U.S. soldier fulfills mission, gets new legs for Iraqi girl

The soldier is set to leave Iraq in a few weeks.

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon, 38, was patrolling the streets of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, when he saw Shahad Abbas. The 11-year-old girl was in a large decrepit wheelchair, and the stumps of her legs where her calves should have been were crusted with dried blood.

Falcon couldn’t just walk on, so he stopped to talk. He came back the next day and the day after that, then every day for six months, bringing her toys, gauze for her legs, a new wheelchair. Anything she asked for, he would bring.

In a war that Falcon no longer really understood, Shahad became his mission. So when she asked for legs, that became his mission, too.

On Friday his dream and hers came true, just three weeks before he’s scheduled to leave Iraq. Shahad was fitted with prosthetic limbs in a U.S. military-funded clinic in Baghdad that normally provides artificial limbs for wounded members of the Iraqi security forces.

With no little girls of his own, he thought of Shahad as his daughter and carried a picture of her.

Iraq has one of the largest populations of amputees in the world, though a precise count isn’t available. There are the tens of thousands of people who lost their limbs in the 1980s, during the eight-year war with Iran. Thousands more were injured in the first gulf war. And then there’s the current conflict, which has cost many people their legs and arms in bomb blasts.

Shahad lost her legs as she was walking to school when a roadside bomb exploded nearby. Two pieces of shrapnel are still lodged in her back to remind her of that day. Her little brother, Ali, was killed.

One day, Falcon, a New Yorker from 1st battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, asked her what she wanted.

“I want legs so I can walk to school,” she told him. It was a daunting request. The family was too poor to pay for expensive prostheses. The travel alone to an equipped clinic would be too expensive. Her father is unemployed and ill.

So Falcon, who says he wasn’t sure about the Iraq war, wasn’t sure he was making a difference, decided he would get Shahad her legs.

He went to his commander, to his chaplain, to anyone who would listen. The quest was frustrating and took months of pleas. He threatened to walk away from the Army if he couldn’t give Shahad legs.

Eventually, he was able to win permission for Shahad to be treated at the clinic.

On Friday, Shahad arrived at the clinic to get her legs. Her mother and uncle wheeled her into the clinic.

By Friday afternoon she was taking her first steps. At first she was tentative and a little scared.

Falcon called out, “Sasha, come give me a hug.” With a sloppy grin on her face, she took several shaky steps into his arms.

“She was looking at my legs, and I was looking at her legs,” he said. “Thank God.”