dawn anna

When a British soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, he is publicly named so that proper tributes can be made.

But no one knows about the horrors of the wounded. They are not identified.

No official figures are released - indeed, we have no idea how many there are.

The closest estimate is that, in the past six years, there have been 5,500 emergency medical evacuations from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Brave: Rory MacKenzie with his girlfriend, Storm

Shamed by two conflicts that have no end in sight, the Government does not care to draw attention to these thousands who have returned from battlefields far away - many so horribly maimed and disfigured that even their own relatives have struggled to recognise them.

Nor does it afford them the level of care they might expect. Britain's last specialist military hospital - at Haslar, near Portsmouth - was closed at the beginning of the year.

In its place is an ordinary NHS hospital, Selly Oak in Birmingham, where a single military ward is dedicated to the care of wounded soldiers.


It has 14 beds. Yet in one month alone this year, 145 personnel were flown back from Iraq or Afghanistan requiring emergency treatment.


And what then?

The lucky ones will get a place at Headley Court Army rehabilitation centre in Surrey - a facility that offers wounded servicemen the best hope of coming to terms with their injuries, yet which one British soldier's young girlfriend, Nicola Curtis, describes bitterly as "the place no one wants us to know about".

She says: "The first time you see it, you feel sick with shock seeing all these wheelchairs and amputees and bandaged-up heads . . . all these terrible injuries, just hidden from the public."

Small wonder, then, that Forces charities and ex- officers have grown increasingly outraged about a breach of the "military covenant", which states that soldiers and their families should be properly looked after by the State in return for their sacrifices in the line of duty.

To discover the full scale of that breach, I have spoken to the families of some of those wounded in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Stories like theirs have remained hidden from the public, not least because injured soldiers who stay in the Army's employ are prohibited from speaking about their treatment.

But they deserve to be heard, for in the face of public indifference and political denial, their courage is as inspiring as it is shaming.


Ilai Derenalagi and his wife Anna are originally from Fiji, but moved to Britain with their daughter in 1999 so that he could join the Army.

"It was a dream for me to move to the Motherland and see Buckingham Palace," recalls Anna, smiling.

Then, in April this year, Ilai, 33, was posted to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty. He phoned his wife to say that it had become much more dangerous since his previous tour.

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It was a popcorn-can lid, a cake pan, a plastic disc called a Whirlo-Way and an even better plastic disc called a Pluto Platter.

But 50 years ago, Wham-O christened it the Frisbee, and an American icon was born. Since then, more than 200 million of the plastic discs have sold worldwide and the ranks of the Frisbee faithful have flourished.

"Hardly a person on this planet doesn't know what to do with these things," said Phil Kennedy, co-author of "Flat Flip Flies Straight: True Origins of the Frisbee."

"It's human nature to pick up something flat and round and throw it."

That's why Walter "Fred" Morrison tossed a popcorn-can lid on that fateful Thanksgiving in 1937. And when that got beat up, Morrison discovered that ordinary cake pans flew pretty well, too.

When a beach bum offered Morrison 25 cents for the 5-cent cake pan he was tossing at a beach, a bell went off.

"Fred saw the commercial potential for something people have been doing since the dawn of time," said Kennedy, who wrote "Flat Flip" with Morrison.

An Army pilot, Morrison used his aerodynamic know-how to create the first plastic disc and, later, a new and improved version.

In 1957, he sold the rights to Wham-O, whose execs renamed it "Frisbee." That's the nickname college kids in the Northeast had given the Pluto Platter, after the tossable pie tins from the now-defunct Frisbie Pie Co. of Connecticut.

Morrison was no fan of the new name.

But Morrison, now 87, became crazy rich off the royalties he continues to get for each Frisbee sold. A disc, some space and a will to fling have opened up a universe of activities, played not only in backyards and beaches but in national and international competitions.

Boulder, Colo., is home to the Ultimate Players Association, the governing body for Ultimate Frisbee. Created by high school students in Maplewood, N.J., in 1968, Ultimate marries soccer's pace with football's aerial acumen.

It now attracts nearly 900,000 U.S. players every year, according to the UPA. The group's youth membership has jumped 1,000 percent in the past four years, partly because of its fair-play philosophy, UPA spokesman Ryan John said. Central to Ultimate is the so-called "spirit of the game," by which players acknowledge their own fouls and settle disputes without referees. UPA's "spirit" guidelines call for players to be gracious and amicable toward everyone, particularly their opponents.

Ultimate players take the spirit of the game very seriously, John said, so much so that many consider it more important than winning.

"I come from a soccer background, which is very much about competing against other people," said Anna Schott, who plays for the nationally ranked Boulder, Colo., women's team, Rare Air. "You're held to a higher standard in Ultimate." (Visit upa.org for more information).

"Steady Ed" Headrick, the inventor of disc golf and considered the father of the modern Frisbee, said in a 2001 Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel story that the flight of the Frisbee gave it a spirit that could never be duplicated by a mere ball.

"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a Frisbee," psychiatrist and disc-golf great Stancil Johnson said in his book "Frisbee: A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise."

Headrick told the Sentinel that Frisbee goes beyond the physical to the spiritual, with devotees who could be called "Frisbyterians."

"When we die, we don't go to purgatory," he said. "We just land up on the roof and lie there."



GAMES ANY FRISBEE FREAK CAN PLAY

Here are some easy Frisbee games. For more ideas, go to frisbeedisc.com.


Bull's-Eye Accuracy: The goal is to land the disc as close to the bull's-eye as possible. Each contestant should have five discs at his throwing line. The total points scored on the five attempts constitute the contestant's score. The bull's-eye should consist of a low basin or basket at least a meter in diameter. Larger concentric circles should be drawn in line or rope. Discs must be entirely inside a circle in order to score.


Keepaway: Played like all monkey-in-the-middle games, except that in this case the monkey may be armed with a disc to knock down the other players' throws.


Bowlbee: A target (or targets) that can be knocked down is used, and players take turns trying to topple it.


ULTIMATE IN SEATTLE


DiscNW is the source authority for all things related to Ultimate Frisbee in the Seattle area.

It organizes and runs several leagues year-round, conducts skills clinics, provides coaches for school teams and beginner-level leagues, and runs Potlatch, billed as the largest mixed (co-ed) tournament in the world, as well as many smaller tournaments.

Fed up with crime, residents in Lynnwood Manor, Pretoria are taking no more chances. Oil drums line the roads leading in to the suburb to stop vehicles while security guards carrying two-way radios check the credentials of their occupants before they are allowed in.

"This is the final frontier. If we do not do this, more blood is going to be spilt," said community leader Dr Kevin Gast after armed thugs killed three people, seriously injured a three-year-old toddler and looted the homes of four residents - all during a four-day crime wave.

The barricades were erected as police on Thursday arrested two men wanted in connection with murder, rape and house robbery.




Inspector Klaas van der Kooi said flying squad members were patrolling Lynnwood when they arrested the men and seized an unlicensed Z88 pistol and two cars.

Police have arrested two men for murder, rape and robbery
The "checkpoints" have followed the torture, rape and murder of Cathy Odendaal (51) whose naked and battered body was found on Tuesday in herFarnham Street home.

Before her murder gunmen held up Farnham Street resident Musa Ebrahim on Saturday and shot his domestic worker's three-year-old toddler before fleeing with laptop computes and cellphones.

Only hours earlier, a Lynnwood Manor gardener was shot dead on the corner of Lynnwood Road and Camelia Streets and a resident gunned down in his Camelia Street driveway.

And only days before that, Gudrun Graf and Anna Pretorius were attacked in their Priory Street complex by men armed with a crowbar.

In August, musician Francois Viljoen (25) was killed at his home in Glenwood Street and Dawn Street resident Cilliers Snyman (68) was shot dead. Frans Jacobs was seriously injured in his Old Fort home.

Residents were in a heated stand-off with the Tshwane Metro Police
Gast and Lynnwood Manor residents were on Thursday involved in a heated stand-off with the Tshwane Metro Police who tried to remove the barricades. Gast has vowed that the barriers will not come down until the Tshwane Metro Council "guarantees" the safety of all residents.

"Until we know that blood will not be spilt and that the council will accept full responsibility for protecting our lives and property, these barriers will stay.

"We are tired of the murder and mayhem. We are telling the council that we are not going to wait another 10 years for it to deliberate on whether we can or cannot have a gated community," he said.

An urgent application has been made by the community to the Pretoria High Court to compel the council to allow them to "gate" their suburb.

Gast, referring to the makeshift access controls, said they were created "to stop the bloodshed".

"We are going to fight to keep them. We are doing whatever it takes to protect our lives and property. We have no other way of surviving."

He added that the barricades were not blockades but merely access control points. It was up to the guards to decide who entered the area.

"If a person does not have a disc then they will have to explain why they are there. If the guard is suspicious then the person will not be allowed in," he said.

The Freedom Front Plus, supporting the initiative, said it was encouraging Pretoria's residents to create security neighbourhoods to protect themselves - "with or without the approval of the Tshwane metro council".

FF+ councillor Conrad Beyers said: "The FF+ will assist communities with legal advice if the metro council wants to break down their security fences.

"From Lynnwood to Centurion, Eersterus to Mamelodi, there should be secure communities. Crime knows no colour and the moratorium on security neighbourhoods is a moratorium on the personal freedom and safety of all residents," Beyers added.

Metro police spokesperson Louise Brits said they were waiting to see legal documents before making decided whether the barricades would stay.
I loved this movie. It showed how you get through life's ups and downs and they couldn't have chose a better actress, Debra Winger. All of the cast acted as if they were a real family, I couldn't have asked for a better cast!! The only thing is that you have to watch the beginning of the movie to understand it, because if you don't watch the beginning you'll get lost.Dawn Anna lets you know that family is very important and spending time with your family is very important. Dawn Anna went through a lot and with the help of her kids and her very caring boyfriend she wouldn't have made it through. I rate this movie a 10 out of 10 stars. It has excellent actors/actresses, and excellent directory and filmography. I LUV THIS MOVIE SOOOOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!

Was the above comment (CBS/AP) A sign in front of Columbine High School sets the tone for the fifth anniversary of the worst school shooting in U.S. history: "A Time to Remember, A Time to Hope."

The Early Show correspondent Hattie Kauffman, reports that a park adjacent to the school, where on April 20, 1999, students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold gunned down 12 students and one teacher, will be the site of a ceremony and a candlelight vigil Tuesday night.

For the families of the victims, five years later, the grief remains strong, but so does the anger, the feeling that some, if not all, of the deaths could have been prevented.

Kelly Fleming's mother says, "April 20th should never have happened. There were too, too many signs along the way that were missed."

Some parents who buried children killed at Columbine High haven't forgiven the authorities, who they say failed to stop Harris and Klebold.

On April 20, 1999, the two boys entered the school with an arsenal of weaponry and had planned even more devastation that was foiled when their bombs failed to ignite. In addition to the 12 deaths, many more were injured.

Onre of the dead was Lauren Townsend. "We're at peace with where Lauren is," her mother, Dawn Anna, says. "I am at peace with that. But I am not at peace with how she got there."

The police response that day still provokes outrage. As students poured out of the school, police did not move in. Teacher Patti Nielson made a frantic 911 call.

Here is her conversation with the police dispatcher:
Nielson: "He turned the gun straight at us and shot. And my God, the window went out. And the kid standing there with us, I think, I, he got hit."

Dispatcher: "Ok, OK. We've got help on the way, madam."

Lauren Townsend's step-father, Bruce Beck asks, "Why did the 911 operator tell Patty Nielson to keep the kids down, help is on the way, when they knew they weren't going to send any policemen into the building?"

Both Kelly Fleming and Lauren Townsend were killed in the library, where students had fled to hide under the desks.

Dawn Anna says, "Our Lauren was told the police were coming."

Dee Fleming says, "You know. while Kelly was hiding in the library, waiting for help, nobody was coming. You know, you just storm the place, you don't stand back."

Three hours went by before police entered the school. Even as a wounded student came to a window to be dragged out, the SWAT teams were held back. Inside, teacher Dave Sanders lay dying in a classroom.

Bruce Beck says, "It's unconscionable to us that Dave was left on that floor to die."

Jefferson County district attorney, Dave Thomas had to tell the parents, five years ago their children had been killed. Asked why law enforcement didn't go into the building, he says, "Well, law enforcement has gone back and they've looked at the way in which the response was handled here at Columbine. And they've made a lot of changes. And I think most of those changes are for the better. And I think all of us, whether we're law enforcement or the school districts or parents, have gone back and reflected on this incident and tried to see what changes we could make to make sure this doesn't happen again."

In another controversy, authorities have admitted numerous complaints were made against Harris and Klebold before the attack. They were never followed up.

Kelly Fleming's father, Don Fleming, says, "You know they had 15 contacts with law enforcement over the previous two years. They were in trouble with the school. They were constantly in trouble with their parents."

Families of the victims say the warning signs were clear: Misplaced police reports, prophetic videos made by the killers at the school itself, a father's secret journal, a Web site and an essay promising death.

"How many times have we heard this was everything, only for something else to come out?" asks Dawn Anna. "The first time we heard that was back in 1999."

Some 30,000 documents in the case have been released over the years. Another 40,418 pieces of evidence, ranging from a tooth fragment to propane tanks, were put on public display earlier this year.

Local authorities, the school district, a state commission and the Colorado attorney general have all investigated, but the question remains: Why didn't someone - a parent, a sheriff's deputy, a teacher, a fellow student - step in before the suicidal gunmen went on their rampage?

Many red flags, Don Fleming says, were missed.

Victims' families have tried to get answers: Some sued the sheriff's department, the school district and the parents of the killers. They won damages, but a federal judge sealed many records.

At the heart of most questions is the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, which responded to the massacre and led the official investigation. Its track record is spotty at best.

After the shootings, sheriff's officials downplayed tips about Harris making death threats - even though they relied on them to get a search warrant for his home hours after the bloodshed.

Randy and Judy Brown, whose sons were threatened by Harris, made several attempts to get the sheriff's department to investigate.

The tips started in 1997, when one of the Browns' two sons gave a deputy a printout of a Web site on which Harris boasted of going on nighttime missions with Klebold, firing weapons and vandalizing property.

The Web site later included boasts by Harris and Klebold about
building pipe bombs and referred to "ground zero."

The tip was forwarded to investigator John Hicks, no longer with the force. A warrant was drafted to search the Harris home, but it was never executed. A report by Hicks was found tucked inside a training manual just six months ago, a stunning revelation that prompted new Sheriff Ted Mink to ask Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar to investigate.

Salazar said he found no negligence by the sheriff's department, though he found at least 15 instances of contact between law enforcement and one or both of the killers.

Other warning signs included violent videos made by Harris and Klebold for a class project and an essay by Klebold in another class describing a Columbine-like slaying of "preps." In one video project five months before the rampage, the two stalk through Columbine itself, offering hit-man services to classmates tired of being bullied.

Harris and Klebold were arrested for a break-in a year before the attack, but parole officers were never told about the death threats tied to the teens. Both completed probation and were deemed to be likely candidates for success as adults.

"There was overwhelming evidence. Columbine should have been prevented," said Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Daniel, was one of the first to die. "We cannot turn back the hands of time, but we can put all this information out on the table. ... We can make this an example of what went wrong so that we can prevent it from happening again."

Most excruciating for some of those seeking answers is the fact that some information is being kept secret. The Harris and Klebold families were forced to give depositions to settle a lawsuit, but what they said remains sealed.

Joe Kechter, whose son, Matt, died at Columbine, said the lawsuit was settled because families were running out of money to fight the insurance companies whose homeowners' policies covered the Klebolds and Harrises.

"I hope some day the Klebolds and Harrises agree to get this information out so it can save other kids' lives in the future," Kechter said. "I am doing this in respect of my son. I feel the police and the whole system let him down that day. I am not going to let him down."

The school district's investigation also remains confidential because officials say its release would violate attorney-client privilege. Salazar's investigation remains open, though family members don't expect big news from the new U.S. Senate candidate.

"I really don't think we are going to get any more answers," said Al Velasquez, whose son, Kyle, was among those killed.

But the horror of Columbine may have improved school safety nationwide. Surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and I.D. badges are now common in schools. Most of all, the tragedy raised vigilance, and other deadly plots have been averted. Near Los Angeles last year, classmates reported two students who were making threats. There was a detailed journal, which included references to inflicting harm upon the faculty and other students at the high school.

In Spokane, a Columbine tragedy was averted when police evacuated the school within minutes of a shooter entering.

And in Northern California, an alert teen prevented a massacre at a local college. Police uncovered weapons and a Web site worshipping the Columbine killers - red flags that, today, no one is ignoring.

Dawn Anna says, "There is no excuse for a child to go to a school library on a school day. and not make it out alive."

Dawn Anna will be among the memorial speakers along with victim Anne Marie Hochhalter, who remains paralyzed from wounds inflicted by the killers.

The students who were enrolled at Columbine then are long gone; the 1998-99 freshmen class graduated two years ago. But now among the students are brothers and students of those wounded in the attack.

The only administrator left is Principal Frank DeAngelis, who said
staying at Columbine helped keep him sane.

He tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith, "I refer to what Klebold and Harris did that day as an act of terrorism. That's part of the reason I was back at Columbine High School. I was not going to let them win.

"People ask me when is going to be that magical day that everything is back to normal at Columbine. And I say that day will never come, it will never exist, because what happened on April 20, 1999, will remain with us forever. We will never be back to normal. We just learn to cope and heal and build upon the strength of one another."

None of the 1,700 students of Columbine will be in class Tuesday, since the campus is always closed on the anniversary of the attack. Rick Kaufman, spokesman for the school district, said security was stepped up for Monday's classes.


?MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The movie depicts the life of Dawn Anna, a teacher and single mother of four children. Soon after meeting her eventual husband, she is diagnosed with a severe brain disease that requires a serious operation. Shortly after her recovery, daughter Lauren Townsend is murdered in the Columbine High School massacre.


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