Stories from God's Little Miracle Garden
[Click Back Arrow to Return to Angel's Home Page]

The Amazing Journey of Jessica Clements

When we first saw Jessica in May 2004, she looked nothing like the beautiful woman whose pictures hung on her hospital door at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She was in a coma. Part of her skull had been removed to relieve the pressure on her brain; it was sown inside a pouch in her stomach. Her mother and fiancée held her hands, expecting the worst. No one, doctors included, expected this outcome. Here is her story.

Jessica’s Journey to Walter Reed started on May 5th, 2004, 15 miles north of Baghdad. She was a reservist who had been activated and sent to Iraq as a tanker [fuel] truck driver.  In the Iraqi desert, Jessica learned to stretch her socks over the tops of her Army boots at night to keep the scorpions out. It was just one of the hazards the soldiers had to live with, like the heat and the roadside bombs.

The noise of improvised explosive devices (IED’s) going off in the distance had caused her to use earplugs. But on that date, the bombs were not in the distance.

Her unit was to go to the Baghdad airport, meet a plane, fly to Kuwait, pick up some new tankers, and bring them back to Iraq. She was a passenger in the truck. On the way to the airport, her truck was struck by an IED.

She slumped into the lap of a civilian contractor from Texas sitting next to her; he held her until medics arrived. Jessica was severely wounded along the left side of her body, especially at the hip and shoulder. These injuries alone were serious. But the shrapnel and blast overpressure (detonation waves) damaged both sides of her head and brain. In short, SSGT Jessica Clements was in very bad shape.

Medics rushed to her, intubated her to assure she had an open airway to breathe, and flew her to the 31st Combat Support Hospital (CSH) in Baghdad, the premier place in country for injuries suffered by explosives.  Jessica was in a coma when she arrived at the 31st CSH. On something called the Glasgow coma scale, she was rated a 3—the lowest possible score. The same as someone dead on arrival.

The initial assessments at the 31^st CSH were obviously grim. The doctors were most worried about the extent of damage that might have been done by the shrapnel and blast to her brain. She was placed on life support and rushed into surgery.

The surgeons went to work. LCOL Poffenbarger, the chief neurosurgeon, removed part of Jessica's skull to allow room for brain swelling. This is common for such operations; it is known as a craniotomy. The piece of skull removed was stored in a pouch in Jessica's abdomen.

On May 13, she left for Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany, but stayed only about 18 hours, and then went on to Walter Reed, arriving there on May 15. She was given little chance of surviving when she arrived at the 31st CSH, and her prognosis was the same when she arrived at Walter Reed.

However, on her ninth day at Walter Reed, she blinked her eyes on command. On the 11th day, she held a pen and wrote a note, asking that the tube in her throat be removed. On the 13th day, she mouthed the words, "Thank you." Jessica was a “miracle child,” as the doctors called her, and three weeks after her injury, she emerged from the coma. Jessica's senses began to tingle back to life.

(Witnessing the incredible recovery of Jessica and many others at Walter Reed caused us to nickname the hospital, God’s Little Miracle Garden.)

Jessica’s fiancée Greg had bought an engagement ring for her while she was deployed to Iraq. One Sunday in early June, when everyone else had gone home, he felt the moment was right. He pulled out the ring and proposed at her bedside.

Jessica’s recovery continued, and on June 21 she was flown to the Minneapolis Veterans Medical Center, a center that specializes in brain injury rehabilitation. So Jessica had moved from near death to rehabilitation in less than two months.

In late July, she returned to Walter Reed to await reassembly of her skull. She had walked out of the Minneapolis hospital on her own. On August 18, doctors at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, put her skull back in place.

We visited Jessica frequently while she was at Walter Reed. On one occasion, her mother asked us for a little pillow to support her daughter’s head. On a subsequent visit, the mother informed us that the pillow had been lost when the staff changed the sheets, and Jessica was very distraught not to have the support for her head. We supplied a new pillow.

Jump ahead now a few months. We were on a Walter Reed bus escorting about 60 recovering military and their families to the Pentagon for the monthly VIP tour. Jessica Clements was one of the soldiers on the bus. She did not remember us, but when we asked her about the pillow, she responded, ‘Oh, you are the ones who gave it to me.” She added that it helped her avoid nightmares as she slept.

We have now lost touch with Jessica, but we spotted the following entry on her blog:

“I'm doing well these days. I'm in school, and it's going ok so far. It was definitely the right move for me. I'm starting with the basic math, because I couldn't remember how to do simple problems, but I don't mind. My brain needed a refresher anyway! I'm also taking Government and Politics. I'm studying hard, and hopefully I'll make a good social worker/counselor someday. I hope to work with other veterans, or people with disabilities like myself. “

Editorial: Do Not Let Our Wounded Walk Alone
Their Journey Never Ends
[McLean Legionnaire, March 2008]

The story of Jessica Clements in this issue of the McLean Legionnaire is only one of thousands of stories that could be told about our wounded and injured men and women from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Jessica is quoted as saying, “It's OK. I would do it all over again. It's my job.”

These words are not unique to her. During the last four and a half years, we have personally visited over 5,000 of our wounded, and over and over again we have heard those words, “It's my job.”

How fortunate we are as a nation to have these incredible young people just doing their job. But many are returning to our neighborhoods with physical and emotional needs. And they deserve our help. As one young amputee told us, “I just want to be treated like a whole person when I get home.”

We as a nation have a responsibility to do our job also. We must look that young man in the eye and say, “Yes, you are a whole person. What can we do to help you?”

A five year old girl said it best on our first visit to Ward 57. As we entered the room, she looked up from rubbing what was left of her father’s leg and said, “He is still my daddy.”

Like Jessica, our wounded and injured have received outstanding medical attention on the battlefields, in the Combat Support Hospitals, at Landstuhl, and at stateside hospitals like Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The survival rate from wounds is over 90%. With this increased survival rate comes more wounded with greater long term needs.

So what can we do to help these young heroes? First we must be proactive in our approach. The yellow ribbons stating Support Our Troops are good. It lets our military know that our country has grown up from the Vietnam Era and can now distinguish our feelings about the War on Terror from the men and women who fight to protect our country.

The welcome home ceremonies are a momentary adrenalin rush for the troops and the participants—it soon disappears.

We need to have our established veterans groups like The American Legion, church groups, and grass-root volunteers find out if Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom wounded and injured veterans are returning to their neighborhoods. Do not wait to see if the VA is going to help them. Do not make them fill out a form requesting help.

Knock on their doors. Thank them for their service. Welcome them to your neighborhood. Tell them you care about them. Ask them what you can do to help them.

Do they need a job? How about a babysitter? Car repairs? Does their house need some fixing up?

Become a new friend for our wounded and injured.

Tell them you will always be there for them.

That's our obligation as American citizens.

Do not let these wounded and injured men and women walk their journey alone.