Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon had mission to care for little Iraqi girl

Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon of New York helped Shahad Abbas get fitted for prosthetic limbs Friday.
LEILA FADEL: MCT

May 10, 2008, 8:21AM
U.S. soldier makes helping legless Iraqi girl his mission


By LEILA FADEL
McClatchy-Tribune


BAGHDAD — Staff Sgt. Luis Falcon, 38, was patrolling the streets of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, when he saw Shahad Abbas.

The 11-year-old girl was in a large decrepit wheelchair, and the stumps of her legs where her calves should have been were crusted with dried blood.

Falcon couldn't just walk on, so he stopped to talk.

He came back the next day and the day after that, then every day for six months, bringing her toys, gauze for her legs, a new wheelchair.

Anything she asked for, he would bring.

In a war that Falcon no longer really understood, Shahad became his mission. So when she asked for legs, that became his mission, too.

On Friday his dream and hers came true, just three weeks before he's scheduled to leave Iraq. Shahad was fitted with prosthetic limbs in a U.S. military-funded clinic in Baghdad that normally provides artificial limbs for wounded members of the Iraqi security forces.

"We created a bond, and I didn't need a translator to interpret the bond we had," Falcon said.


Surrogate daughter
With no little girls of his own, he thought of Shahad as his daughter and carried a picture of her in his uniform.

Iraq has one of the largest populations of amputees in the world, though a precise count isn't available. There are the tens of thousands of people who lost their limbs in the 1980s, during the eight-year war with Iran. Thousands more were injured in the first Gulf War. And then there's the current conflict, which has cost many people their legs and arms in bomb blasts.

Shahad lost her legs as she was walking to school when a roadside bomb exploded nearby. Two pieces of shrapnel are still lodged in her back to remind her of that day. Her little brother, Ali, was killed.

One day, Falcon, a New Yorker from 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, asked her what she wanted. He expected her to ask for a toy. "I'll get you anything you want," he recalled saying.

"I want legs so I can walk to school," she told him. One day she planned to be a doctor. School was important to her.
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