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Interview Fred Downs
ADM's Steve Sapienza
interviews the Chief Consultant for the Prosthetic Sensory Aid Service for the Veterans Administration for"Survivor's Stories: Americans and Landmines"
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MR. DOWNS: Okay. My name is Fred Downs. I am the chief consultant for the Prosthetic Sensory Aid Service for the Veterans Administration service. And, my responsibility is to provide all the prosthetic, orthotic, and sensory aids to all of America's disabled veterans, and that enables me to be thoroughly involved with all the different disability issues and the consequences of certain actions.
MR. SAPIENZA: And, you yourself are a veteran and also someone who has benefitted from this. Now, I guess your story goes back as far as Vietnam. You were in Vietnam. When did you first go to Vietnam and what were you doing at that time?
DOWNS: I arrived in Vietnam in August 1967. My job was the US Army and I was a combat infantry platoon leader. And, my job was to lead a platoon of infantrymen into combat patrols and we worked up in, I was part of the fourth division, third brigade, first is fourteenth infantry. And, we worked up in what they call Icorps, which is the northern part of South Vietnam. And, we worked along the coast and Duck Fo, Chu Li, Kam Kee, worked back up in the central highlands. In the central highlands, we fought the North Vietnamese Army, generally, and then down in the coast we fought the Vietcong. Two different types of fighting entirely. And, but, I, in January 11th, 1968, while we were on a combat patrol in the Chu Li area of near Kam Kee, and I stepped on a Bouncing Betty landmine.
SAPIENZA: Can you just give the audience and the viewers an idea of what was sort of happening at that time in Vietnam? Just a little bit of the background. You mentioned on the phone that it was sort of a build-up to the Tet offensive. There was, you were doing these patrols trying to gauge or tell what was going on with regard to the build-up, that sort of thing.
DOWNS: Well, at the end of 1967, uh, around December and during the truce, why, there was a lot of activity up north of us and a hundred and first airborne got into a lot of trouble. So in the early part of January, why, in fact, the last part of December, our brigade was lifted up to the Chu Li area to help them. What we didn't know at the time was that the Vietnamese Army, the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong, were preparing for the Tet offensive.
So, out on one of the tent peninsulas, outside of Chu Li, there was tremendous fighting going on, hundred and first was in trouble, then the Republic of Korea, that was one of our allies. We staged out of one of their base camps, and we began fighting our way back and forth over the peninsula, through villages. This one particular village had been fought through a number of times. No one lived there any longer, but there were bomb craters and devastation. It was right next to the ocean, as a matter of fact.
And, so, this particular morning, why, we were going to patrol back through the village. We had had some action the day before. And, early in the morning, why, I got the platoon up, and we started on our patrol. We worked in small platoon size elements. The idea was if we could then find the enemy, we would fight and hold them until the rest of the platoons and the other companies arrived. So, I think this day I probably had twenty-four or twenty-five men with me.
SAPIENZA: Was it any different than any other day?
DOWNS: No, it just been a lot more fighting because we didn't know why, but they seemed to have more weapons, more ammunition. And, the Vietcong usually were more of a hit and run ambush kind of fighting. But, lately they had been starting a fight and they would continue fighting. And, so we had to change our tactics a little bit.
But, we were just infantry grunts. We didn't know any of the intelligence of what was going on. So, we didn't know anything about why there was increased activity. We attributed it to probably the truce because, during the truce at Christmas, the enemy always used that as an opportunity to move a lot of supplies south from North Vietnam, so that's what we attributed it to.
SAPIENZA: So, what was it like as you walked through this village that particular morning?
DOWNS: That particular morning, I had a couple of point men out in front of me. I always walked with the point group. I had my medic in the middle of the platoon, we walked in single file, and then my sergeant was towards the rear so that we have command and control if something happened to any part of the platoon.
And, the sun came up, was a beautiful day. And, I was walking along smoking a cigarette, and I looked at my, looked at my watch and said, oh, seven forty-five in the morning. And, next thing I knew, I was flying through the air and it was black powder and dirt rushing by me, and I threw my arms up like this, and I realized that something drastic had gone wrong and I threw my arms like this to catch myself or balance myself because I was flying through the air.
There was just a jagged bone there. The arm was gone and the muscles and tendons, it just, it just completely devastated me. And, then this arm I could see both bones in this arm from the wrist to the elbow, because all that was blown away. And, part of my thumb, my hand. So, I was, and I landed on my feet and I staggered forward and fell down and rolled over on my back. And, uh, I just, just, depression instantly that you're in, the despair, it's just indescribable. Your whole life is changed in a microsecond.
SAPIENZA: Did you know what hit you?
DOWNS: Oh, I, yes, you just sort of, I sort of knew it was a Bouncing Betty. Different kinds of weapons have different kind of effects and I'd been in combat almost six months and had seen a lot different kinds of wounds and had been wounded before. I'd been shot a few times and hit with shrapnel two other times. So, I'd seen a lot of my men get hit and just instinctively knew what it was.
Then, I felt just a racing numbness. There were so many pain circuits going into my brain, I think everything was overloaded. And, I didn't know that from the waist down, in the back, that my buttocks and the back of my legs and my feet had been shredded. And, my pack, the contents of my pack had been exploded out and just laying in a big circle all the way around me.
Five other men were wounded, my RTO, my radio/telephone operator, who was behind me, got hit from the waist down, and he was sitting on the ground screaming, blood just covered him like a sheet. And, two men in front of me, one of them got hit in the knee and then there was another man behind my RTO and he got hit in the stomach and he was screaming, and then there were two other men. Six of us got wounded all together.
Then, my machine gunner ran up to me and started cutting off my web gear. He asked me what he could do for me and I wanted him to run over and pick up my arm. I didn't want to leave it in the village. I didn't want the enemy to -- in my mind, the way I was thinking, I didn't want the enemy to know that they got me. So, he brought my arm back. And, from about here down it looked pretty good. But, there was a humongous gap missing and of course it was all jagged. He laid that across my stomach. Then, this arm I had trouble controlling, he laid that across my stomach. My sergeant ran up to me and the medic. I was the last one the medic took care of because I was in the worst shape. He had triage he had to take care of the ones that looked like that had a good chance of surviving.
So, you're laying there and you're thinking these things. And, really, you're in shock so you're in some ways more rational than the people around you. And, I realized that I was dying, and, uh, just a terrible sickness and sense of loss and things unsaid and undone, people I had, things I wanted to say to my grandmother and to my brothers and my sister. Things that you never said but thought you were going to, I thought about those.
SAPIENZA: This is what you thought about when you were...
DOWNS: When I was laying there.
SAPIENZA: Did you hear the helicopters coming?
DOWNS: Well, the, the, I heard them blow down a hooch next to me. There was, because this was a villa, a hooch was what we called their houses. Made out of bamboo and thatch.
SAPIENZA: So you heard men...
DOWNS: So, they blew that down. The sergeant and the other men are around me, and they told me that they called the captain and the captain was on his way. He wanted to run over to me because I was the, my captain was the oldest man in our company. He was twenty-seven. I was the second oldest man in the company, I was twenty-three. And, so we were pretty close. And, so, he was some kilometers away and they said he was running towards us with his headquarters unit.
And, then they said the helicopter, the dust off, was coming in. And, I said, I could hold out. My medic talked to me, and some of the other men talked to me and the, we were discussing the perimeter and how bad the other guys were. And, then the helicopter landed right next to us, and they ran out of there and they threw out the folding cots and threw one down next to me and opened it up and put me on it. And, as they were rushing me towards the helicopter, the guy who was carrying my head and shoulders, because I was looking at him like this, he started throwing up on me and he dropped me. And, then my machine gunner run over again and picked me up and said, I'll take it. And, they were loading the men into the dust off, so you had like tiered layers, I think there was one or two. I was in the bottom tier, so they put me on that, and I remember the blood was dripping down from the men above me and, of course, they had the other wounded also in there. We were all over the -- blood was all over the floor of the helicopter. So, we took off.
The medic on board was a, that traveled was every dust off, why, he was a black man, and he looked at me, lit a cigarette, stuck it in my lips, and asked if he could do anything for me. And, I said, cut off my left boot, my foot is killing me. For some reason, that was the one pain signal that was getting through all the rest of them, and my foot was full of shrapnel and so for some reason it was hurting. So, he cut that off of me and then I looked at the helicopter pilot. And, he turned and he looked at me and he said something into his lip mike. And, the medic nodded and leaned down at me and he hollered and he said "Ten minutes to Chu Li, can you make it?" And, I said, "I can make it."
SAPIENZA: What, what were you thinking at that point?
DOWNS: I was thinking just hold on. Just got to hold on. It was a lot of, just I noticed it was just a helicopter and noise and helicopter and the expressions of the pilot and the medic were the two I could see, and, of course, the men above me. And, I could, I tried to lean out a little bit like this and see who it was. And, I was yelling at them and they were yelling back at me. Because it was so much noise in the helicopter.
There was a guy setting on the floor and he was just stunned in shock. And, so you just keep gritting your teeth and the pain waves come and you just, you're trying to hold out because you see, when you saw a man get wounded, it seemed that they would die faster if they lost consciousness. And, the longer that a man could keep conscious, why, the greater his chance of survivability, or at least that's what we always thought.
So, I remember a tremendous jolt. The helicopter hit fast, and they threw open the doors and there was one of those ambulances there and they loaded us in the back of it and we roared across the tarmac and then there was, they opened the doors, and we were brought into this big operating area. There were six teams already set up. And, I remember laying on the cot and they threw me off onto this, and there were two surgeons, one at each shoulder, nurses on both sides of me and orderlies. And, there was a Red Cross lady at the foot of the bed. And, her job was to keep asking my name, rank, and serial number for the purpose of keeping my conscious.
And, I remember they started cutting all my clothes off with scissors and my, any equipment I had left. And, one of the surgeons, he cut a slit into my arm and reached in and tied off the blood vessel and I didn't feel it. And, I, oh, I must be really in bad shape. I didn't feel that scalpel. And, then, I remember he said, "who tied this God damn tourniquet? Don't they teach you guys anything?" words to that effect.
And, years later, by the way, I received a, I found a letter that this surgeon had written to my wife. And, at the time, so I got his name, I tracked him down. He teaches trauma surgery at the University of Vermont. And, when I went up to visit him, all those years later, he showed me his diary, and in there is the lieutenant, lieutenant Frederick Downs. And, he describes that day.
Because, what happened was, soon after that, a few minutes after that, why, I yelled at the Red Cross lady about what's the matter with your God damn ears? Can't you hear what I'm saying. And, of course, she was trying to just keep me conscious and then my heart stopped because of all the loss of blood and, of course, I blacked out.
Then, after that, I was always known as the lieutenant they brought back from the dead because they used closed heart massage, direct IV, and got me going again.
And, when I came to hours later, I was in the most miserable pain you could possibly imagine. And, stayed at the second surg, which people would probably think of it as a MASH unit, seeing the TV show MASH. I was there for three or four or five days while they stabilized me.
Then they moved me to Quinyon and there were so many new wounded coming in because of the increased activity from the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. So, they had to make room to move me down to the eighty-fifth, the VAC, to stabilize me. That was in Quinyon. And, I was in intensive care there. And, it's kind of a strange feeling because men around you were dying. They'd die during the night, generally. It always seemed like that was the worse time. And, I was there for a week and a half, two weeks, they moved me to Philippines overnight.
Then Japan. And, I was there for a couple of weeks. They moved me to, by that time there were just guys lined up on the hallways outside the rooms, you're in these great big open bays. Anyway, a hundred men in a bay. All these wounded. And, no legs, no arms. Sometimes no faces. And, the idea was just to keep going until you get back to the world as they called it.
And, when I got back to the world, I was put into Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Arora, Colorado, which is outside of Denver. And, I was in the amputee ward. Wing of the fifth floor, five west. And, there were hundreds of amputees on those wards. Then, went through about five months of operations, and then I became an outpatient there outside the main hospital. I was in a BOQ outside of that. And, I went back to college.
SAPIENZA: What were you, when you were there in the hospital, when you first got there, early on, I mean, what were thinking about as far as your future? Were you thinking a year ahead, were you thinking five years? What were you thinking when you first got to the hospital?
DOWNS: First I started thinking of it as soon as I became conscious in the second surg back in Chu Li. Was it in a year from now, this pain won't be as bad. That's the only thing that got you through, got me through. And, couldn't sleep, pain all the time, so you're just on the ragged edge. And, by the time I got to, in fact, even back in Vietnam in the hospitals there, why, total despair because what would I do without an arm. And, of course, they were trying to save this arm and so every day they'd operate on me and the surgeon would tell me before they put me under, well, lieutenant, we may have to cut it off today. And, I'd yell obscenities at him because, of course, he was trying to prepare me for the worst. But, after about three weeks, they were able to save it. But, I still had the worry, it wouldn't work. It was in a claw shape like this. So, I worried about how I would write letters, how I'd make a living, didn't have any idea. Just though the worst things that could happen.
And, so, when I was laying in the hospital bed in Denver, one day, a gentleman from the Veteran's Administration, and I'd never heard of the Veteran's Administration, never heard of the VA. He stopped by and I was from Western Indiana, so we didn't pay much attention to the government there, except to mistrust them. He stopped by and he explained he's from the Veteran's Administration and that the VA would, they thanked me for my service and they were going to pay my tuition, fees, and books, plus give me an allowance to go back to any college of my choice in the United States. I was just dumbfounded. And, that was a bright moment in my day when he did that. That was the first time I knew I'd be able to afford to go back to college.
So, then the VA also informed me that they would pay me compensation for the loss of my arm. And, that was the first time I knew that. So, that was a great sense of relief.
One of the first things I started thinking about was what would I be able to do. I wanted to learn how to tie my shoes, I wanted to learn how to dress. I wanted to learn how to take care of myself again. I couldn't feed myself for the first three/four months because of the different operations I was having. So, I always had to wait for an orderly to feed me to take me to the bathroom and I got a terrible sense of, I was depressed a lot, but you can't let yourself stay in depression. You've got to get back up out of it, and there's always somebody worse off than you were, so if you got to feeling too sorry for yourself, why, somebody would come by you who was in worse shape. And, we sort of helped each other go through that rehabilitation process of, well, if that guy could do it, I can do it. And, we would learn how to do things and take care of each other.
SAPIENZA: So, where did you end up going to school? What did you study?
DOWNS: Went back to the University of Denver and got my undergraduate degree in business administration. And, then I got my masters degree in business administration. So, I graduated with an MBA in '71, I think.
SAPIENZA: What did you do?
DOWNS: I worked in civilian industry there in Denver for about, until I was thirty. And, I wasn't real satisfied with just making money. So, I went to work for the Veteran's Administration in their benefits section. I really enjoyed that and they put me on the fast track in the management, so I worked my way up to assistant director.
And then I had the opportunity, I was, nineteen years ago, I was called back to Washington. And, the executive group back there wanted me to take over the directorship of prosthetic and sensory aid service. And, explained that it was in a lot of trouble, and I didn't know a lot about it, what the prosthetic and sensory aid service was. All I knew was I told the VA I'd call the VA number and say I needed a new arm and they'd set up an appointment for me and I'd go down and have a new arm made and that's all I knew about it until they said, well, we have a service that's in charge of this and it's in a lot of trouble and we need you to fix it. And, I was only going to do that for a couple of years, but I love this job. Because I, I'm able to affect policy and procedure for providing prosthetic, ___, and sensory aid devices to all of America's disabled veterans. And, it's a tremendous sense of satisfaction being able to do that. So, I still do it, still have great enthusiasm for it.
SAPIENZA: As you were still in private industry, what was it that attracted you to the VA or, at that point, were you just trying to make a jump out of private industry?
DOWNS: Well, I was working, making good money, had a great promise in front of me, because I was working for a large construction, real estate firm in Denver in the early seventies, and so there was lots of boom times there. But, it was just about making money. And, I know that it seems kind of strange to some people, but I'd been in combat, led men in combat, and was responsible for their lives, and I missed that challenge.
And, I liked working, I didn't know it at the time, but I liked working with people.
I didn't know I liked working with people. I'd always been a people person, and I liked meeting people and I liked getting involved, and I realized, after I got out of the hospital and was going back to college and then working in private industry, that I began, people asked me lots of questions because they were always like, well, you're wearing an artificial arm and how'd you lose it and -- I started giving talks to school kids and then to health care professionals and they found out that they were able to ask me all kinds of questions that had always been in their minds. And, for little kids, it was like a good way of addressing their fears. And, I don't know how --- I probably talked to thousands of kids in the last thirty years.
SAPIENZA: You were, you've worked with thousands of kids?
DOWNS: Oh, yeah, I worked with lots of kids. In fact, I spoke before, I think, almost five hundred kids at Sidwell Friends earlier this year. And, the teacher called me a little later and said it was hard to keep those kids entertained for an hour, but I had them there. Because, I'm very frank and open about the issue of disability.
You know, it's like anything else. You have, you have your fringe groups who make issues out of everything. And, most people are just down to earth, concerned about their everyday existence. And, I always talk about that, the things that concern, when I talk to newly disabled, you know, they worry about, "what are my friends going to think? What's my family going to think? How will I get a job? How will I take care of myself?" And, so, surprisingly, there's just not a lot around to keep people informed. Now, certainly, there are tons of things written. But, when you are newly injured, you don't know, and you're afraid to ask. And, sometimes the teams don't know what to provide you -- the rehab teams.
And, so, when I go out and talk to folks, when I talk about the real things and the reality and you're going to be told this. But, here's what's really going on, and it's something to pass on because when I was first wounded and for a long time after that, why, there would be an army orderly would stop by and take extra time with me.
And, I remember one time this major, when I was in Quinyon and I was in terrible shape, and she stopped by and she unfolded a whole -- stopped by each one of the beds. And, when she got to mine, she pulled out her pack and there was a picture there of, lots of pictures of men with no arms and doing activities, driving, fishing, hunting, writing, being with their families. And, it's the first time I realized I could have a life after disability.
And, it's those little things that people would do as part of their existence, when I was in the hospital, any hospital I was at, one of the Army nurses or one of the volunteers or one of the Army sergeants or one of the privates, they'd stop by your bed and they would talk or they would, sometimes they would stop, write a letter for you, write a letter home. I couldn't write my own letters, so they had to write it for me and it's a way of sort of paying back all of that kindness that was given to me all those years. And, I think that's sort of the obligation we have as members of our society, is to help other people. And, I'm certainly no bleeding heart, don't get me wrong. It's just that I believe that there's a real place for, no matter what your political bend is, you need to help other people.
SAPIENZA: That sort of carried you through your time at the VA where you talked about your enthusiasm and for helping other veterans, wounded veterans.
DOWNS: Exactly.
SAPIENZA: And, then, going off of that, but you've also, you've done some work to help other people internationally. Can you go into that a little bit, describe how you were tapped to do this type of work and what is this work?
DOWNS: Well, as director of the program here in Washington, the largest program of its kind in the world, actually, I do a lot of work, done a lot of work with the Veterans Service Organizations, and with the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees. Those staff people got to know me over the years and then situations came up in the Department of Defense in El Salvador. They needed a humanitarian team down there to help them with artificial limbs, looking at the rehab center. And, they had work going down there already, very good work, but they wanted an outside reviewer. And, so, when the question came up, well, who would do this for the government, why, the VA loans ___ DOD and so I went down to El Salvador. I was down there about five or six trips looking at the rehab centers and working... and, that's when I first became aware of the damage that was occurring to civilians. I hadn't really thought about it before then.
SAPIENZA: What year was this roughly?
DOWNS: This would have been in the eighties, during this war, this El Salvadorian war.
SAPIENZA: You just take that over from the beginning, during the 1980's.
DOWNS: It was during the 1980's when the war in El Salvador was going on, why, DOD needed someone to come down to evaluate a prosthetic program that they had helped the Salvadorian government establish and they needed another review individual to come in and say is this right, is this wrong, can we do more? And, that was one of the first opportunities I had to do work other than in this country.
SAPIENZA: Before you got here, we looked at some of the pictures. There was picture of two little girls.
DOWNS: Oh, yeah.
SAPIENZA: Can you tell us a little bit of what was going on. We saw the picture with you with the two little girls. What was their story?
DOWNS: Well, they...little kids, worked a lot with little kids. And, what happened out in the countryside in El Salvador, why, the opposing sides would plant landmines in the fields and in the trails and on bridges and places, obvious places where people would walk. And, kids and civilians would stumble into these areas and step on these minds and blow off a leg or a hand or if they, that's if they survived. Then, they would get them back to a rehab center or to a hospital and there was really no way to take care of them.
The government didn't really have a system set up to take care of individuals hurt in the war. And, it was something that the American government, when they saw the problem, even though people see the American government as being the DOD and the military side of it, well, the military side is made of human beings who see the other side of it. And, so, they saw an opportunity, maybe we can help in this area. And, so they started the amputee program down there, with the State Department, USAID, everybody planned to work together to do the right thing. And, of course, this was in the midst of the real issue over the war was the military part. But, what grew out of that was an awareness with USAID, State Department, and DOD, that this was an area that could be of benefit if, for no other reason than the fact that it helped the psychology of the government that we were trying to support in that we were going to help with these innocent civilians who were wounded as a result of these civil conflicts.
It's complicated as hell, but, for me, bottom line was here, they wanted me to see if there were ways to help these individuals with better prosthetic programs, and that was the purpose of why I was sent down there. And, that's, was the beginning of my international involvement working more and more with, uh, the USID group that was in charge of humanitarian care.
And, I worked a lot then and I had the opportunity, when General Vesey, in 1987, the American government was trying to develop talking points with the Vietnamese government. And, that time, relationships had broken off. And, President Reagan signed General Vesey as his emissary to Vietnam to discuss, to try and figure out ways to get some kind of common ground to begin talking. One of the things that General Vesey came up with was to have a humanitarian team go over and look at their humanitarian needs which was lots of amputees from the war, and they then, in turn, we would have the opportunity, our humanitarian need was to try and resolve the POW MIA issue. And, so, that's how the two countries began to get together.
So, General Vesey sent me and Doctor Savery and one other individual to Hanoi in 1987, in August. Twenty years almost to the date of when I'd been sent to Vietnam to be in combat. Very strange feeling. And, so we landed in Hanoi with the, part of the US government. We were the US government team. And, those three/four days, we toured, after we established our sit-down talking points, I was only a member of the team. The real team leader was Doctor Savoy, Savery, excuse me. And, the agreement was we'd look at the rehab centers and we went out looked at the rehab centers, a couple of them, the hospitals. And, we made, after that, thirteen trips. Traveled form the North down to the South through Central Vietnam, saw rehab centers, little out of the way places, and saw the results of the war in Vietnam. Saw the casualties they had from their fight with China, the ones from Cambodia, and then the results of landmines they were still finding in unexplored ordinance.
And, it's the same problem in Laos. There's lots of unexploded ordinance there. And, then, in Cambodia, which is one of the dangerous places I've been in, because there, a couple of years ago, they were still putting landmines on the road to control them at night. And, people put landmines around their gardens and it was, so you have all these women and children, and men coming in with no leg, no foot, hand gone.
SAPIENZA: How many different countries have you been to to look at, have you been asked to visit? And then, what has been sort of the, if you're looking at specifically rehabilitating in these types of clinics, what is the number one injury that you see out there?
DOWNS: Well, the number one injury is, I've been to, I've counted, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Egypt, Mexico, those, six, seven. I've been asked by USAID, their humanitarian section, to go to other countries. But, one of the main, of course, the main injury I see is the, are the amputees. Because, for one thing, the human body can lose a limb and still survive. And, the people we see in these countries, they're tough. Because if they survived the initial wound and they survive sometimes two or three days coming down out of the countryside to get to the town so they'd be... I remember more than once I would see an example of a mother who would carry her child for two or three days to get to the rehab center.
They heard the Americans were coming. And, it's such a depressing time because they would be so many children lined up there, and they were expecting some kind of miracle when the Americans land, came in to the rehab center. And, of course, all we're doing is looking and evaluating, trying to determine the best use of resources, and write reports for those groups who had applied for grants top provide humanitarian aid. And, it was very disheartening because you could see the despair in their faces when they realize you couldn't fit them with a limb immediately.
And, I'll never forget one scene outside of Hiafong Harbor. We had had the same experience and this mother had come down, for three days she had been traveling, carrying her kid on her back. So, we broke the news to her. So, later on in the afternoon, while we're driving back and we, as we're driving, we're a couple of kilometers from the rehab center, and there's that mother with that child on her back, and she's walking back along the road back up to that village, two or three days away.
And, so you would, I would see these kinds of things and it dawned on me over a period of time that, you know, landmines were a weapon that needed to be outlawed. We have plenty of weapons we can kill each other with. As an infantryman, I didn't ever like landmines, I hated them anyway. As a civilian, I certainly hate them, and when I saw the damage they did, why, I just decided I would join that ban against landmines, and that's what brought me to where I am today.
And, I see the results of landmines and booby traps with our veteran population from all the wars. We in the VA take are of all of America's veterans. And, so we have guys from World War I. Of course, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Dessert Storm, Bosnia. Our newest, Somoa. And, so, when I look at, when I'm sitting at my desk looking at our numbers and how many legs and how many wheelchairs and, these are not numbers to me. These are individuals. And, it's a whole panorama of the twentieth century of the wars that America's been in. And, you know, that's the price we have to pay for the freedom, democracy, the kinds of things, the good things we're trying to do.
And, I'm not going to get into any arguments about good, bad, or indifferent. It's that a country goes to war and tries to do the right thing. The people, the individuals, we don't make the policy, we do what our country asks us to do.
So, look at all these veterans, literally millions of them over this period of time of the twentieth century, and you really get, the impact hits you in a job like mine. And, that's the reason so many Veteran Administration employees love what they do. Because, it's, we're a part of seeing what history we have made in this century. And, these individuals who are the result of, you know, done their duty, came back, why, you know, this is, if we can take some of this knowledge and help other countries with just the basics, you know, helping them rebuild limbs, showing them how to do that, or providing resources to do that, we'd begin a rebuilding process that, in our lifetime, we'll probably never see the results of. But, begins a process.
SAPIENZA: When you did the travel to all these different countries, are you able to say, obviously, you'll not able to say definitively, you know, these people were wounded by landmines. But are you able to say the majority of people you encountered on these missions were landmine victims?
DOWNS: The amputees that I saw in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were, for the most part, caused by landmines. El Salvador, almost all the amputees were caused by landmines. And, then, in Sri Lanka, you've got a mixture of, there you had more accidents. You did have lots of war casualties and booby traps. But, I wouldn't say any percentages.
Now, people, the critics will say, oh, they aren't all landmines, they're accidents. Well, of course, they're accidents, they're car wrecks, they're farming accidents, there's all this stuff enters into it, too. But the end result is that landmines are the cause of most of these amputations that we see and that we're trying to deal with. And, I don't think people realize how many of them there are worldwide in these areas of conflict. And, they stay there in the ground forever until they're discovered, either accidentally or a team goes out and tries to recover them.
SAPIENZA: One of the reasons we started to do these, these, we did these two documentaries was to help the American public get closer to this issue by coming closer to American landmine survivors. Then, getting a little picture of what it's like to be a landmine survivor in other countries around the world. You're obviously an American landmine survivor and you've done the travel. I mean, what is it that Americans might, just, don't see? Or, is there anything that you have seen that you would want to encapsulate and say "that's the reason" or "that's an important reason why we should try to eliminate these weapons?"
DOWNS: Boy, that's an awesome task. I think anyone who's watching this program, if they, at this very moment, said to themselves, "what happened if I lost my hand tomorrow in a car wreck or my leg? What would I do?" And, from that, then, interpolate what it's like in another country that's not as rich as ours, doesn't have the resources, and ask them what they do. And, the answer is that they're in despair, they have no resources, and they then sink to the bottom of that society. And, they're reduced to usually handouts, begging in the streets. If they have children, why, their children have less opportunity.
So, what one has to do is think of the individual. Don't think of the country or the world picture, the Department of Defense, the State Department of both countries, whether they're communist, whether they're fascist, whether whatever, whether they're Arabs, whether they're Jewish. Don't think about that. Think about the individual. Think about yourself, your son, your daughter, and what happens. Just think about that person. Through no fault of their own, they get involved in a conflict sometime and they lose a limb, or they become blinded, because they're, your country says that you've got to go do this.
Well, think what it would be like if you went to work tomorrow and, on your way to work as you're walking down towards work, you tripped a booby trap or a landmine. And, your legs are blown off. And, think what the impact of that would have on American society. It generates fear, it's a terrorist weapon. And, it does, it's very effective at what it does. And, that's the reason I consider landmine warfare in the same category as germ warfare and nuclear weapons, because it's so indiscriminate. It is a terrorist weapon. It's bad enough for a soldier to be terrified by it, but a soldier, that's a job. But, soldiers should kill each other with the weapons that they have at hand that they can deal with more on a personal basis. I know it may sound weird, but that's the way I feel about it.
And, to just sew landmines around and then, later on, the soldiers leave, and civilians hit them, somehow or another that needs to stop. And, the only way you can stop it is to ban landmines across the board. And, then enforce it. Which, of course, will be extremely difficult, but we enforce chemical warfare and nuclear warfare. We've got lots of phobias against it, and it will take a lot of work. But, that's got to start somewhere.
SAPIENZA: Do you have anything about the issue that you want to add that we may not have covered?
DOWNS: No, just...
SAPIENZA: What about something about getting -- I mean, our big concern is trying to help the American public get into this issue more, become connected somehow. You just did a good job of describing, you know, how they should think about it. Is there anything they can do? I mean, that may be a question, you know, what, what should they be thinking about?
DOWNS: What can they do? Well, they've, they've got to realize that a letter from them or a phone call to their congressman to let them know where they stand on the issue is important. Because, it does make a difference. Your congressman does listen to you. And, whereas, they won't listen to one person, particularly, they will listen, as the numbers begin to increase. Don't get embroiled in the arguments at the macro level. Just always think of it as a personal issue, as a human being.
And, there's no reason to continue a practice that's not necessary. If we want to kill soldiers on the other side, we have more than enough weapons. And, I think everybody's bragging about what we've done in Serbia lately with airpower and SMART bombs and, you know, I don't particularly think that we as Americans can be satisfied with indiscriminate killing. And, that's what war is ultimately all about.
SAPIENZA: Do you think Americans understand their country's policy? I mean, first of all, what is the US policy with regard to landmines, and then do you think they understand it?
DOWNS: I don't think they understand it. I think a lot of people just speak from their guts. They, the military says we need it to protect our soldiers. And, taken by itself, that's correct. It's, like, it's a good defensive weapon. But, you don't need that to protect your soldiers. We have other devices to protect our soldiers. The fact is that this is dangerous to soldiers, our soldiers, as it is to the other side. And, I can guarantee you that if both sides agreed not to use landmines, the soldiers on both sides would be happy with that.
SAPIENZA: The US stance, obviously, we stand outside the landmine ban treaty, as a country, and yet you go to other countries and see the damage and devastation that landmines cause. How do you feel about the US position on landmines being outside the treaty?
DOWNS: I think America's wrong. I think America needs to join the ban against landmines. That's my feeling, my belief, and that's the reason that I've consented to this interview. I think it's important for people to begin to think about the consequences of those weapons.
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