Panelist Biographies
John Campbell, deputy as- sistant secretary of defense, Warrior Care Policy, DoD
DEREK DONOVAN: … Today, we have a very distin- guished group of panelists. We’re very excited to hear what they have to say. I think that we will hear about some things that worked well, and I think it’s also im- portant that we hear about things that perhaps didn’t work as well for everybody. For me personally, I kind of like to focus on the posi-
Maj. Tara Dixon, USAR, trauma and critical care surgeon
tive, and I would like everybody to think about those positive things that come up because I think oftentimes it’s just as important, if not more important, to reinforce success as it is to go ahead and struggle and battle against those things that we’re not quite doing as well. MASTER SGT. WILLIAM “SPANKY” GIBSON, USMC-Ret.: … When I first got injured, I was a gunny. I was a gunny 17 years in the Marine Corps. I was 35 years of age. I got shot. It was a battlefield amputation so it was ampu- tated at a combat surgical hospital in Al-Taqaddum [air base, Iraq].
Derek Donovan (modera- tor), vice president, Fisher House Foundation
Shortly after that, I went over to Walter Reed [Army
Master Sgt. William “Spanky” Gibson, USMC- Ret. (moderator), wounded warrior
Petty Officer 3rd Class Benjamin Host, USN-Ret., student veteran
Col. Karen T. Malebranche, USA-Ret., executive director, Veterans Health Administra- tion, Office of Interagency Health Affairs
Annette Slaydon, spouse caregiver, and Tech. Sgt. Matthew Slaydon, USAF-Ret.
62 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2012
Medical Center in Washington, D.C.], and I [was] amped up to start my amputee recovery. It’s hard enough when you’re 21 years old. When you’re 35 and you’re a senior staff NCO, you want to get back to the world as quickly as you can. … Normality is what you want after anything traumatic in your life. It’s going to be wonderful to share our [stories] be- cause … the more we tell our stories, the more we share our stories, the more that we share our experiences, the better our recovery will be. … MAJ. TARA DIXON, USAR: I served two tours over in Iraq, once during the surge and once in 2010. I am a board-certified surgeon and trained in trauma, critical care, and burn surgery. … [During] both my tours [in Iraq] … I was in a far-forward surgical team. … We were the first line. … [It was] my job … to make those deci- sions at that moment [of] who needs their leg amputat- ed right away versus risking them bleeding to death out in the middle of the field. … We got bombed routinely. … They would aim at the surgical team. They would be like, “that big red cross, that’s where you aim.” So we would have to take the big red cross off the top of the tent because they knew where to aim. Where our medevac helicopters were, that’s where they knew to aim at because if they took out those mede- vac helicopters, we would be down. There’s some child abuse that went on at some of the bases that I was at. They knew that we have a soft spot for the locals, and so they could get some children on base to try to either case the base or bring in people strapped on with suicide bombs. So we would occa- sionally see these 2-month-old or 2-year-old [children] brought to us with [problems], either being dunked in
PHOTOS: STEVE BARRETT
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