Monday at a ceremony in Arlington, Va. In attendance were family, friends and fellow soldiers, also a former chairman of the Joint² Chiefs of Staff and senior Pentagon officials. A four-star Army general presided - not the usual crowd when a mid-ranking officer leaves service. NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence brings us the story of Major DJ Skelton, retired.

QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE³: DJ Skelton shouldn't even be here. He enlisted⁴ in 1996 after flunking⁵ out of college. In the Army, He learned Mandarin⁶ Chinese at the Defense⁷ Language Institute. But he wasn't on a path to becoming an officer.

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MIKE LWIN: Good afternoon. I'm Colonel Mike Lwin, United States Army, retired.

LAWRENCE: Mike Lwin and others pushed Skelton to apply to West Point. Lwin was the MC at Skelton's retirement⁸ this week.

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LWIN: And less than 24 hours ago, Major DJ Skelton asked me to take on this duty.

(LAUGHTER)

LAWRENCE: Skelton got into West Point, but he really shouldn't have made it through there either. Four-star general Robert Brown explained at the ceremony.

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GEN ROBERT BROWN: He joined the class of 2003. Now, I couldn't believe this when I read it. I thought it was a misprint. But I checked the facts.

LAWRENCE: The facts were a horrible rap sheet of misbehavior.

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BROWN: Four hundred hours walked on the area - I didn't think that was possible.

LAWRENCE: Those were hours of punishment. But somehow, he still graduated and became an officer. But the real reason DJ Skelton shouldn't be here was the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004. He told me the story in his kitchen.

DJ SKELTON: The back of the road just lit up like a huge flashlight. And it was just a barrage⁹ of RPGs, mortar¹⁰ rounds. And it was clear that we were ambushed¹¹.

LAWRENCE: He was leading his platoon. Two rocket-propelled grenades hit the overpass¹² they were defending.

SKELTON: One exploded. I think one did not. The head broke off, went through my leg. And then I got shot quite a bit...

LAWRENCE: Right.

SKELTON: ...For that. My medic was with me. He got shot. My RTO was with me. He got shot. Both lived.

LAWRENCE: Skelton was blasted in the left arm, right leg and chest. What really should have killed him was a piece of shrapnel that entered his right cheek, destroyed the roof of his mouth and exited out his left eye.

SKELTON: I could hear people screaming, and then all of a sudden the pain, the most incredible feeling of pain.

LAWRENCE: And just like that, his Army career should have been over.

SKELTON: And then I remember waking up at Walter Reed. And then I have doctors that are telling me, well, you're never going to rock climb. You're never going to run. You're not going to do half the things that were a source of happiness for me as a kid that were part of who I was. And now the Army is saying, yeah, you're not fit for duty. You cannot serve. I had a hard time with that.

LAWRENCE: At the time, Walter Reed Hospital was getting overwhelmed with casualties that the military clearly hadn't planned for. No one was there to show someone like Skelton that life could go on. Luckily, his rock climbing friends did.

SKELTON: Some friends showed up and kidnapped me...

LAWRENCE: He'd been in the hospital nearly a year.

SKELTON: ...And threw me in the back of a Jeep and drove me out to a local rock climbing crag place. And we had a great time. But that was just this very powerful moment in my life. There was this community that just felt motivated to not give up on me.

LAWRENCE: And that's one of the reasons DJ Skelton says he is still here. He stayed in the Army despite the loss of his left eye and his palate and lasting¹³ damage to his right leg and left arm. And in 2007, he co-founded an organization called Paradox¹⁴ Sports so other vets¹⁵ could have the same experience.

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SKELTON: Hello.

LAWRENCE: That's how I met Skelton about five years ago. He and a team of professional climbers took a group of disabled vets up an 800-foot cliff called the Snake Dike¹⁶ in Yosemite National Park. NPR interviewed him dangling¹⁷ off the ropes.

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LAWRENCE: I'm about to pass you in just one second to DJ Skelton.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Hi, this is Audie Cornish. Are you in a safe space to talk (laughter)?

SKELTON: (Laughter) Of course. How are you doing?

CORNISH: Great. Now, people have talked about obviously the camaraderie¹⁸ of being in the service. How is this similar to that?

SKELTON: As a veteran, it's amazing. I've never served with any of the other brothers and sisters-in-arms that are out here, the other vets. But we speak the same language. And we sit around the campfire at night, and we tell stories that only we can relate to and the climbers around us. And in turn, the climbers talk a different language. So to combine all of that experience that brings us all together is pretty powerful.

CORNISH: Well, DJ Skelton, thank you for your service and thank you for talking with us.

SKELTON: You bet.

LAWRENCE: Skelton's work with wounded troops and his desire to show that they could still be useful to the Army landed him a policy job advising the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But his career didn't end there, which is another reason Skelton shouldn't be here. In 2011, after dozens of surgeries and still dealing¹⁹ with, for example, the shrapnel holes in his mouth that sometimes let food slip into his airway²⁰, Skelton asked to be sent back to war. He passed all the physical tests and joined his old unit in Afghanistan. His commander was then-Colonel, now-General DA Sims.

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GEN DA SIMS: DJ had this really hellish town.

LAWRENCE: Skelton was leading foot patrols in the infamous²¹ Panjwai district. Taliban shot at them almost every time they left the outpost.

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SIMS: He had instant credibility with the young men that he was leading at the time. This is leadership by example.

LAWRENCE: Sims says any disability was overcome by Skelton's ability to lead. Skelton doesn't completely agree with that. His men all made it home, but the thought that he might lose one of them because he wasn't physically²² 100 percent haunted him. And here's the last reason he maybe shouldn't be here.

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SKELTON: So let me just get this over with.

LAWRENCE: At his retirement, Skelton read the names of fellow veterans who weren't there. Some died in battle, but a lot of the names he read died back here at home.

SKELTON: Lieutenant²³ Ben Larsen was my fellow South Dakotan classmate at West Point. Died from his struggles with dealing with his combat tours when he came back.

LAWRENCE: And Skelton was honest about his own issues right there in front of General Brown, about drinking way too much when he got out of the hospital to the point where his men locked him up, dried him out and made him get therapy. And there's the physical toll²⁴ of more than 80 surgeries and dealing with the red tape as he becomes a veteran.

SKELTON: Take a look at me, 17-plus years of active duty, I should be celebrating. Instead, I'm bitter. I'm upset. I'm frustrated²⁵. I'm angry.

LAWRENCE: His palate still isn't fixed²⁶. The last attempt was a 17-hour surgery to graft²⁷ a piece of his good right arm to the roof of his mouth. But that hasn't completely worked. Right now, Skelton eats mostly through a feeding tube in his stomach. And last year, the VA told him to change the brand of nutritional²⁸ liquid he puts in that tube and then told him later that the VA can't pay for that brand. To their credit, his VA physician did show up at his house with an envelope of cash for him to buy what he needed. All this is wearing him down.

SKELTON: The psychologist diagnoses me with recurring²⁹ sustained trauma³⁰. And the source of the trauma is my inability to navigate³¹ the VA and the DoD health care systems.

LAWRENCE: And that's what Skelton says he wants to tackle next. He's pushing for a congressional commission that would look not only at VA but how to connect veterans with all the resources in their home communities to head off issues like drug abuse or homelessness or depression. He also wants to focus on his 3-year-old son and be supportive of his wife, who's a marine³² biologist now doing an MBA. They were there at his retirement ceremony, along with his mom, dad, and sister and lots of others he thanked by name.

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SKELTON: Reggie Hemerger saved my [expletive] a lot in Afghanistan. Where's Eric Ikener - Battle of Fallujah?

LAWRENCE: There are lots of reasons DJ Skelton shouldn't be here.

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SKELTON: So thank you. This is my family.

(APPLAUSE)

LAWRENCE: But the room was full of the reasons he still is. Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Arlington, Va.

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