Marine General keeps fidelity with wounded Marines

AP/Houston Chronicle:

He keeps the list in his shirt pocket, close to his heart.

There are about 60,000 Marines under the command of Lt. Gen. James Amos. He just welcomed 17,000 back from Iraq, a homecoming sobered by the impending departure of 13,000 for a war now in its fourth year.

Most will return. Some will not.

An uncertain number will end up on Amos' list: A handwritten index card updated daily with the number of Marines under his command wounded in combat.

...

It starts with a visit — to as many as he can.

"It's a function of loyalty," the 59-year-old general said. "In Marine speak, it means fidelity. It's a wonderful word not used very often — except in the Marine Corps. It means faithful. It implies faithful almost to a fault. ...

"I owe it to them."

Shannon Jacobs isn't surprised anymore when Amos shows up at Brooke Army Medical Center outside San Antonio. She cheerily hugs the general, who has arrived to visit her husband — Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Jacobs, a 30-year-old from Hamilton, Ohio, burned 18 months ago when a roadside bomb he was trying defuse exploded — and several dozen other Marines recovering at the Army hospital at Fort Sam Houston.

"Gen. Amos was actually here for my husband's Purple Heart ceremony about a month ago," said Jacobs, 26. "He's a regular person. The sheer fact that he cares so much about his Marines and gets personal with them, it means a heck of a lot."

...

Once Marines with burn and amputation injuries started receiving treatment at Brooke, he added regular trips there, now about every three weeks. Because he's at Brooke more often than most generals, he is greeted by nurses and doctors as if he's a member of the staff, said Lt. Col. Grant Olbrich, chief of the Corps' family support staff at the hospital.

"This man has a heart for it that is just rare to see," Olbrich said. "When he is sitting down talking to these Marines and talking to their parents, there's no facade to it. It's another human who wants to see this injured human get better."

Non-Marines, too — soldiers, sailors and airman alike — got warm greetings and even hugs.

...

When visiting with a smiling Lance Cpl. Diane Cardill, 23, of Harrisburg, Pa., he rolled her arm bandage down to see how her burns were healing. She and several other women were injured when a suicide bomber struck their truck during a night patrol in Fallujah.

"The best thing you can do is touch them, make them feel normal," Amos said. "That's what they want."

...

Returning to Camp Lejeune after the trip, Amos summed up the reasons for his visits: "We bury our dead with great honor and dignity, but the wounded live on. They are the ones we as Americans should not forget."

There is much more between the ...'s. The General is a leader who takes care of his troops. Everyday is Memorial Day for men like Lt. Gen. James Amos. We are lucky to have him.