Show i irt Tbf Salt Lake Tribune Sunday November 20 fe A13 19H8 Broken Con Ira Soldiers Recover Rebuild Lives at Rancho Grande By Ellen Hampton Cox News Service tral America are lined with the ‘RANCHO GRANDE — The war sucked them away from their lives as country boys smashed them up and then spat them out broken soldiers But they got lucky twice They lived through it and they landed under the roof of the Rancho Grande "At the worst moment alone and deep in the Nicaraguan jungle they thought about death They knew the odds 90 percent of the contra troops Nira-ragua- wounded n within the country wouldn't make it out If they couldn't walk they had to wfut for their troops to come back and carry them out For some that wait stretched into months Civilians came from nearby villages bringing food and water to their jungle hideouts Time passed wounds festered and fear grew Sargento was 20 years old when he took a bullet in his left knee and a grenade tore up his calf in a firefight near the town of Jinotega The short distance to the safety of the border became an impassable barrier For four months he hid in the bush and ate what people from the town brought out They washed him and treated his shattered leg with herbs Still the worst moment came His leg was black with gangrene 'I couldn’t stand it anymore I was dying I didn't want to die" he said I had to cut it off with a knife” Standing in the dusty courtyard of the Rancho Grande Sargento tells the story with a hint of pride He beat the long odds and lived So did 170 other boys and men at this farm in a Central American nation which due to political sensitivities wishes to remain anonymous Daybreak comes early and a couple of the women here are up before dawn to pound out 200 tortillas for the soldiers’ breakfast A dozen cows need to be milked the cabbage watered and the hogs slopped before the scorching sun climbs to center stage Rancho Grande appears on the surface to be a typical farm Its tenants are anything but The boys and men cling to their noms de guerre their combat boots their military command structures and fervently their belief in the cause Many joined the Nicaraguan Resistance better known as the Contras when it first was formed in 1981 Now with US military aid suspended since March and the Reagan administration closing up shop the future of the war is in doubt The future for these broken soldiers would be grim indeed without Rancho Grande The streets of Cen e Two of the rooms in the farmhouse have been turned into classrooms In the afternoon six boys and men ages 14 to 24 learned to read and write at the first grade level The teacher another Nicaraguan woman who left because of the Sandimsta government called out simple nouns which they repeated and wrote in notebooks "Soup Frog Rat Mine" Several of the students had too intimate knowledge of mines and the damage they do They just didn't know how to spell it "They have a great desire to learn" said the teacher who goes by the noin de guerre of Thelma "We've achieved a lot" Punche a stout joined the contras with his father five years ago He was doing fine until 1987 in northern Zelaya province when an 82mm mortar ripped off his right leg While he was being carried to safety in a hammock he was hit by a bullet in the arm He has learned to walk well with his prosthesis and now is tackling reading writing and typing “I’m learning here" he said Rancho Grande was established last November with a grant from the William Casey Foundation a private trust set up by the widow of the Central Intelligence Agency director Sophia Casey said m a telephone interview from her home in New York that contributions totaling $150000 were sent in upon her husband's death and that she turned the money over to the Nicaraguan Resistance for the Rancho Grande project "It was a terrific program" Mrs Casey said "They had so many disabled soldiers as a result of the fighting and they had no place to fix crip- pled and maimed they are its beggars Most of the disabled contras have no education no job skills no family to look after them and above all no home "For a lot of them it would be impossible" said Dr Henry Zelaya a contra physician and combatant who helped set up Rancho Grande "Nobody who is here has any family except in Nicaragua” Zelaya brought most of the injured soldiers to Rancho Grande from contra camps along the Honduran-Nica-raguaborder He had operated on many of them in the camps under a parachute tent with no anesthesia Many wounds that under normal conditions would not be debilitating required amputation mostly because of the time lost between injury and treatment Zelaya said The average was 25 days It does not seem to occur to these soldiers that they are skimming the surface of tragedy In the afternoon typing class 20 men pounded away on portable typewriters on the front k porch of the farmhouse No here they didn't even look Veinte-Cuatr27 looked every bit a soldier in fatigues and boots as he concentrated on the lesson But he had been shot in both arms the bones were broken and never set and they healed overlapping He cannot lift anything heavy He said he was happy to learn to type ‘ We are becoming capable" he said The typing teacher a Nicaraguan woman who fled the Sandimsta regime said she feels she is making a contribution both to the men and to the cause "You see one without a leg and one without an eye and it affects you” said Mercedes de Villareyna “At first I didn t even like to see them Now it s like a family I identify with them I try to understand their fight their problems their goals” An old Jeep sits in pieces outside the barn that serves as a machine shop Boanerge 18 said he wants to learn mechanics so that he can work someday He lost his leg to a bullet wound and he lost his confidence with it He said he is afraid to leave the farm because he has no papers to be legally in this country and could be deported to Nicaragua He said he is worried about not keeping the promises he made to God while waiting injured to be taken out of Nicaragua And most of all he fears he will never be loved "I'm afraid I won’t ever get married" he said and knocked on his artificial leg "Because of this” n hunt-and-pec- o t them” 7TA EVERYDAY LOW TIRE PRICES! 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