Perspective: Amid sorrow for one lost life comes hope for Iraqi girl

Christopher Walsh

LEAWOOD, Kan. - Maureen Walsh buried her son a few days after Labor Day.

A month later, the day before his birthday, the letter arrived - a gift a grieving mother can hold close in this season.

Chris Walsh, a 30-year-old Navy medic, was killed Sept. 4 in Fallujah, Iraq, when his Humvee took a blast from a roadside bomb. Two Marines died with him.

But what this Leawood mother didn't know until she read the letter, written by his captain, was the story behind her son's last actions.

The letter - and a story this month in The Boston Globe - told how Chris Walsh had helped an Iraqi baby girl suffering with a deformity that would kill her just as effectively as any bomb. The letter spoke of a man's honor and heart.

Walsh, a 1994 Bishop Miege High School grad and an Eagle Scout, had a history of doing the right thing, whether it was inside the slums of St. Louis where he had worked as a paramedic, or stopping to help wounded civilians in Iraq.

He found the 2-month-old baby girl in June while his Marines were chasing a "bad guy" in and out of a slew of low-slung village buildings. But when Walsh saw her, his mission changed. He put down his M4 carbine and picked her up.

She was tiny and sick. She looked as if her insides had turned inside out.

Walsh took photos of her birth defect, called bladder exstrophy, in which the bladder grows outside the body. He showed the photos to the doctor back at his base, but learned that the surgery was too intricate for the military's combat support hospitals.

She needs to go to the states, the doctor told him.

Read the rest at the Kansas City Star