The Work We Do in Iraq
Never forget that there are 10,000 stories like this one - most of them un-reported, but all of them building the bonds of friendship and trust between the peoples of Iraq and the United States:
HADITHA, Iraq – A two-year-old Iraqi girl returned to Haditha March 7 after undergoing open-heart surgery at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University.
Ala Thabit Fattah, the girl’s father, and several family members traveled with Marines to Baghdad International Airport to meet Amenah, who departed Iraq Jan. 22 with his wife.
“I am very happy. I was very worried that my daughter would not come home alive,” Fattah said. “I am very grateful for the great treatment the American people gave to my family.”
The family then flew to Al Asad Airbase in Al Anbar Province, where they boarded an MV-22 Osprey for the final leg of the voyage to Haditha.
Back home, the family served a dinner in her honor.
“I’ve got four children, two boys and two girls myself; I was very happy to see a father, mother and child reunite,” said Maj. Kevin Jarrard, Company L’s commanding officer and the architect behind the medical effort.
Marines from 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines, which is assigned to the Camp Pendleton-based Regimental Combat Team 5, discovered Amenah on a routine patrol through the city. They noticed her extremities exhibited a bluish hue whenever she exerted herself. The battalion surgeon, Capt. John Nadeau, recognized the gravity of her condition and coordinated arrangements with the medical staff at Vanderbilt to perform a surgical procedure to remedy her heart defect.
The 35-year-old Gainesville, Ga., native, Jarrard choreographed the international effort to transport Amenah to the United States and oversaw the entire operation. His wife, Kelly Jarrard, raised the funds to finance the journey on both ends.
“Thank you is just too small of a word to express how I feel,” said Amehah’s mother, Maha Muhammed Bandar.
We are, indeed, our brother’s keeper - or, in this case, our little sister’s keeper. Thank God for alert Marines and loving, giving people.
29 comments March 10th, 2008
