Saving Grace

Exhausted, Marine Cpl. Aaron Mankin stopped rolling in the dirt to put out the fire that had consumed his upper body. He became very still and closed his eyes. Images of family and friends flashed through his mind. "I thought about this girl I was dating," Mankin says quietly, gazing over at his wife, a fellow Marine. "I lay down to die and fixated on her face."

Diana Mankin stares back at her husband's face, grossly disfigured with burns from the improvised explosive device (IED) that nearly took his life in Iraq. Her hand twines around his like a ship tethered in a storm.

The Marine Lance Cpl. says she has a hard time even remembering what he looked like before his injuries on May 11, 2005. "Aaron was all I thought about when I came back from Iraq," she says slowly. "I was scared because he looked like a stranger. But now, I don't even see the scars. Not anymore."

Making the scars go away, in the most literal sense, is why the Mankins have come to UCLA. The injured Marine is the first patient in Operation Mend, a one-of-a-kind partnership launched by UCLA Medical Center board member and noted philanthropist Ronald A. Katz, which unites wounded soldiers from Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio, Texas, with UCLA doctors.

"Irrespective of your political position on the war, these are our soldiers," says Katz. "These are our countrymen, our neighbors. If they're injured, whether you approve of the war or don't, it's our responsibility to take care of them."

He is not alone in that mission. On campus and in the desert, in ways large and small, Bruins in and out of uniform are helping to heal the wounds of war.

Taking Down the Red Tape

In Fort Bragg, N.C., Army Captain Arturo Murguia '99 is the company commander for a unit that helps wounded soldiers, whom the Army calls Warriors in Transition (WTs), deal with the perilous military bureaucracy to ensure they get the care they need when they return home. Although Murguia is a field artillery officer with zero background in medicine, he knows something about the cost of war #8212; on one of his last combat patrols in Baghdad, the captain's vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that slammed him up against the inner hull, and he was later diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.

"I know exactly what it is like to navigate that bureaucracy, deal with revolving doctors and nurses while they deploy, and endure the long waits in between appointments," he says. "Is it tough? Absolutely. Is it relentless? Yes. It is also by far the most rewarding job I have ever had."

Indeed, it is a long, tough road for all who strive to repair the ravages of war. No one knows that better than the first patient of Operation Mend.

The Kindest Cut

On the eve of the second in a series of complex facial surgeries, the outgoing and personable Mankin says it was hard coming to terms with his devastating injuries. "I had reached a point where it was like: 'This is me. This is what I'm going to look like for the rest of my life.' And then I heard about this program at UCLA ... It's not just all the medical expertise or technology; it's the heart and passion these individuals have for my family and me."

The Mankins learn from Timothy Miller M.D. '63, chief of reconstructive and plastic surgery, that Aaron's next procedure, where a skin flap is brought down from the forehead to build a new nose, will also require a tracheostomy to protect his damaged airway. The tube could be in for up to a year. "That's intimidating," Mankin says in a soft, wheezy rasp. Miller, a silver-haired surgeon who knows a soldier's hardships better than most, nods emphatically.

After graduating from UCLA Medical School in the '60s, Miller completed a one-year internship in Tennessee before spending a year in BAMC's burn unit and then another year in Vietnam. Last summer he performed four reconstructive surgeries free of cost on a 12-year-old Iraqi girl whose nose was sheared off in a missile attack.

"Cpl. Mankin and Sgt. Mikeworth [Darron Mikeworth, Operation Mend's second patient, who lost his left eye and large portions of his face to an Iraqi car bomb] have given me a heck of a lot more than I've given them," the surgeon states flatly. "They put their lives on the line. This is the least I can do to repay them."

Miller strode into the operating theater for Cpl. Mankin's first surgery wearing his jungle camouflage hat from Vietnam; when asked about the difficulty of his next procedure, the surgeon deadpanned, "On a scale of 1-10, it's about a strong 14."

"I can do 14," the Marine shot back. "It's the 15 you have to worry about."

Fortunately, The Katz Family Foundation pays all uncovered costs for the Mankins, as it will for all Operation Mend patients, including lodging for Aaron's parents, his wife, and 10-month-old baby girl, Maddie. And case manager Priscilla "Patti" Taylor, a former U.S. Army nurse who has served in Vietnam and the Middle East, watches over the soldiers like a proud den mother. "We're making quilts of valor for them," she explains. "It's a military tradition and a small token of thanks for the sacrifices of these young men."

Laws, not Lawlessness

It's not only wartime combatants that Bruins have been helping. In March of last year, Phillip Carter '97, J.D. '04 voluntarily deployed himself to Iraq as a U.S. Army active reservist, where he used his legal skills to affect change, and, in at least one case, salvage a young Iraqi's life ["Renaissance Soldier," UCLA Magazine, January 2007].

Carter, an Army officer for nine years with military police and civic affairs, went to Baqubah to train policemen. When he and his team saw evidence of torture and unlawful detention in the jails, they began a campaign of applied pressure to influence judicial reforms. "Seeing people with holes in their legs created by power drills is something you never forget," Carter, now an attorney in New York City, relates. "But witnessing the systemic abuse that comes from a nation dumping people in jails and forgetting about them is, in some ways, even more difficult to tolerate."

The lawyer/soldier says his years at UCLA instilled a "passion" for determining right from wrong that helped fuel his mission in Iraq. Over a three-month period, Carter asked enough questions and documented enough cases of abuse to help reduce overcrowding in one Iraqi facility by nearly 50 percent. He earned the release of a 14-year-old boy, imprisoned as bait for a crime committed by the boy's brother, by appealing to a local judge. And enemy gunfire and roadside bombs could not prevent Carter from making regular visits to Hamid Abboud, a 46-year-old storeowner imprisoned in 1998 for killing a man in self-defense, released and granted amnesty four years later, and then re-arrested in 2004 for a term of 20 years. "Fighting a counter-insurgency is like the graduate level of warfare," Carter explains. "The military needs more people from top-flight universities. Especially for a war like this."

Books, not Bullets

Education was also the reason Maj. Laura Pacha M.D. '98 appealed to the UCLA Medical Alumni Association earlier this year for used textbooks to distribute in northern Iraq. "English is the language of medicine in Iraq, and the universities, teaching hospitals and nursing schools were desperate for updated materials," Pacha relates from her base in Tikrit. "Why did I pick UCLA to ask for donations? My experience there showed me how hard they worked to maintain the humanity in medicine, and I thought UCLA, more than anywhere else, would be receptive to a volunteer program."

In fact, Pacha's modest idea of stateside giving quickly grew into Books Without Borders, a partnership between the U.S. Army, UCLA's schools of Medicine and Nursing, the UCLA Health Sciences Store and the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Books Without Borders was conceived and coordinated by Valerie Walker, director of the UCLA Medical Alumni Association (MAA), after receiving an e-mail from Pacha. Within six months of Pacha's e-mail, the MAA handed more than 5,000 pounds of medical textbooks and journals to the United States Army at a press conference with MAA board member Patrice Healey M.D. '84 and Lt. Col. Christopher Talcott, who chairs UCLA's Military Science Department. As of this writing, the program has delivered nearly 3,000 medical textbooks to northern Iraq. Five regions in Iraq will benefit from these medical materials on a daily basis.

When asked why she felt a desire to take Pacha's e-mail and design a full-scale project, Walker responded, "The answer is simple: UCLA is a major university and has the responsibility to its students, faculty, alumni, donors and the community to utilize its time and talent resources for the better good of the world."

Walker, previously the volunteer coordinator for the Jules Stein Eye Institute, goes on to explain that UCLA medical association alumni don't always know the full impact of their efforts, but "the university is better and stronger when the work Bruins do comes from a place of passion and purpose."

In Iraq, as health care section chief supporting the area's provincial reconstruction team (PRT) and the man spearheading delivery of the donated textbooks, Capt. Marcus Pecora, School of Nursing '02, says the benefits of Books Without Borders have been immediate. "Doctors have learned new drug therapies in areas like high-blood pressure and antibiotics they didn't even know existed," he notes.

Noting the ever-present threat of attacks from sniper fire and armor-piercing grenades, Pecora says his "book missions" function like any military operation: Materials are loaded into trailers that are hitched to tactical Humvees, and the convoy is protected by an armed security detail. Pecora, who carries a rifle and sidearm, says locations like the nursing high school, in Tikrit's city center, carry a high level of danger. "The drops are in non-secured buildings, so we try not to spend a lot of time in one place," he explains.

Even with all that, it's not enough. Helping secure Books Without Borders on the homefront is Lt. Col. Talcott, who was deployed twice to Iraq and also to Kuwait on a security and training mission.

Talcott worked hand-in-hand with the AMAR International Charitable Foundation and Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne (UK) to build new health clinics in Baghdad. "We built five new health clinics in the Iraqi city we supported," he says. "Iraqi contractors were hired to refurbish and/or build these facilities and then Iraqi medical doctors and professionals provided the expertise to purchase the medical equipment and medicine to make them fully functioning facilities."

Talcott warns that donation programs from outside Iraq like Books Without Borders still are essential because while "this infrastructure rebuilding occurred with Iraqi leadership direction and supervision, the country lacks the materials and resources needed to make these fixes permanent ... we now can add UCLA to the mix to make a positive difference."

Surgery, not Sniper Fire

Closer to home, Cpl. Mankin's father, Steve, has spent a gut-wrenching day at the UCLA Medical Center awaiting the results of Aaron's surgery. The small-business owner from Rogers, Ark., fights back tears as he describes his son's ordeal.

"When they came and said we're through, he's in recovery," the elder Mankin says, "it was like two and a half years of these emotional peaks and valleys just slammed into me. The first level was just survival, and then it was functionality. Here at UCLA we've entered a new phase that was so unexpected and so life-impacting. In many ways ..." his voice suddenly falls silent. Then, echoing his son's words just a few days before, he says, "... it's just plain overwhelming."

"My only knowledge of UCLA [before Operation Mend] was an impression of an institution striving for and achieving the best. But it wasn't until I came here and met the people caring for my son that those impressions meant anything."

Why He Fought

In January 2007, a roadside improvised explosive device took the life of 2nd Lt. Mark Daily '05 in Mosul, Iraq. He was the first Bruin to die in the war. Before he left, Daily wrote a letter on his MySpace page explaining why he fought. The letter became a media phenomenon, a testament to courage #8212; and its cost. Here are some excerpts:

"Anyone who knew me before I joined knows that I am quite aware and at times sympathetic to the arguments against the war in Iraq ... I joined the fight because it occurred to me that many modern day "humanists" who claim to possess a genuine concern for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their fellow 'global citizens' to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and conditions.

"Their excuses used to be my excuses. When asked why we shouldn't confront the Ba'ath party, the Taliban or the various other tyrannies throughout this world, my answers would allude to vague notions of cultural tolerance (forcing women to wear a veil and stay indoors is such a quaint cultural tradition), the sanctity of national sovereignty (how eager we internationalists are to throw up borders to defend dictatorships!) or even a creeping suspicion of America's intentions. ...

"One thing is for certain, as disagreeable or as confusing as my decision to enter the fray may be, consider what peace vigils against genocide have accomplished lately. Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics. Often times it is less about how clean your actions are and more about how pure your intentions are. ...

"Don't forget that human beings have a responsibility to one another and that Americans will always have a responsibility to the oppressed. Don't overlook the obvious reasons to disagree with the war but don't cheapen the moral aspects either. Assisting a formerly oppressed population in converting their torn society into a plural, democratic one is dangerous and difficult business, especially when being attacked and sabotaged from literally every direction. So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include 'Good Luck.' "

Published Jan 1, 2008 8:00 AM