In the four months since the death of my son, Sgt. Matthew J. Fenton, from injuries suffered in Iraq, I h ave stated many times the horror of what I saw in the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda Md.
I believe that the time has arrived to tell the whole story of his death and the carnage that was inflicted on some of his fellow Marines. I do not find this easy to do, but as the Death toll and injured number continues to climb, I cannot sit silently.
On April 26, Matthew, 24, was the gunner on a Humvee protecting a Marine convoy on the outskirts of Fallujah. A suicide car bomber attempted to ram his Humvee, and he got off a few shots at the vehicle. From what I have been told it is common practice for these bombers to detonate their bomb if they come under fire. Matthew was the only Marine injured in the attack. Later that same day I received a phone call telling me that Matt was seriously wounded and that it was a head injury.
The next day we were informed that Matt had been flown to Germany. Matt's mother, Diane, and I prepared to go to Germany. But in the middle of trying to get a flight, we received another call saying that he had stabilized and they were going to fly him to the United States. We were all lifted by this seemingly good news.
Diane and I flew to Washington the next day and were met by a uniformed Marine and driven to Bethesda. What awaited us there is still shocking to me now. We met with two doctors who laid everything out for us. Matthew's injury was a devastating one. Shrapnel had entered his head just above his left eye and traveled diagonally through his brain and exited the right rear.
'A nightmare'
Surgeons in Baghdad had removed two plates from his skull to help relieve the pressure from the swelling of his brain. The frontal lobe was destroyed, so they had removed it. It was explained that the frontal lobe is the center of personality and the place where someone is aware of themselves. The Matthew that we knew and loved was gone, and would never come back.
As we struggled with that staggering news there was more to come. The shrapnel had done severe damage to both sides of Matt's brain because of the angle that it traveled through. The brain can figure a way to control functions when one side is damaged, like in a stroke. But this was devastating news. The doctors told us that if this had happened in Vietnam, there would have been no surgery. If this happened in front of the best hospital in New York City, there would have been no surgery. His chances of ever having meaningful movement were less than slim.
Why, we asked, was the surgery done in Baghdad? The answer, surgeons do whatever they can to keep a soldier alive. They do not decide life or death.
We were then led down a long hospital corridor toward my son's room. This is the moment that I will never forget until the day I die. Just outside his room we were instructed that we had to don gowns, masks, and gloves every time we entered the room. This was to prevent us from picking up bacteria that Matt may have brought back from Iraq and spreading it to other patients in the ward.
My shock was doubled upon seeing Matthew. He was unrecognizable. His head was completely swollen, like some cartoon character. There were maybe hundreds of metal staples in his head. There were of course tubes coming and going everywhere. There were drains running from the site of the surgery. And there was the ventilator. I immediatelly snapped at the doctors. Somewhere along the line I had been informed that Matt was breathing on his own. Nine years ago I watched my father die after having cancer surgery. He never got off the vendilator and I flashed back to that time.
Matthew was able to breathe on his own, the doctors explained. The ventilator was only assisting. His heart and lungs were perfect. There had been no damage to his brain stem, which controls involuntary actions like breathing and the heart beating. So there we were looking at our son, not recognizing him, not a scratch on him below his eyes. But his face and head mangled and inflated. This must be a nightmare, one that we will never wake up from.
What war leaves behind
For days we made that walk down that long hallway. It took some time but I was finally able to look at some of the other Marines on the ward with Matthew. I wish to this moment that I hadn't. Kids with horrible injuries.
One had bene in the ward for 11 months, after seven different brain surgeries. His wife refused to let him go. She was praying for a miracle. He had parts of his skull removed also, but all the swelling was gone now and his head had sunken in where they had been removed. He did not move at all.
Across the ward another Marine was in his third month, and his head was all sunken in. This is what lay ahead for Matthew also. Also across the ward was another Marine who was there only a few days before Matt. He was lucky, damage to only one side of his brain. I became friendly with his father, Jim, from Tennessee. One day there was an uproar from his son's room and I looked over and made eye contact with Jim. Maybe an hour later we met in the hallway and he apologized to me. His son had opened his eyes for the first time and his family just responded. There was no need for an apology as I would have jumped for joy if Matthew were to open his eyes.
All that was left was to decide when the life support would be removed. That final decision rested in the hands of his mother. There was no disagreement on what course to follow, just when.
On May 3, the Marine Corps commandant presented Matthew with his Purple Heart. On May 4, I noticed that the swelling of Matthew's head was going down. By the end of the day, the indentations where pieces of his skull were missing were becoming noticeable. The next morning I was dreading what he might be looking like. And yes, there was his head becoming very odd shaped.
Letting go
I prayed that Diane would find the strength to let her son go today. I did not want to see him decline another day. . Another day of watching his head sink into his skull. And neither did she.
Sometime around noon on May 5, Matthew was moved from the ward to a private room. Behind some curtains they removed the ventilator and most of the tubes. He was kept on the morphine, and we were assured he would not feel any pain. Now he was breathing all on his own. Diane got into the hospital bed with her son, and I held his hand and we all waited and watched for Matthew to pass.
But he would not go easily. After three hours of labored breathing, I asked the nurse if there was anything that she could do. No. I asked God to take him now. No. His mother told him to go. I asked him to go. Go to some peace. A half-hour later, he finally took his last breath.
This is the real story of the war in Iraq. We all know the numbers, and we all know the reasons that are claimed that we have to be there. But this is the reality: young brave, patriotic men losing their lives for a cause that keeps shifting.
Every politician who supports the war should go to Bethesda or Walter Reed and see what their support is costing in human life and suffering. And to everyone who opposes the war, don't sit back any longer. Someday you may be touched personally by some tragedy from this disastrous war, and it will be too late, like it is for me.-- Matthew Fenton, Little Ferry, NJ
THIS is why we oppose a war based on lies.
THIS is why we oppose a war without strategy.
THIS is why we oppose an occupation with no plan for when we can leave.
THIS is why we cannot let George W. Bush send any more young Americans to die so he can save face and once AGAIN not have to account for his crimes.
THIS is why we cannot allow George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld call us "appeasers".
THIS is why we cannot "stay the course."
THIS is why every fucking Senator and Congressperson up for election this year who supported this war and who continues to support this war (Mrs. Clinton, I'm talking to you too) must be removed from office in November.
THIS is why we cannot allow the evil men who run this country to frighten us any longer.
Over 2600 families have had to endure what the Fenton family of Little Ferry has endured. Does anyone believe that if 26,000 or 260,000 American families had this story to tell, we would still be in Iraq?
No one who supports this war has been asked to sacrifice. Jonah Goldberg and the other 101st Fighting Keyboarders sit snugly in their nice, warm homes, while young men like Matthew Fenton have their brains blown out -- and they say that what they're doing for the war effort is just as important.
We have an election coming in two months. Between now and then, we are going to hear this president and his henchmen continue to use the rhetoric that has been so successful for them up to this point -- the rhetoric of fear. They will tell us that the boogeyman is coming to get us, assuming that we will not think about the five years during which they have done nothing but make the world a more dangerous place. They will tell you only they can keep you safe, at the same time as you are more vulnerable than ever before as a result of their bungling. And they will continue to feed American kids into a meatgrinder to satisfy their bloodlust. And they will continue to swiftboat men like Jack Murtha, who today threw down the gauntlet and said that "If we are to fight this war with the same sense of dedication and vigor as we did prior wars, we cannot do it without a surge in force" -- a military draft.
Matthew Fenton's father hasn't been on TV. He will never be invited to appear on "Hannity and Colmes." He will never be invited to the White House for a face-to-face with a president who cares so deeply about the sanctity of stem cells and yet feels nothing for the young men and women he is sending to die -- kids lying unseeing and unknowing in hospital beds with their heads caving in around their shattered skulls.
Those in Washington who voted for this war and now regret it have a lifetime of penance in front of them. Those who voted for this war and persist in supporting it deserve their own place in the hell these military families will live in for the rest of their lives -- because a lifelong fuckup of a man stole an election in 2000, ignored threats against this country, and then cynically used the attack that took place ON HIS WATCH to settle a grudge.
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