“VSI-Very Seriously Injured”
“Mrs. Guinn, do you have your passport ready?” asked the female voice on the telephone. “Your husband has now been classified as Very Seriously Injured (VSI) and we need you and your children to fly to Germany to be with him.”
After the call from the Colonel, I got out of bed, finished my morning routine just like every other Sunday and went downstairs to wrap banana bread and blueberry muffins for the bake sale at church. My second call of the day was from a very nice lady with the Department of the Army (DA) who informed me my husband had been injured in the line of duty and was currently classified as Seriously Injured (SI). Wait a minute, Seriously Injured? What happened to getting a satellite phone to him so he could call me?
I needed to talk to someone, but it was 7:00 in the morning, too early to call anyone! I did start making calls though, and the call to Tommy’s Mother was the most difficult telephone call I have ever had to make. The hardest part of the call was not having any information to give her at that point other than the fact that he was seriously injured. I know how hard it was to hear as a wife, I could not imagine hearing that news as a mother.
I realized that most churches had not started services yet, so if I could get the word out quickly then people could start praying. I called our church in Killeen (I obviously was not going to make the bake sale), I sent an email to our church in Savannah and called my Mother so she could notify her church. Tommy’s Mom was spreading the word in East Texas-by the time we finished, my husband literally had people praying for him all over the world and that was before the creation of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We did not have much information to give anyone, but they prayed anyway.
Black eye, broken jaw, broken rib, closed head injury-the news kept getting worse.
Tommy was currently in a hospital in Pakistan and the doctors there were trying to stabilize him so he could be flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Medics from the Australian military were first on scene and stayed by his side the entire time he was hospitalized in Pakistan to make sure he received the best care possible; many times over the past nine years I have wished I had the opportunity to thank them for watching over my husband. Tommy’s condition continued to deteriorate and he had been officially downgraded to Very Seriously Injured (VSI). At that point it was time to get our passports ready-the doctors did not think he was going to live long enough to be flown home. Passports, really? I was not prepared for this! Tommy and I had discussed what would happen if he did not make it home at all from a deployment, but injured? That thought never crossed our minds.
As the news spread, I started receiving telephone calls and emails from family and friends throughout the United States, asking questions to which I did not have answers. A few ladies from church stopped by during the Sunday School hour to sit and pray with me and I appreciated it so much. We had only been stationed at Fort Hood a few months so we did not have a huge support network like we did when we were stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. Thankfully our best friends, Chris and Angela Tichenor, moved to Fort Hood a few months before us and lived just a few blocks away. I never would have made it through the nightmare of my husband being injured without them to lean on. I was later told Chris was called by someone in the unit and instructed to take Angi and go to my house because they did not want me to be alone when I received the notification. Chris and Angi were not given any other information so they did not know what to expect; they were preparing themselves for soldiers in uniform-a death notification. It really did not matter what was happening, our dear friends just knew I needed them and they were there.
Two of my neighbors and Angi sat with me all day as I waited for updates from DA. My friends from Georgia called and offered to be on the next plane to Texas if I needed them. At that time I truly did not know what I needed. I had not even let myself cry at that point; I needed to be strong for Dakota and Dustie. I had to keep it together, all of the decisions and plans that needed to be made were resting on my shoulders because my husband was lying in a hospital bed, in another country, half way across the world. I wanted nothing more than to be at his bedside but I could do nothing, everything was out of my control except for my emotions; those I could and would control. I would maintain my composure and be strong. I would not let my children see the heartbreak and terror I was feeling; I wanted them to have a few more hours of being normal “Army Brats” before their lives began to spin out of control.
Finally, late in the afternoon, I received the call to let me know Tommy was stable enough to be flown to Germany and I would get a report when he arrived.
When I started writing all of this down I realized how much I had forgotten from those days and how unsure I was about the timing of different events. As I became frustrated at my lack of memory, I knew it was time to call the people who were there by my side-I just could not seem to get my timeline right and I want our story told correctly. So as I have made phone calls and sent text messages to friends and family I have begun to realize I am not the only one who still struggles to this day with the memories and emotions of that time in our lives. My family was not the only one deeply affected by Tommy’s injuries. A part of me is humbled by the outpouring of love and support we received during that time and another part is devastated that so many wonderful people were so brokenhearted by what we were experiencing. I listened this week to my precious Mother-in-law cry as she shared with me her memories of those first days, as my friend told me she was experiencing emotions again that she had long ago locked away and as my husband told me, for the first time, that he is uncomfortable hearing about what we went through during that dreadful, dark time of our lives. It would be so easy at this point to stop. If I would just delete this document, the panic attack I feel coming on will stop, my breathing will slow to a normal rate and my heart will stop pounding; but if I do that, you will never hear of the courage shown by my family and friends, you will never read of the milestones we have reached or of the laughter we have shared-so my friends, I will not delete this file. I will post this for the entire world to read, starting with the painful beginning. Why? Because, no matter how painful it may be, you cannot appreciate the end of the story unless you read the entire book.