Marlene Wagman-Geller

    In a Salinger short story, Esme, an upper class British schoolgirl, tells a forlorn American soldier, “I hope you return from the war with all your faculties intact.” Her words are not prophetic; after witnessing atrocities, he suffers a nervous breakdown. In another war, a nonfictional woman also goes through unmitigated hell; her indomitable spirit exemplifies the human spirit’s ability to soar-against all odds.

     Ladda Tammy had a singular upbringing. She and her younger brother Tommy were born in Bangkok, to mother Lamai Sompornpairin, a Thai of Chinese descent, and a Marine father from Virginia, Franklin Duckworth, a World War II, Korean and Vietnam vet. His job in the United Nations entailed the family’s relocations to Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia. Her itinerant childhood meant always pulling up roots, but it left her trilingual- Thai, Indonesian and English-and made her emotionally resilient. The Duckworths lived in Cambodia until two weeks before the Khmer Rouge takeover. She recalls devastating sights that made an indelible impression.

    When Tammy was 16 the family moved to Hawaii, but her years were anything but a tropical idyll. Franklin had been reduced to financial dire straits by a late-in-life layoff and the Duckworths descended from middle-class into poverty. No one would hire him because they said he was overqualified. She explained this comment, “Those are code words for ‘you’re too old.” At low ebb, the family of four was down to their last $10.00. They were forced to live in a pay-by-the-week motel and Tammy recalled, “We’d use the food stamps for baloney and white bread, praying it would last the week.” At McKinley High School a teacher gave them money for Taco Bell. Tammy bought two tacos for 99 cents, and would offer her father one, pretending she was full. Despite her difficult home situation, partially due to her Tiger Mother Lamai, Tammy graduated with honors.

    In 1990 Tammy enrolled in the Master’s program in international affairs at George Washington University with the aspiration to become an ambassador. She joined the ROTC and recalled, “I fell in love with the military. I even loved the drill sergeants yelling at me.” It was how she met her husband, Bryan Bowlsbey. When they were cadets he made a comment that she felt was derogatory about the role of women in the Army. Contrite, he apologized and helped clean her M16. The couple married three years later.

       Duckworth enrolled in a political science Ph.D. program at Northern Illinois University and concurrently became a member of the National Guard. In 2004 she trained as a Black Hawk pilot as it was one of the few jobs with combat potential for women. She said she ‘got a lot of shit” as the first female platoon leader of her unit. When she made her team cocoa before training exercises the pilots called her “mommy platoon leader.’ In 2004 she was deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

        On November 12 she was copiloting a Black Hawk with Daniel Milberg when insurgents lurking along the Tigris River launched a rocket propelled grenade at their cockpit. She tried to control the helicopter and wondered why the pedals did not respond. It did not occur to her that she no longer had any feet with which to press them. She recalled with a lightness of tone that belied the horror, “I did not realize my legs were already gone. I mean, how many times a day do you ever look down to check if you still have your legs?” Duckworth had also lost half her blood and her right arm was barely attached. Milberg-who risked his life to save hers-described the rescue as straight out of Saving Private Ryan. Surgeons in Baghdad amputated the remains of her right leg just below the hip and her left leg below the knee. They stabilized her arm and she eventually arrived in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. where specialists and her husband awaited. Her stay-in the facility she called “the amputee petting zoo”-was of thirteen months duration. Duckworth had the dubious distinction of being the first female double amputee of the war. She was virtually helpless, with only one usable limb. In agony she battled the pain by looking at a clock and counting to 60 as each minute ticked by. At first she recited, “One dead Iraqi, two dead Iraqis, three dead Iraqis.” However, she soon stopped herself from giving into hate and determined she was not going to be defined by “some guy who got lucky with a grenade decide how I live my life.” Instead she repeated the Soldier’s Creed, “I’m an American soldier. …I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.” 

   Bowlsbey had just returned from his brother’s wedding rehearsal dinner when he received the devastating news. He flew to the hospital to be there when Tammy regained consciousness, and did not leave her side to shower or sleep. He said breaking the tragedy of her injuries was one of the most difficult things he had ever done, but she took it “with poise and stoicism.” After she listened to his run-down of all the things amputees were capable of doing she replied. “I love you, but you stink. Go shower.”

     During the months of convalescence, when the psychological and physical pain was so great, and the future as a potential three limb amputee was so bleak, she could easily have succumbed to despair. But the spirit of defeat was not the stuff Tammy Ducksworth was made of. She persevered-to still rise-even if physically doing so entailed prosthetic limbs. These became state-of-the art titanium, one bore a camouflage pattern, the other an American flag.

     The patients at Walter Reed helped dispel the gloom with their own brand of dark humor. They would joke about the doctors ruining their tattoos when performing surgery and Tammy got into the spirit with her t-shirt: Lucky for me, he’s an ass man.

     The staff also helped through the long road to recovery when they encouraged their patients to set goals, and hers ranged from the practical to the daring. First, she wanted to regain enough mobility in her right arm so she could wear a ponytail without assistance. Bryan’s was well-meaning but proved clumsy in this endeavor. She also wanted to fly once again with the National Guard.

       When Forest carried Lt. Dan from the jungle of Vietnam the officer railed against Gump, shouting he had cheated him of his destiny. He had lost his legs in the sniper attack and would have preferred to die with honor than live as a cripple. Tammy Duckworth never felt this way. She marks the November 12^th ambush with her Alive Day, a tradition that arose in Vietnam as wounded American soldiers struggled to cope with the physical and emotional scars left by their injuries. The anniversary marks a bitter-sweet moment. She said, “It could be a horrible day, but I choose to celebrate it. I know it’s the day I lost my legs, but it is also the day that I survived.” Duckworth says the celebration is not about her, but rather a tribute to those who aided in her recovery. Many guests attended of whom Tammy said, “When you have all these people behind you, you don’t want to let them down. That’s where my strength comes from. If I gave up, it would be disrespectful to them.” As Milberg said of the woman he refused to leave for dead-she hosts no pity parties. On the first of these occasions she put on her pink t-shirt that reads Life is good before she headed off to the banquet hall. Her tops are emblematic of her character. Another reads, Dude, where’s my leg? Another, “Wanna touch it? When asked about her sense of humor regarding her amputations she explained, “You can choose to cry about it, and you can choose to be depressed for the rest of your life about it, but at the end of the day, I earned my injuries in defense of my nation.” She added to honor those who saved her was to maintain her sense of humor and to show that her life is actually quite normal. She continued, “My husband and I have fights all the time. We don’t fight because I don’t have legs. We have fights because he leaves the toilet seat up. And it annoys me.”

      Lt. Dan reembraced life when he let his bitterness go, and Tammy is endlessly grateful to have survived. She stated, “Every day is a payback for me. I measure each one on how effective I am. I don’t ever want to be sad about my life.” Then, as if to prove her point, she suddenly moved her chair and revealed flirty, flashy shoes. They were pointy, zebra-striped with silver buckles strapped onto her two shiny titanium carbon fiber legs. She continued, “One of the good things about losing your feet is I can wear all the pointy shoes I want and it doesn’t hurt anymore. I can wear shoes just for fashion now,” she chuckled, though it camouflaged sadness.

      Post release she realized one of the many items on her bucket-list when she piloted a single engine Piper-Cherokee, her left prosthetic manipulating the pedals, making for a daunting feat at 2,000 feet. For Tammy flying equals freedom, even if it is not the adrenaline-pumping combat duty but sailing over Virginia’s forests. She completed the Chicago Marathon in the wheelchair division, and relearned how to scuba dive. However, in her more vulnerable moments she admits she is not bionic, her emotions not bullet-proof. She shuns her flesh-colored prosthetics since they serve as a reminder that she will never be able to put on “sexy heels and a sexy dress” for a date with her husband. Some days all she can do is battle fatigue, on other days it’s is a fight against “phantom limb pain.” She also is saddened she did not regain the full use of her dominant right hand, an irritation because her salute is no longer crisp.

        Tammy also achieved her goal of again giving back to the country she loves when she entered the arena of politics-even though it placed her in another line of fire. Not surprisingly, Ms. Duckworth did not prove to be a strait-laced politician. On one occasion she joined fellow Democrats in the House to sit on the floor to demand a vote on gun-control legislation. Members had taken to tweeting photos and livestreaming the motley crew singing “We Shall Overcome” on Facebook-a blatant violation of the decorous rules of the chamber. To forestall the Capitol Police confiscating her phone, Tammy slipped it into the hollow of her prosthetic. When asked what else she had hidden there, she replied her secret vice- Sour Patch Kids.

    By this time Duckworth’s trials and her joie d vivre made her a darling on the talk-show circuit and earned praise in magazines such as Glamor.  A commentator extolled her virtues and mentioned if Tammy ran as a Republican she would have his vote. Duckworth declared her first candidacy for Congress in 2005 as a Fighting Dem. She lost by two points and admitted she sat in her bathtub and cried for three days. Tammy attempted a second run in 2012 against Senator Mark Kirk, and if biographies alone won elections, Duckworth would have been a shoo-in. In her speech she stated, “My family has served this nation in uniform, going back to the Revolution. I’ve bled for this nation.” The already contentious Illinois Senate reached a new low when Kirk insulted his mixed race opponent, “I forgot that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.” Ms. Duckworth did not answer, and the audience dissolved into a stunned silence. Both parties agreed Kirk had crossed the line by attacking a lieutenant colonel, the recipient of a Purple Heart, who had given her legs for America. It flew in the face of the fact the Illinois chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution had erected a statue of her standing next to the War of Independence hero Molly Pitcher. He offered his “sincere apology” via Twitter. However, Tammy took the comment in stride. As she said, “These legs are titanium. They don’t buckle. Go ahead, take a shot at me. There’s nothing you can do to me now that will ever be as bad as that day in Iraq. I’m tough enough for it. I am.”  In 2012 Senator Tammy Duckworth became the first disabled female veteran and the first female Asian- American woman to serve in the House of Representatives.

        As with many survivors, Tammy questioned why her life had been spared, and one of the many reasons became manifest with her pregnancy. This was no easy feat as she was forty-six and had to conceive through reproductive technology. Carrying a baby was further complicated as this made walking on her prosthetics more difficult as they had been calibrated to her height and weight and the added pounds played havoc with their electronics.

    Bryan and Tammy toyed with calling their daughter Piper after their plane; however, they settled on Abigail O’kalani Bowlsbey when a former senator from Hawaii bestowed a traditional island name. Her regret from retiring from the National Guard was Abigail would never get to see her serving in its ranks. Although it will be a challenge to raise a child without legs, the full use of her dominant hand, a career as a senator and a husband who can be deployed, there is no cause for worry for the woman who is as tough as titanium.

      An expression in the US military that is a shout-out to the affirmative is one Tammy Duckworth-survivor extraordinaire deserves-Hooah!