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Nilsen-Cultra vs China
Group USA beach front volleyball participant Navy Reserve Lt. Commander Lauren Nilsen, who works at Landstuhl Army Health-related Middle in Germany, makes an attempt to block a shot by China’s Chang Liu during the 5th CISM Military Globe Video games on Copacabana Beach front in Rio de Janeiro. China won the match, 21-eight, 21-thirteen, sending the No. 1 U.S. women’s duo of Nilsen and Air Force 1st Lt. Brooke Cultra (No. 2 in foreground) of Ramstein AFB, Germany, into the bronze medal match in opposition to Brazil’s No. 2 squad. Brazil took the bronze with a 21-seven, 21-9 victory. U.S. Army picture by Tim Hipps, IMCOM Public Affairs
Army Globe Video games volleyball, 9-eleven anniversary provide nurse total circle
By Tim Hipps
Installation Administration Command
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Amongst competing in the Conseil Worldwide du Activity Militaire’s 5th Army World Game titles and her role in the 10th anniversary of the terrorist assault on The usa, Navy Lt. Commander Lauren Nilsen has arrive total circle.
Nilsen helped Crew USA win an unprecedented gold medal at the 2001 CISM Globe Volleyball Championships in Viterbo, Italy.
10 several years afterwards, she teamed with Air Power 1st Lt. Brooke Cultra of Ramstein Air Foundation, Germany, as Crew USA’s No. 1 women’s seaside volleyball squad at the 2011 Army Planet Online games on Copacabana Beach front in Rio de Janeiro.
She remembers both activities like they ended up yesterday.
“We defeat Italy – in Italy – for the gold,” Nilsen said. “And it happened to be a week prior to 9-11.”
Nilsen arrives from a significant loved ones of police officers and civil servants on Long Island, N.Y.
“My total total family members is Army or police officers – my mother, my dad, my stepfather, my uncles, my brothers in law, my cousins,” she mentioned. “There’s fire division, also.”
She was daydreaming about her home in Kauai, Hawaii, the Garden Island of Peace, as she traveled Sept. 9 from Italy to LaGuardia Airport to check out household and close friends in New York Metropolis.
“I bear in mind it was the most lovely September day, just nevertheless and attractive,” Nilsen recalled. “We observed the 1st tower get strike, and I understood that my sister was in the city working. She acquired on a single of the final trains that left Grand Central Station.”
Nilsen and her sister’s husband, a policeman, drove to meet her at the safe haven of Shea Stadium.
“I just remember hearing on the radio the total way: ‘Tower one down Tower two down aircraft into the Pentagon airplane down in Pennsylvania,” Nilsen said. “And as we achieved Shea, we could just see the huge cloud above the metropolis.”
The rest of the day and evening was surreal to Nilsen.
“The complete day, even that night, I just couldn’t even slumber,” she mentioned. “Because on Extended Island, you have got LaGuardia, Kennedy and Islip, so you’ve always got aircraft in the air, and they shut down every little thing. No one has actually noticed no aircraft in the sky. It was just a truly eerie sensation.
“And I assume a great deal of us believed there was a whole lot more to arrive. I remember waking up the up coming morning actually sweaty and hoping it was just a undesirable dream.”
Soon after enduring the attack, Nilsen decided to forego “the great life” in Hawaii and moved back to New York, wherever she accomplished school and pursued two of her “civilian dream jobs” as a corporate nurse and operating with substitute medicine.
“I landed equally of them,” Nilsen mentioned. “I received supplied to be the nurse for Mayor Bloomberg’s company, and for one particular of the leading integrative doctors in the nation.”
It did not take extended, however, for Nilsen to land in Afghanistan as a civilian nurse.
“I just bear in mind getting treatment of my high-profile doctor’s clients and just viewing the war,” she recalled. “And I was like: ‘Lauren, just go again into the military.’”
Nilsen re-entered the Navy Reserve and accepted a mobilization deployment to Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany, in which several U.S. and NATO Troopers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan get treatment. She reported in 2009 for a nine-month tour and continues to be there nowadays.
“I’ve been a nurse for eighteen several years and that’s the best nursing of my life, the most humbling,” Nilsen stated. “I in no way believed I would ever see, significantly less be a element of, taking care of our American troops and heroes with battle injuries. But I did that for about nine months and I was in a placement wherever I could go again to the States and use my GI Bill to get my master’s diploma, or pursue my coaching, or other pursuits.
“But I determined I would regret it for the rest of my daily life if I did not go back there to operate for yet another two years to consider treatment of our wounded warriors. I ended up working as a Navy Reservist out of Stuttgart. I operate for the Division of the Army as a civilian contractor at Landstuhl,” she explained. “I’m on one of the medical trauma models where we’re still obtaining all the inbound from downrange.
“I think it completes a circle for me simply because in 2001 I was in the Globe Championships, and staying a portion of nine-eleven in New York – and obtaining it right have an effect on my household and myself, it shifted the way I lived existence – just gave me a different perspective.
“My daily life was not as charmed any more. I was far more thoughtful and intentional, I assume. And 10 many years later, right here I am at the Army Entire world Video games taking part in beach front volleyball at 39 years outdated, and at the identical time doing work at Landstuhl.”
Call it karma, fate or destiny, Nilsen believes it was meant to be.
“It’s been therapeutic for me,” she explained. “And I believe my Household is genuinely grateful that I can represent them as well by getting care of our guys more than there in Germany.
“We do the greatest we can with a lot of dirty injuries from the explosions and gunshot wounds – a good deal of washouts preventing infection, tons of amputations that you do not see in the news. We just do our ideal to consider care of their morale and do nearly anything we can to make them as cozy and calm as possible until finally we can get them back to the States, in which they can make complete recovery.”
Nilsen tends to way more than just U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
“Tons of Army,” Nilsen said. “A whole lot of Marine Corps, Navy, and a lot of NATO troops – we get the Romanians, the Polish, the Canadians, so it’s not just Americans. We get a lot of men from Jordan now, occasionally the Aussies, and a couple Brits.”
At the Military World Game titles in Brazil, Nilsen embraced CISM’s motto of “friendship via sport” even though competing in “The Peace Games.”
“It’s been incredible,” she said. “When I did it in 2001, there had been only perhaps fifteen international locations due to the fact it was all volleyball. Right after that, I was calme. I didn’t require to do CISM any longer. Then this arrived around. I’m hanging out with Soldier-athletes from Sri Lanka, Korea, the Iranians, those men are great. Just obtaining simple conversation with them is breaking down some partitions and perceptions. Just talking to them as a kind individual representing the United States genuinely tends to make a huge variation.
“Ecuador, South Africa, Venezuela – and even at evening in the athlete villages they have dwell music with a band,” she continued. “It’s a huge block celebration with the whole globe, and the entire world is dancing collectively. Even the Chinese, they are like ‘this is great for us to talk.’ And we’re riding on the bus with Albania, China, Pakistan, Qatar, Angola, and we’re all just large-fiving each other, smiling, chatting.
“So CISM is working, and I feel the States should genuinely know about this.”
Staff USA won Army Planet Games medals only in men’s basketball, women’s sailing and men’s and women’s parachuting, with the Golden Knights skydiving women bringing house the lone gold. The U.S. army athletes, even so, understood and appreciated their mission.
“We have a work to do,” Nilsen said. “Our job is to be in the army and do our purpose, to serve in our work description. These people, their governments pay out them to stand for them even in the international arena in expert sports. Perhaps, if anything at all, it may possibly be humbling to these other international locations to see that we’re not usually dominating and that we are working and we are people who labor and function hard.
“Maybe that is very good for them to see.”