THE OTHER WALTER REED
The Hotel Aftermath
Inside Mologne House, the Survivors of War Wrestle With Military Bureaucracy and Personal Demons
By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 19, 2007; Page A01
The guests of Mologne House have been blown up, shot, crushed and shaken, and now their convalescence takes place among the chandeliers and wingback chairs of the 200-room hotel on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Oil paintings hang in the lobby of this strange outpost in the war on terrorism, where combat's urgency has been replaced by a trickling fountain in the garden courtyard. The maimed and the newly legless sit in wheelchairs next to a pond, watching goldfish turn lazily through the water.
Holding Pattern at Mologne House
Photos
Holding Pattern at Mologne House
Mologne House, on the grounds of the 113-acre Walter Reed Army Medical Center, opened in 1997 as a short-term lodging facility for military family members and retirees visiting Walter Reed and Washington. But the hotel has been completely overtaken by the war-wounded, housing some 300 soldiers, Marines and their family members.
Today's story is the second of a two-part series on outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Sunday's story and a collection of photographs of Cpl. Dell McLeod and his wife, Annette, who lived at a short-term facility for outpatients for 14 months, can be found at www.washingtonpost.com/nation.
Chat: Staff writers Dana Priest and Anne Hull will be online Tuesday at 12 p.m. to answer questions about this story at www.washingtonpost.com/
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More on Walter Reed
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients.
Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, an amputee, was at Walter Reed for 16 months. He expressed frustration with his time there, calling it a 'nonstop process of stalling.' (Michel du Cille -- The Washington Post)
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But the wounded of Mologne House are still soldiers -- Hooah! -- so their lives are ruled by platoon sergeants. Each morning they must rise at dawn for formation, though many are half-snowed on pain meds and sleeping pills.
In Room 323 the alarm goes off at 5 a.m., but Cpl. Dell McLeod slumbers on. His wife, Annette, gets up and fixes him a bowl of instant oatmeal before going over to the massive figure curled in the bed. An Army counselor taught her that a soldier back from war can wake up swinging, so she approaches from behind.
"Dell," Annette says, tapping her husband. "Dell, get in the shower."
"Dell!" she shouts.
Finally, the yawning hulk sits up in bed. "Okay, baby," he says. An American flag T-shirt is stretched over his chest. He reaches for his dog tags, still the devoted soldier of 19 years, though his life as a warrior has become a paradox. One day he's led on stage at a Toby Keith concert with dozens of other wounded Operation Iraqi Freedom troops from Mologne House, and the next he's sitting in a cluttered cubbyhole at Walter Reed, fighting the Army for every penny of his disability.
McLeod, 41, has lived at Mologne House for a year while the Army figures out what to do with him. He worked in textile and steel mills in rural South Carolina before deploying. Now he takes 23 pills a day, prescribed by various doctors at Walter Reed. Crowds frighten him. He is too anxious to drive. When panic strikes, a soldier friend named Oscar takes him to Baskin-Robbins for vanilla ice cream.
"They find ways to soothe each other," Annette says.
Mostly what the soldiers do together is wait: for appointments, evaluations, signatures and lost paperwork to be found. It's like another wife told Annette McLeod: "If Iraq don't kill you, Walter Reed will."
After Iraq, a New Struggle
The conflict in Iraq has hatched a virtual town of desperation and dysfunction, clinging to the pilings of Walter Reed. The wounded are socked away for months and years in random buildings and barracks in and around this military post.
The luckiest stay at Mologne House, a four-story hotel on a grassy slope behind the hospital. Mologne House opened 10 years ago as a short-term lodging facility for military personnel, retirees and their family members. Then came Sept. 11 and five years of sustained warfare. Now, the silver walkers of retired generals convalescing from hip surgery have been replaced by prosthetics propped against Xbox games and Jessica Simpson posters smiling down on brain-rattled grunts.
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