Honor the Quiet Professionals

During my deployments to Iraq, I had the honor of serving some of the military's "Quiet Professionals" as a small but very unique portion of our clients. The quiet professionals are the US military Special Forces; highly trained and independent shadow warriors who complete the most dangerous and tricky missions. In the hospital we met Navy Seals, Army Rangers, and Air Force Combat Controllers. They came to us as patients, secretly in the middle of the night with false names and social security numbers, and then disappeared just as fast when they had been stabilized. We coordinated care with Special Forces physicians, many of them reservists who left their families for months at a time, completely out of communication. We trained their medics to intubate, decompress collapsed lungs, and quickly pass venous or intraosseous catheters to help their men in times of need. One medic I knew started IV's on his troops before battle, and packed bags of fluid in his ruck with stacks of ammo magazines so he could quickly start resuscitation if they were hit. It was very humbling to work with such dedicated troops.

20 FEB 2009 SSgt Tim Davis lost his life to an IED attack near Bagram, Afghanistan. He was a USAF Combat Controller. Members of his team are trekking 800 miles in 10 days in his honor. They will travel with 50lb packs on their long walk from San Antonio to Pensacola. Tim leaves behind a wife and a one year old son.

Learn more about Tim here:

http://www.sgtmacsbar.com/CCTPhotos/Gallery24/Davis/Davis.html

Here is the team's fundraising site:

http://firstgiving.com/samschindler

Here is the breakdown of the trekking team:

http://sites.google.com/site/stmemorialmarch/

and lastly, here is a map of their route from TX to FL:


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