Saving kids to save soldiers
Veterans in attendance look to the flag during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
A member of the Flathead Composite Squadron, Civil Air Patrol presents arms during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Principal Kerry Drown gives the opening remarks during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Whitefish Independent High School instructor Jill Weigland is recognized for her service during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Veterans stand for the Armed Forces Salute during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Dr. Craig Lambrecht, president and CEO of Kalispell Regional Healthcare, was the keynote speaker during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Mark McCrady conducts the high school band during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Jenanne Solberg directs the high school orchestra during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
A student plays an arrangement of “Amazing Grace” during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
A student plays an arrangement of “Amazing Grace” during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Veterans in attendance salute the Flathead Composite Squadron, Civil Air Patrol as they retire the colors during Monday’s Veterans Day Assembly at Whitefish High School. (Daniel McKay/Whitefish Pilot)
Lending a helping hand can make all the difference, Dr. Craig Lambrecht says.
It’s a lesson he learned while serving in Iraq and a message he aimed to convey as the keynote speaker on Monday during the Whitefish High School’s Veterans Day assembly, held in a gym packed full of community members.
Now the President and CEO of Kalispell Regional Healthcare, Lambrecht served a 30-year career in the National Guard and was deployed in Iraq from 2004 through 2007. He retired a Colonel.
Lambrecht recalled coming to a supply outpost called Scania, located between Baghdad and Kuwait City, being assigned to evaluate a makeshift burn clinic called the Smith Gate Clinic. What he found was shocking, he says.
Thousands of burn patients per month, primarily children, were coming to the small clinic inside a shipping container, and the waiting room was some benches under a tarp outside the building. Inside, the medicine cabinets were barren.
“They were seeing 1,000 kids a month,” Lambrecht told the crowd. “These were children who had burns, and [the clinic] couldn’t take care of these children with the Iraqi health system. It had nothing to do with war, they did not have the technology or the supplies, nor did they have the environment where the kids felt safe.”
Most of the burns came from accidents involving lighting propane gas tanks, which were commonly used in an area without much electricity, he said.
Seeing pain in children as a soldier is tough, Lambrecht said, and not being able to help turns eyes on them.
Without medicine, the most the clinic could do is wash off the wounds.
“You would send them back to their village and what would happen? They’d get infected and they would die, and the Americans would be blamed. And if the Americans were blamed for not taking care of these children, what happened? Mortars, rockets, soldiers dying,” he said.
So Lambrecht and others took to action.
“We reached back to the United States, to high schools, grade schools, communities, and we raised over $1 billion in three months with the Air Force coordinating all the supplies we needed from the United States to get to that little burn clinic,” he said.
In addition, he and others helped move children with severe medical needs out of Iraq and to the United States. Lambrecht told the stories of the children shown in photos, some of whom even had fathers that were building bombs to use against the U.S. before his troops stepped in to help.
In all of the photos, there’s a smiling child, having received the care they need. There are also smiling soldiers.
“When you have troops in a war zone that can smile and have something to look forward to, you have morale. When you have morale in a fighting force, you win,” Lambrecht said. “When thousands of children were saved, it meant thousands of troops were not killed.”