Travis way station offers care, nurturing

Travis way station offers care, nurturing: "




Posted on Sun, Nov. 05, 2006


Travis way station offers care, nurturing
Troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan find haven for healing at base in Fairfield
By Dogen Hannah
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

FAIRFIELD - As gusts buffeted Travis Air Force Base one evening, Andrew Lowe rested securely on a litter in a cargo van, waiting to be carried aboard a nearby jet on the tarmac.

About a week earlier, the 22-year old Marine corporal had been chasing insurgents through a palm grove near Iraq's Euphrates River. As he pursued them, a makeshift bomb blasted metal shards into his legs.

'The shrapnel wounds were so severe they had cut through my arteries,' Lowe said. 'The doctors actually managed to save my legs, which was a miracle.'

More than 22,200 U.S. military members have been wounded in almost five years of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. At least 2,500 of those have passed through Travis, a major hub for military aircraft and home to the Air Force's David Grant Medical Center.

For Lowe, who was flying to a Marine base in Hawaii, and others returning injured from war, Travis is a way station.

For the lance corporal who was bound for a Navy hospital in San Diego, the sergeant who was headed for an Army base"