[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''

                                 ______
                                 

                           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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