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Undying valor
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Candidate
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Nov 27, 2005 09:06pm |
| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Nov 27, 2005 09:00pm |
| Description | Story by Stacy St. Clair Photos by Brian Hill
Posted Sunday, November 27, 2005
WASHINGTON — On the morning of Nov. 12, Army Maj. Ladda “Tammy” Duckworth lies half-awake in her bed. An IV pumps antibiotics into her right arm.
Before the treatment is finished, a ringing telephone ends any chance of falling back to sleep. Fellow Black Hawk pilot Dan Milberg is on the line, his first words a reminder of the life-altering moment they shared 12 months earlier.
“It’s almost 4:30 in Iraq,” Milberg says, skipping the normal pleasantries. “In five minutes you’re going to be shot down.”
Duckworth, a 37-year-old member of the Illinois National Guard, looks at the clock and realizes it’s true. At this moment exactly one year ago, a rocket-propelled grenade ripped through their helicopter and forever changed their lives.
The insurgent attack took both of the Hoffman Estates woman’s legs and shattered her right arm. She lost nearly half her blood, but miraculously survived. Milberg was among those who saved her and who sustain her still. There are many others, and on this, the anniversary of her trauma, she thinks of them.
In the year since the ambush, Duckworth has been rebuilding both her life and her war-scarred body at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She has endured dozens of surgeries, including a recent operation on her right arm to spare her from losing a third limb. |
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