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Show Transcript Survivors' Stories: Americans and Landmines
Produced August 22, 1999
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| NARRATION: Funding for the following special presentation of America's Defense Monitor is provided by the Open Society Institute's Landmines Project and the John Merck Fund. ["America's Defense Monitor" program introduction] NARRATION: Landmines. Seeds of death. Small, buried weapons that explode with the slightest pressure. Every twenty-two minutes someone.. somewhere steps on a landmine. Their deadly blast destroys 26,000 lives a year - soldiers and civilians, men and women, adults and children alike. It is estimated some 80-100 million landmines lie scattered in over 65 countries worldwide. It costs just a few dollars to plant a landmine - it takes up to a $1000 to remove it. An international treaty banning landmines went into effect March 1, 1999. The United States is not among the signers. Landmines were responsible for 33% of US casualties in the Vietnam War and 20% of US casualties during the Persian Gulf War. Since 1900, one-hundred thousand US citizens have fallen victim to landmines - here are some of their stories. [FADE UP FROM BLACK] AXELROD: "I'm Irvin Axelrod. I'm seventy years old. Today we are at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Today is the anniversary of the end of the war, and its known as Korean Armistice Day. I'm a Korean Vet. I got wounded there in 1951." NARRATION: In 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea and the Korean Peninsula erupted in war. Irvin Axelrod, then a college student, was sent to Korea and assigned to the 25th Infantry Division as a messenger. He was delivering secret attack plans to a British unit when he crossed a rice paddy. AXELROD: "The rice paddy was covered with some snow. And, we were walking along the dike or ridge on the rice paddy because it was a terraced rice paddy going down to different levels. And, I was walking in front, and evidently I put my foot down and it detonated a landmine. And, it picked me up and threw me down to the next level. And, at the same time, I heard some small arms fire, machine gun fire, in the background. And, my first thought, when I landed, was that they shot me through the foot. My buddy said to me that I stepped on a landmine, and I said, "no, they shot me through the foot" or the ankle. And, he said, "no, look at the dirt spread out on top of the snow." He said, "that's a landmine. I'll go get help." And, he went and got some British medics that picked me up on a stretcher, and I was really scared that, while they were carrying me across that rice paddy, that they would hit another mine and I would be killed because I'm lying flat to the ground." NARRATOR: Axelrod spent the next 4 years in government hospitals, undergoing 22 operations in an effort to save his leg. It was at a VA hospital in Brooklyn NY that he had an encounter that would change his life. AXELROD: "But I did have one tremendous experience in the
hospital, and that is when Helen Keller came up to visit the
Korean War amputees and wounded.And, she made such an
impression on me by her courage, because I realized that she lost
her sight, her speech, and her hearing when she was a young woman
and she has gone on to be a very important world figure.
So,
they put her hand on, they put Helen Keller's hand on my wet
cast, and through her interpreter, she said that Helen Keller has
had a burden to carry in her life but never one as heavy as mine.
And, that made me feel that this is really nothing compared to
what she's going through and I just have to concentrate on what I
was left with, not what I lost.
NARRATOR: After his release from the hospital, he returned to school, received his degree, and pursued a civilian government career. During the Cold War, while working as a Commerce Dept. food industry specialist, Axelrod received an unusual request for help from a visiting group of Soviet officials. AXELROD: "I was asked to do whatever I can to help Anatoli Mysikov, who was a twenty-nine year old Soviet. I tried real hard to get the food industry to help me bring this guy over here and nobody was really interested because, at the time, President Reagan was calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. And, nobody wanted to help the enemy. And, I said, "I'm not helping the enemy, I'm helping a human being." NARRATOR: Fighting through U.S. and Soviet red tape, Axelrod raised enough money to buy the Soviet vet an artificial leg. AXELROD: "In the three months he was here, he received a state of the art leg and it was just the most wonderful thing I had ever done in my life. And, three weeks after he went back, I retired from the government with thirty-six years service, and I started working more with helping people." NARRATION: Today Irvin Axelrod is president of the Washington Amputee Association. AXELROD: "We started this group ten years ago to help new
amputees. We try to help new amputees learn that what
they're going through has occurred to every amputee. I want
you to know that every amputee has phantom sensation, or phantom
pain; when they, you feel the limb that isn't there anymore. I've
never met an amputee that didn't have it. You can ask all of
these people. They have phantom pain. It diminishes as time
goes on, and right after the amputation it has to do with nerve
regeneration, it, it's a little more severe.
Foreign countries sometimes send their amputees to the National Rehab
Hospital because of their reputation. And, there's a war between
Peru and Ecuador. And, we've had maybe ten landmine victims from
that war sent to this hospital. At the last meeting we had,
we had a Spanish interpreter, and we were able to settle a lot of
their questions, most of which pertained to the phantom pain or
phantom sensation that they all, that all amputees suffer. And,
I think they were very appreciative.
I do not feel that the
American public understands the landmines issue. They have never
really had any landmines planted in this soil. When a
person, a farmer in Cambodia, steps on a landmine, his family
disowns him because he's not worth working any longer because
he's handicapped. And, I feel that, for the rest of my life, I
would like to try to help these unfortunate people that are
wounded by landmines. And, that's my new dedication in life." [FADE to BLACK] [FADE UP ON 15 SECOND Public Sservice Announcement] NARRATOR: This is one acre of farmland in the American Mid-West. If this were Cambodia, a landmine would lie somewhere beneath the soil. Ready to plough the field today? [TRACTOR KEY - ENGINE STARTS] [FADE to BLACK] NARRATOR: Marianne Holtz is an American nurse who has worked throughout Africa. In 1994, nearly 1 million refugees fled a campaign of genocide in Rwanda into neighboring Zaire causing a humanitarian crisis of monumental proportions. Holtz went to Zaire as a nurse to help in the relief effort. HOLTZ: "We pretty much hit the ground running. Within a few hours we were out in the camps, in makeshift situation, trying to deal with cholera on an incredibly massive basis. Most of the people were just laid out on the ground just like cordwood one after another. See their IV fluid hung up on the fence? And then they all were laid out on the floor of the tent." NARRATOR: In 1995, following a brief trip back home, Holtz returned to Zaire to work as a Nurse Coordinator for the American Refugee Committee. One Sunday, she was driving in the countryside outside of Goma when disaster struck. HOLTZ: "We passed over the same stretch of road that we had come by the first time in the morning, and we didn't make it the second time, returning back to town. I have no memory from that point on, because I have complete amnesia, but what I am told happened was, we ran over a land mine that had been put in a bit of a hole in the road. And the truck we were driving was thrown about 30 feet off the road, and from there on, my life was destroyed, and I was nearly killed." NARRATOR: Holtz was flown from Goma to Nairobi, Kenya, where the doctors did not expect her to survive. HOLTZ: "I was told later that when I got into the emergency room, the evening of that first day, that my blood pressure was extremely low, my pupils were fixed and dilated, and the doctors in the emergency room did not expect to admit me to the hospital. It was anticipated that I was going to die in the emergency room." NARRATOR: Marianne clung to life for nearly a month in Nairobi, before improving enough to return to a hospital in Seattle, Washington. HOLTZ: "I lost both my legs, my back was fractured in three places, a great deal of damage was done to my face, and it was just a miracle that I lived to tell the tale." NARRATOR: It was during her rehabilitation in Seattle that Holtz became aware of an international movement to ban landmines. HOLTZ: "One of my family members, one of my sons brought me some information about the international campaign to ban landmines. At this time, the campaign was collecting signatures, and he brought me one of the petition forms, and while I was in the hospital, I just needed to practice, anyone who came to visit me was asked to sign a petition, or take a petition and bring it back filled in. And so I was able to collect quite a number of signatures." NARRATOR: Since her hospitalization, Holtz has become a strong advocate for an international ban on landmines. HOLTZ: "Three of my sons have been in the military, and they were
horrified that they had been the ones that should have been
taking the risks, and yet, it was me who was injured.
And the reality is, that's the way it is with landmines. It's
the military that takes the so-called risk, but it's the
civilians that are taking the injuries. We don't think about
that so much in the United States because not a large number of
civilians to date have been injured. But with the number of us
that are taking jobs abroad like I was, or our tourists just want
to go places, the reality is, more and more of us are going to be
injured by landmines. And I realized this, and realized that I
had better start showing people that if it could happen to me, it
can happen to you, and it will happen to somebody you know, one
of these days." [FADE to BLACK] [FADE UP ON PSA] NARRATOR: It's small. shiny. green. To you it may look like a
landmine - but to a child it looks just like a toy. [EXPLOSION]
Mines kill and mutilate nearly 10,000 children each year. [IMAGE
OF WOUNDED CHILD] [FADE TO BLACK] [FADE UP FROM BLACK] WASHBURN: "I'm Bob Washburn, I live in Scotia, New York. I
work here in Latham, at an orthopedic laboratory, and I'm a
resident prosthetist, and I make artificial limbs, arms and legs.
I do everything right from the evaluation of the patient,
right through fitting, actually building the arms or the legs,
and right through delivery and follow-up." [BOB WASHBURN WITH AMPUTEE PATIENT] WASHBURN: "How does that feel? okay?" AMPUTEE: "Yeah that's good." WASHBURN: "I got into the field because of my own amputation, I
stepped on a landmine in 1996 in Bosnia. NARRATOR: In 1996, Bob Washburn was a US peacekeeper in the
precariously tense "Zone of Separation" near Tuzla, Bosnia. WASHBURN: "I was a platoon leader for the 40th Engineer
Battalion, in an engineer company, and our job was to clear roads
of landmines and/or buildings, just to make sure there was no
booby-traps, landmines, unexploded ordnance." NARRATOR: On February 1, Washburn and three others from his
platoon went on a mission to investigate a recent landmine
explosion on a nearby road. The convoy of tanks halted and
Washburn got out of his vehicle to talk with the leaders. WASHBURN: "we had finished our discussion, and as we were walking
back to the vehicle, then I stepped on a landmine, and the blast
obviously took off some of my toes, blew me up in the air.
I was pretty sure I knew exactly what happened, but for the first
maybe 30 seconds, I thought it was the guy beside me or behind
me, because there was a blast, and there were people screaming,
and you know, I'm looking up at the clouds, and I just figured it
was the blast, and then, my foot started hurting, and said oh,
and I looked down, and then I saw my boot was split open, and at
least two of my toes were already gone." NARRATOR: A Med-Evac helicopter flew Washburn to a field hospital
for immediate surgery. He was the first NATO Peacekeeper to step
on a landmine in Bosnia - three days later the first American
soldier was killed by a mine. Bob Washburn was awarded the Purple Heart in 1996. He
retired from the military in April 1997, but remains deeply
concerned about the danger posed by landmines to U.S. troops and
innocent civilians. WASHBURN: "I wish that U.S. troops were not in Kosovo, because I
see similar things that happened to me, happening over there,
because its not completely avoidable. Like the one I stepped on,
it's all plastic so it couldn't be detected. It's been there for
a couple of years, so you can't see any ground markings, you
know, and it's only a quarter of an inch or so under the surface,
so it's just waiting for somebody to step on it." [FADE TO BLACK] [FADE UP on PSA] [CLOSE UP OF A CLOCK WITH MINUTE HAND MOVING QUICKLY TO 22 PAST
THE HOUR, SECONDS TICKING - TICKING GETS LOUDER -] NARRATOR: Every twenty-two minutes a landmine claims another
victim. [FADE TO BLACK] [FADE UP FROM BLACK] NARRATOR: Vietnam. January 11th 1968. Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese forces have stepped up their activity, preparing for
an all out attack against South Vietnam that would later become
known as the Tet Offensive. Heavier than usual fighting has left
the air thick with tension. Frederick Downs, Jr. a 23 year old
U.S. Army platoon leader begins another day on combat patrol with
his men near the coastal town of Tam Ky. DOWNS: "The sun came up. It was a beautiful day and, I was
walking along smoking a cigarette, and I looked at my, looked at
my watch and said, "oh, 7:45 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." NARRATOR: As a Med Evac helicopter lifted off from a nearby base,
Fred Downs and five of his comrades lay bleeding in the aftermath
of the powerful landmine. DOWNS: "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. I was
thinking just hold on. Just got to hold on." NARRATOR: Downs survived his severe injuries - barely. He became
known as the lieutenant they brought back from the dead and was
decorated with numerous awards for his service, including four
purple hearts. Later he went on to write three critically
acclaimed books about his experiences during and after the
Vietnam War. Today, Fred Downs is the Chief Consultant of the Prosthetic
and Sensory Aids Service at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
He manages a nationwide program that assists nearly 2 million
disabled veterans. DOWNS: "I love this job because I am able to affect policy and
procedure for providing prosthetic, orthotic, and sensory aid
devices to all of America's disabled veterans. And, it's a
tremendous sense of satisfaction being able to do that." NARRATION: Fred Downs has also worked for the US government to
develop prosthetic projects in countries that have been ravaged
by landmines. DOWNS: "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. 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." NARRATOR:
Faced with his experiences with landmine survivors both
in the United States and abroad, Fred Downs decided to take a
stand against landmines. DOWNS: "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." [FADE to BLACK] [FADE UP ON PSA] NARRATOR: North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iraq. What do these
countries have in common? None of these countries have signed the
International Treaty to Ban Landmines - neither has the United
States of America. Welcome to the club. [FADE TO BLACK] [FADE UP FROM BLACK] WHITE: "Landmines have killed and maimed more people than
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons combined. These are
truly weapons of mass destruction in slow motion. They're just
happening here, there, over there, one at a time every 22 minutes
but amassing critical numbers and astounding numbers of victims
around the world." NARRATOR: Jerry White is co-founder of Landmine Survivors
Network, an international organization headquartered in
Washington DC. In 1984, he was a student on a camping trip with
friends in the Golan Heights of Israel. WHITE: "We were hiking down the side of a hillside, setting out
to catch a ride to Jerusalem after five days of camping and
suddenly boom, the whole earth exploded around me, and I didn't
know what it was. I didn't know what a landmine was. And we
realized as we looked around us that this threat was coming from
the ground. We didn't know how far the borders of this minefield
went and my two friends had to summon the courage to carry me
out." NARRATION: The fateful step Jerry took in Israel drastically
altered his life and ultimately the lives of thousands of other
landmine survivors around the world. WHITE: "Landmine Survivors Network was founded in 1995 when
another American Landmine survivor Ken Rutherford lost both his
legs in Somalia and myself gathered at a United Nations event in
Vienna and met with other survivors and spoke out for the first
time about the survivor experience. Landmine Survivors
Network started as a powerful idea of survivors helping
survivors. I think we underestimated how powerful that was, that
here we had a certain fellowship of suffering amongst survivors
from Cambodia, Bosnia, Angola, Mozambique, the United States - all
sharing a certain common bond and a passion to see that these
weapons that had scarred our bodies that they are eradicated for
ever more." NARRATOR: Today, programs started by Landmine Survivors Network
are making a difference in mine affected countries around the
world. WHITE: "LSN is now active in five mine affected countries. We have
programs in Bosnia, Jordan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Mozambique and
each country it's very exciting. These are employment opportunities
for mine victims who developed peer support networks to visit new
amputees in the hospital or in their homes and then link them to
existing rehabilitation services and then provide direct
assistance as appropriate to help survivors reclaim their lives
again" NARRATOR: Another mission of Landmine Survivors Network is
raising awareness about U.S. landmine policy. WHITE: "The United States often says we aren't the problem our
mines aren't hurting people. Well, the landmines that have
been discovered around the world in Somalia, in Iraq, in Angola,
in El Salvador, in Cambodia, in Laos, in Vietnam, the list goes
on where American landmines have been discovered, so the nearly 5
million that we've exported since '69 are out there lurking. Our
mines are part of the problem. We share responsibility for
cleaning them up. So from a legal and moral standpoint, let's do it
- clean up our mess." NARRATOR: White hopes to convince the U.S. to join the 135 other
countries which have already signed the treaty to ban landmines. WHITE: "So on March 1, 1999, landmine survivors from the United
States, both civilian and military, gathered together in front of
the White House and we launched our "Why Not Us" campaign - meaning
why not the United States? Where is the United States? Why can't
or why haven't we signed the landmine ban treaty? So on the day
that the treaty was becoming international law, we had American
survivors calling on President Clinton to follow through with all
of his words and rhetoric about support for a ban and actually
cross the finish line and commit the U.S. to this very important
treaty." [FADE to BLACK] DOWNS: "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." HOLTZ: "Americans need to speak up. They need to say that this
is not to be tolerated. It's inhumane, we don't condone it, we
don't support it, we want it stopped. AXELROD: "I feel that all Americans should be willing to help
landmine survivors worldwide. Many of the mines planted around
the world have American components in them, and I just feel that
we sold these mines to people, manufactured them and exported.
We have banned that practice right now, but we have not banned
the use of landmines." WHITE: "In 1994 President Clinton announced that the world should
pursue the universal international ban on anti-personnel mines.
Great news, wonderful leadership. We were excited. We took him
seriously. We moved on Canada, showed leadership, Norway showed
leadership, the Europeans showed leadership and the world
stampeded past the United States. So now we have pictures of
President Clinton in Kosovo saying believably that he doesn't
want any more children to lose an arm or a leg and yet we've had
enough of the rhetoric and enough of the commitment. We're looking
for action. We're looking for the U.S. to cross the finish line and
join the mine ban treaty." [End of Broadcast]
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