FISHER HOUSE - HELPING MILITARY FAMILIES

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Lucky is the word Barbie Green repeats when telling the story of her son Anthony's combat injuries.

Lucky he is coming home, lucky his injuries weren't worse, lucky she happened to be in France when he was airlifted to a U.S. Army hospital in Germany. Lucky she could see him before he was again airlifted, this time to recover near where his unit is based in Schofield Barracks, HI.

Now, Barbie, her husband Guy, and their younger son, Ian, 17 and about to start his senior year at Plymouth High, are waiting for Anthony to return to their Canton home.

Private First Class Anthony Green, 22, was wounded on July 19 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle, killing two members of his unit.

The 2006 graduate of Plymouth High was awarded a Purple Heart.

Barbie Green had been in France, studying World War II history when Guy told her by phone of Anthony's injuries. She said she immediately went online to locate the hospital and find a place to stay in Landstuhl, Germany, when she discovered Fisher House — one of more than 50 such homes specifically built for the families of hospitalized military personnel — which provides meals, phone cards, laundry, transportation and a private room with a full bathroom for free.

She learned the name of her son's surgeon and connected with a sergeant who act as a liaison for hospitalized members of the military, their family and the medical team.

"It was 2 in the morning and I didn't want to call (the liaison), so I called Fisher House," Barbie Green said. The woman who answered the phone promised a room would be waiting when she arrived. The sergeant met her at the train station and whisked her off. Before she could see Anthony, "they tried to prepare me," she said. "They said his face was going to look bad. I was expecting him look worse."

When she walked into Anthony's hospital room, she saw her boy with cuts and bandages on his face, his right eye swollen nearly shut. He was sitting up "as best as he could and he looked at me and said, 'Mo-om," she said. "It was pretty intense.

"I was just, kind of lucky. I didn't cry. I did that later. I just sat there and held his hand."

Lucky, she said. She still has the message he left on the family's answering machine. Wounded soldiers are allowed to call home as soon as possible, she said. "Since Anthony called, we knew he was OK. The really sad part is, two of Anthony's friends were killed in the explosion," she added, her voice trailing off.

Army Sgt. Jacob Molina, 27, of Houston and Staff Sgt. James M. Christen died. The men, all members Bravo Company in the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, were traveling through Afghanistan's Kunar province, considered one of the more dangerous areas of that county.

Hearing about the extent of Green's injuries — the bullet wound in his right leg, smashed jawbone and other facial fractures, nerve damage that may or may not be permanent, the possibility of a closed-head injury as yet unmeasured, it is almost jarring to hear PFC Green's mom end the list with, "We're lucky."

She said perspective came quickly in her short time as a guest at Fisher House in Germany and in her visits with Anthony at the Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center. She watched as representatives from organizations dedicated to helping hospitalized military personnel feel better in any way. The care she had at Fisher House. The Wounded Warrior Project helped Anthony Green, who arrived in Landstuhl with little more than his Purple Heart, by providing "shirts, underwear, shorts and shoes," she said, adding that volunteers went shopping for the hospitalized military.

"At Fisher House, they gave me a backpack for him with more toiletries," she said, going on to describe quilts and pillows that are also donated to the hospital for military patients."

Barbie Green noticed that many in hospital beds had no family members present because an overseas trip is too expensive. Her time with Anthony lasted just a few hours on the first day, "then I returned at 6:30 a.m and stayed until 11 a.m. when they were lining him up for his flight. They were all in stretchers in the hall, like in M.A.S.H. It was quite the process and there were just so many guys."

At Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center, she met a solider with cancer and the mother of another soldier, one who had lost part of a foot and who is so severely injured, Green said, he will probably spend a year or more in the hospital.

She sat next to Anthony's bed, feeling the grit of Afghanistan still on his hands and in his hair, thinking of the men who died and the other members of Bravo Company who remain in Afghanistan. They were on Anthony's mind, too, Barbie Green said.

"Luckily I had a computer with me. That was a good thing. He wanted to get in contact with his guys back in Afghanistan," she said. She said he contacted them through Facebook. "Those guys were still on their mission. They had to keep going.

"I feel bad for those guys," she said. "One of them wrote (after hearing from Anthony), 'Man, you scared the shit out of us. We thought you were dead.'"

Today, Anthony Green is in a Warrior Transition Unit in Hawaii — "to simply allow the soldiers to heal and keep them monitored medically and all the other things that need to be taken care of after they are wounded. He will be in this unit as long as he is healing," Barbie Green wrote in an email on Tuesday.

He'll also be allowed to come home for nearly a month of convalescence, she said. Meanwhile, Barbie Green is looking for ways to give back. She wants everyone to know about Fisher House and Wounded Warriors and, hopefully, support the missions of those organizations, which helped her family so much, she said.

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