[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 34 (Thursday, March 21, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E399-E400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
``FROM FRONT LINES TO BACK ROADS''
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HON. FRANK R. WOLF
of virginia
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I want to call to the attention of our
colleagues an article in the March 11, 2002, edition of the Washington
Post which tells the story of a decorated flight surgeon with the
Army's elite Delta Force who now spends his time in the rural areas of
the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia as a beloved country doctor making
house calls.
His name is John O. Marsh III, better known as Rob, the son of John
O. Marsh Jr., better known to many of his former colleagues in this
House as Jack. I am proud to represent as part of Virginia's 10th
District areas which used to be included in the 1960's in the old 7th
District, which was ably represented by then Congressman Jack Marsh. As
many of our colleagues will recall, Jack went on to serve in the
administration of President Ford and as Secretary of the Army under
both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
We congratulate Dr. Rob Marsh, who has followed in his father's
footsteps in his service to the people of his nation and to his state.
The Post article follows:
[From the Washington Post, Mar. 4, 2002]
From Front Lines to Back Roads--Delta Force Doctor Now Delivers Care In
Rural Virginia
(By Carol Morello)
MIDDLEBROOK, VA.--The only doctor in this crossroads of a
Shenandoah Valley village does not volunteer details of his
years with an elite Army unit, or how he almost died in
Somalia of mortar wounds. And his patients are too polite to
probe.
But while waiting in the clinic to see Rob Marsh, many of
them study the watercolor prints on the walls, depicting
soldiers rappelling into battle and downed Black Hawk
helicopters. How, they wonder, did this decorated combat
physician come to treat the aches and pains of farmers and
factory workers in the valley?
``They remind me every day where I came from, and why I'm
here,'' explains Marsh while driving over gravel roads and
one lane bridges in his pickup truck. He's making house
calls. And he won't send a bill. It's not very efficient, he
allows, but this is what a good country doctor does.
They didn't have a doctor before Marsh moved here six years
ago with his wife, Barbara, and their children--now two boys
and two girls, ages 3 to 9. ``I feel that's why I was saved,
to come back here and do this,'' he says. ``This is my
calling.''
At a time when rural America is starved for physicians to
provide basic health care, Marsh practices medicine with a
care and attention that seem lost to another era. How many
doctors are left whose patients drop by just to leave a home-
baked cake or to show off photographs of the animals they've
raised in 4-H?
Marsh's practice in a University of Virginia satellite
clinic is all the more extraordinary when contrasted with the
life he used to lead as a flight surgeon for Delta Force, the
Army's secretive Special Forces unit.
His office is filled with mementos of war zones where he
mended wounds and lost friends before settling on a farm near
here. A bookshelf holds the iconic Delta Force dagger inside
a triangular frame along with the motto ``Oppressors
Beware.'' In two examining rooms, drawings of Delta Force
battles share wall space with osteoporosis posters. Even his
clock is on Zulu time. His Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars
and Purple Heart are stashed at home and in his truck.
What is missing is anything that smacks of the Hollywood
version of what happened to Delta Force and Ranger troops in
Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. Marsh has not seen the
blockbuster film ``Black Hawk Down.''
``I don't have to go watch a reenactment of seeing 18 of my
friends die,'' he says.
Nor did he consent when producers asked him to be a
consultant. ``I couldn't leave my patients,'' he explains.
Friends and colleagues say a common thread runs through
Marsh's work in polar-opposite environments.
``His dedication to the military was just as intense as his
dedication is now to his patients,'' says Lewis Barnett, the
former head of the University of Virginia's family medicine
program. ``He's a devoted servant.''
Marsh, 46, had wanted to be a Green Beret ever since a
third-grade visit to Fort Bragg with his father, John O.
Marsh Jr., then a Democratic congressman from the Shenandoah
Valley who later became secretary of the Army under
presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The son is
John O. Marsh III, but everyone knows him as Rob.
The quickest route into the Green Berets was as a medic, so
Marsh enlisted and eventually received a degree from Eastern
Virginia Medical School.
He had his share of close calls. During the Persian Gulf
War in 1991, for example, a medic who replaced him on a
helicopter flight into Iraq was killed when the chopper
crashed.
But nothing compared to his experience in Somalia two years
later. U.S. troops set out to capture two aides to a local
warlord. Army Rangers and Delta Force operatives became
pinned down during a night of pitched combat.
The casualties arrived at the airport base in waves. First
a handful, then by the dozens--some 60 serious casualties in
all. Marsh and two other physicians worked through the night
and into the next day. Eighteen Americans and hundreds of
Somalis died in the fighting, chronicled in the book ``Black
Hawk Down'' by Mark Bowden, and the movie of the same name.
For Marsh, the worst was yet to come. Two days later, he
was standing on the tarmac with other officers when a mortar
hit. The man next to him was killed. Twelve soldiers were
wounded, including Marsh.
Here is what he remembers before losing consciousness: ``A
flash. Noise. I remember feeling pain.''
Shrapnel shredded his abdomen. A shard pierced an artery in
his leg. Yet even as he lay bleeding from his nearly fatal
wounds, he ordered soldiers to carry the injured to his side
so he could perform triage. ``They were my people. I wanted
to know who was hit.''
Marsh's father, who vividly recalls his son's arrival at
Andrews Air Force Base two weeks later, believes the
experience made him a better doctor: ``It's given him empathy
and insight into people who are sick.''
Even before his injury, Marsh had talked of returning to
the valley, which he always considered home, though he was
largely educated in Arlington public schools.
The university's health system was looking to open a rural
office in this area and show medical students the life of a
country doctor--a breed that has largely vanished over the
last 50 years as physicians have gravitated to specialties
and urban areas.
``Rural areas can be hard on the family,'' says Claudette
Dalton, an anesthesiologist who heads the university's
community education program. ``There are no cultural
attractions. You have to drive 10 miles to the Piggly Wiggly
to get groceries.''
Marsh saw it differently.
``He goes where the need is greatest,'' says Dalton.
``There aren't many physicians who will take on all comers as
patients.''
One day recently, Marsh spent the afternoon crisscrossing
the back roads of this cattle-raising area south of Staunton.
He made a half-dozen house calls, most to elderly, housebound
patients. Testing the memory of a stroke victim, he asked her
how many chickens her daughter owns. At the home of a cancer
patient struggling to pay for his arsenal of medicine, Marsh
left a supply of salesman's samples. In the run-down
farmhouse of a man who had been acting confused, Marsh found
an addling blend of outdated drugs, some of which had expired
in 1986.
He would not ask for payment.
``If I sent them a bill for $150 for a house visit, they
would pay,'' he explains. ``But I probably wouldn't keep them
as a patient.''
They are not just his patients, he says, but ``my
friends.''
That's why he attends their funerals, serves on their
volunteer fire and rescue unit, makes apple butter with the
Ruritan club, and is an elder in his Presbyterian church.
``You can become very close to everyone, very quickly,'' he
says of this hamlet of 200, so small it lacks even a
stoplight. ``If you're a good doctor, you treat people right
and get involved in the community.``
It's a philosophy he's passing on to the coming generation
of doctors. ``He believes we should make sure we give more to
our community than just medicine,'' says Frank Petruzella, a
U-Va. medical student who spent a month working with Marsh.
``He's very involved in all aspects of people's lives.''
Marsh has been involved in Carl Sprouse's life for a
decade. They were in Delta Force together, and Sprouse now
lives down the road.
``When my father had complications after open heart
surgery, Doc Marsh would stop by at 11 or 12 at night to see
him in the hospital,'' recalls Sprouse. ``He wasn't his
doctor. He just has compassion for people. He was a good
soldier. He's a great man.''
[[Page E400]]
Marsh deflects such praise. In this small farming community
that he and his family call home, he has rediscovered what he
loved most about Delta Force. ``It's the same atmosphere,''
he says. ``Everybody takes care of each other, and we do our
jobs.''
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