Most Americans haven't seen the growing legion of wounded troops returning from Iraq who are cared for at military facilities sealed off from the public. The media, in turn, have focused on the hit-and-run guerrilla attacks that claim one or two GIs in Iraq almost daily. Little attention has been paid to the long, difficult and very personal struggles that ensue in wards at BAMC and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Source: Christenson, Sig. "Soldiers, Marines work to recover from war injuries at BAMC." San Antonio Express-News, 18 Aug 2003. Link

"They come here 19, 20 years old and when I see them leaving, missing limbs -- I've seen up to three limbs gone off people, and I don't think in our generation we've seen this amount of harm done to young people," [Maj. Gene] Delaune says.

Source: Zdechlik, Mark. "U.S. soldier injuries mount in Iraq." Minnesota Public Radio, 14 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Explosions shatter and sever legs and arms. They char flesh and drive debris deep into the soft tissue that remains. Unattached muscles, nerves and tendons dangle. Red-hot shrapnel sometimes punctures torsos below waist-length body armor, ripping bowels and bladders. Concussions bruise skulls and brains. Soldiers thrown into the air are injured again when they hit ground.

Source: Wood, David. "Amputees Returning to Duty." Times-Picayune, 12 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

In the Persian Gulf War, about three troops were wounded in action for every fatality. In Iraq, about seven are being wounded for every one killed.

Bavley, Alan. "New technology and medical practices save lives in Iraq." Knight Ridder Newspapers, 17 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Send stories about the wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan to The Memory Hole: russ@mindpollen.com

Photo gallery of the wounded [The Memory Hole]

Chart of coalition fatalities [CNN]

War Amputees blog

Gary Boggs

A couple miles south of the Tikrit base camp, the Humvee Boggs was riding in was badly damaged by an improvised explosive device. Shrapnel pelted the left side of his body. "I took some nice pieces in my arm," Boggs said. "Luckily I didn't lose it." But he ended up losing his left eye.

Boggs is among more than a dozen Soldiers who have lost an eye in Operation Iraqi Freedom and have been helped by Walter Reed’s ocularist, Vince Przybyla.

McMillan, Brett. "Prosthetic eyes improve patients' outlook." Army News Service, 12 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Maurice Craft

Staff Sgt. Maurice Craft, an Avenger crew member with B Battery, 3/4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, was riding on Highway 5 in Baghdad Nov. 24 when an improvised explosive device hit the vehicle he was riding in. He remembers telling the driver to pull him out, and the searing pain cursing through his legs. Closing his eyes seemed to make the pain go away, but he worried that he wouldn’t wake up again.

“I forced myself to keep my eyes open,’’ recalled Craft. “I knew I had to if I wanted to make it home to my kids and family.”

Craft’s left leg was amputated at the knee and a titanium rod is keeping his right leg connected to his hip, which was shattered in the attack.

Jewell, Lories Spc. "Injured Soldiers get morale boost." Army News Service, 17 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Eric Lanstrum

Landstrum was on a nightly presence patrol in Iraq in early October when a rocket-propelled grenade, IED and machine gun fire ambush claimed his left eye.

"I lost my eye; shrapnel wounds throughout my body, lost a piece of my skull and got messed up pretty good," Lanstrum recalled.

"At first, I was so messed up I didn't think about my eye, I was happy to be alive, and, even to this day, it doesn't bother me that I lost my eye." Lanstrum said. "I see guys around here missing a lot more than an eye. I'm going to take care of the one eye I have left and just carry on."

Lanstrum said he couldn’t feel sorry for himself when three of the five guys in his vehicle died. “Me and another guy, who lost his eye also, were the only ones to walk out of my truck so I feel pretty fortunate.”

McMillan, Brett. "Prosthetic eyes improve patients' outlook." Army News Service, 12 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Thomas C. Koch, Jr.

Koch, a member of a military police company mobilized out of Fort Leonard Wood near Rolla, Mo., was driving a truck along a stretch of Baghdad highway nicknamed Ambush Alley in July when an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade hit the truck's side mirror and bent it toward the cab.

Moments later, a bullet hit the mirror, showering Koch's face with glass; one piece lodged in his left cheekbone. A second bullet struck the left corner of his mouth, ripped open his cheek and shattered teeth.

Koch's assistant driver grabbed the wheel until Koch came to a few seconds later.

"I spit out the bullet and pulled the glass out of my cheek," said Koch, 33. "He stared at me for a second or two like I had come back from the dead. I don't imagine I looked too good."

As a combat lifesaver, the other driver was equipped with a bag of medical supplies including field dressings - large gauze bandages Koch used to stanch his bleeding.

"Even though it was chaos, it was very efficient," Koch said. "He was on the radio with one hand and handing me bandages with the other. And I was driving with one hand and stuffing bandages in my mouth with the other."

Koch is back at Fort Leonard Wood for plastic surgery, root canals on damaged teeth and bone grafts for his jaw. He wants to return to Iraq.

Bavley, Alan. "New technology and medical practices save lives in Iraq." Knight Ridder Newspapers, 17 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Brandon Olson

Spc. Olson, from Hazen, is part of a team and that team is in Iraq without him. And that hurts. More than physical pain.

Olson lost his leg just below the knee as the result of an explosion in Mosul, Iraq, Nov. 1. For about a month, he's been recovering at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Spilde, Tony. "Wishing his 'boys' were home with him." Bismarck Tribune, 17 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

And researchers there have gained tremendous insight into traumatic brain injuries, which they say are occurring at a higher rate than in previous wars.

The Washington Post reports, 62 percent of soldiers examined at Walter Reed between August and December suffered brain injuries in combat.

"Walter Reed Noting Increase in Brain Injuries Among Soldiers." Associated Press, 14 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Derick Hurt

Sgt. Derick Hurt returned Friday to a small town in Missouri, a place he wasn't sure he'd ever see again.

Lying face down in an Iraqi street three months ago, the 26-year-old infantryman almost bled to death after grenades tossed from a rooftop exploded into his Humvee and blew his right leg apart.

At times, his pain and depression have been so intense that his family and girlfriend found him barely recognizable on visits to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

For now, things are looking up. Hurt's prosthetic leg fits well, and he's learned to walk smoothly....

It was an ordinary Saturday in Mosul, where his unit in the 101st Airborne Division had been assigned to military police duties since May, helping to maintain public order, Hurt said in an interview last week at Walter Reed.

"We were heading down the street, one we went down a million times," he said. "There was nothing in the street. The next thing I knew, I saw a big orange flash right in front of me. A couple of seconds later, another one. My ears were ringing. I knew I'd been hit."

Only later did Hurt learn that two grenades thrown from a roof had landed in front of his unarmored Humvee and bounced against its underside. He'd placed sandbags all over the floorboard to protect it, except for the section where the gas pedal and brake were.

"The force of the grenades came right through that area, the thin piece of metal - tore it right off," he said.

"I was holding the steering wheel. I was numb. I couldn't move my arms. I noticed the truck had died, was veering off the side of the road toward a semi. I thought I was going to get a head injury. I couldn't move my legs, so I used my torso to bail out. I think that's when I broke my wrist and messed up my hand."

Prone on the curb on his stomach, he tried to see what was wrong with his legs, but couldn't turn to look at them.

"There were more bombs going off and so much smoke I could barely see. I thought, 'This is it. I'm going to die here, just like a vegetable on the ground.'

"Then I heard one of my guys yelling my name. I thought, 'They're here! They didn't just run off and leave me!' I tried to yell, 'I'm here,' but I couldn't; I'd lost so much blood that nothing came out. Thirty seconds later he found me. The first thing he said was, 'Holy (expletive).' I said, 'Don't say that.' That's when I knew something was very badly wrong."

Soon a handful of soldiers surrounded him. One used wire as a tourniquet, causing Hurt to yell in pain, but the soldier said that if he didn't cut off the circulation, Hurt would bleed to death right there.

"One thing I remember is asking everyone for water. They said I couldn't, it would make me bleed more. I was never so thirsty in my life. I tried to reach for their canteens. I was thinking if I don't get water, I'm going to die."

They carried Hurt to a Humvee. "That's when I saw my legs. One of them was half gone, the other was all battered up. My foot was still there, hanging on by something as big around as my finger. One of the guys lost his balance and stepped on my foot. I felt pain, so I assumed it was a nerve attaching it."

They drove Hurt to an intersection, where a helicopter landed and took him to a local hospital. He was given drugs that knocked him out, and the next thing he remembers is waking up in Germany. He arrived at Walter Reed on Sept. 21.

Dine, Phil. "Quiet casualties mount in Iraq action." St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 13 Dec 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Travis Harvey

As Julia Harvey stood alone in her kitchen, unable to calm her wailing 3-week-old daughter, she peered at the ceiling and told God, "I need him home! And I need him home right now!"

Within a week, her husband, Florida National Guard Spc. Travis Harvey, was back in the States. But the homecoming hasn't turned out how Julia or Travis Harvey had hoped.

Harvey, like thousands of soldiers wounded in Iraq, returned home to his own private war. He's still in agonizing pain. He can't work. And his marriage is suffering.

"I couldn't do it by myself anymore," said Julia Harvey, 27. "But this is not what I had in mind."

Travis Harvey nearly bled to death in a July 15 mortar attack, in which a piece of the softball-sized mortar pierced his right leg, splitting it open. The shrapnel then lodged in his left leg, shattering the bones. Another piece of shrapnel hit his left arm.

Lying alone on the concrete, Harvey, a former medic, shoved his fist into the open wound of his right leg to slow the spurting blood.

"Oh, my God; why me?" he thought. "I'm dead."

Then he thought about Julia and Alexa, the newborn daughter he had never seen, waiting for him at their Ocala, Fla., home.

"I made a decision in my mind to go home," he recalled. "I thought, `OK, you're awake, you're conscious.' I pushed all the negative thoughts away. Then I knew I was going to make it."

Harvey, 27, returned to a wife he had wed only days before his January 2003 deployment and to a baby born while he was about 6,900 miles away in Iraq.

Previously extremely active, holding three jobs at a time, he yearns to provide for his new family and help around the house. But his injuries make that impossible.

His wife was forced to return to work while he stayed home nursing his injuries and taking care of their baby. The stresses of the new roles for both partners created major friction in the marriage. Travis began taking antidepressants in addition to painkillers. The couple fought constantly.

"While he was gone, I had to take the reins," Julia Harvey said. "He had his own big horse to deal with in Iraq. When he got back, we had to hand each other one of the reins. It was a huge adjustment."

Travis Harvey said he has difficulty articulating when he is in emotional pain. He tried to tough it out, but it manifested as anger.

"We argued about everything," Travis Harvey said. "There were yelling matches. After two weeks, we couldn't live together."

"We needed a break - a serious break," Julia Harvey said.

Within three weeks, the newlyweds split. Travis moved in with his grandmother in Lake Panasoffkee, Fla. Travis and Julia began marriage counseling....

Now, Travis spends his days taking care of 5-month-old Alexa while Julia works as a receptionist. The couple is back together and trying to make their marriage work.

Travis will begin physical therapy after his wounds heal. While on medical leave, he is being paid as if on active duty, about $2,600 a month. Eventually, the military will place him on disability.

He had planned to serve 20 years and retire. Now he's glad to see his military days behind him.

"Iraq sucked," he said. "Twelve-hour shifts, living in hot concrete hangars, no toilet. (Ready-to-eat) meals most days. Then I almost died."

Johnson, Pamela. "For thousands of injured U.S. soldiers home from Iraq, the war goes on." Orlando Sentinel, 28 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Brandon Olson

But Deb Olson didn't mind the accommodations in Ward 57 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest Washington.

Her 21-year-old son, Spec. Brandon Olson, had joined the Army just a few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. She had told him only half-jokingly that she would give him $10,000 to reconsider, but he had been moved and enraged by the death in New York and at the Pentagon. He was eventually deployed to Iraq as part of the 101st Airborne Division, and on Halloween night an explosive went off about two feet from him while he was on foot patrol in Mosul. His right leg had to be amputated just below the knee.

Fernandez, Manny. "A Pause on the Road to Recovery." Washington Post, 28 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Matthew Van Buren

You won't find much self-pity at Landstuhl. You certainly won't find it talking with Spc. Matthew Van Buren, 21, of Kansas City, Kan., who's in a wheelchair and awaiting surgery to close a huge cavity in his leg caused by a chunk from a roadside bomb. Clutching a fatigues-clad stuffed turtle that his brother gave him when he completed basic training, Van Buren chuckled as he explained how pieces of shrapnel are working their way out of his body, sometimes popping out as he sleeps.

Van Buren, also of the 1st Armored Division, was hit Nov. 8 in an attack that killed another soldier. "It just riddled my truck with shrapnel," he said.

Dilanian, Ken. "Wounded soldiers Iraq's untold story." Knight Ridder, 27 Nov 2003. Link. posted 18 Dec 2003.

Robert Acosta

Every hour of every day for the last four months, Robert Acosta has thought of the moment when the grenade slipped from his fingers.

In the early evening of July 13, Specialist Acosta, of the Army's First Armored Division, was riding in the passenger seat of a Humvee toward the gates of the Baghdad airport. Something entered through his window, flew by his face trailing a ribbon of smoke, hit the windshield and landed next to the driver.

Specialist Acosta grabbed the grenade with his right hand, but as he turned to throw it out the window, he dropped it between his legs. He picked it up again. Somewhere between his ankles and knees, the grenade exploded in his hand.

"It was gone, it just disintegrated," he said of his hand. "It was just a mist of blood."

The driver of the Humvee was unhurt. Not only did the blast destroy Specialist Acosta's hand, it also shattered his legs, the left one now mended with a steel plate and skin grafts and the hole in his heel almost closed. In place of his right hand and part of his forearm, he wears a prosthesis that ends in a two-pronged claw.

"I think I should be dead right now," the 20-year-old Specialist Acosta said one recent afternoon, resting from doing pull-ups in physical therapy at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center here. "But I feel like I failed myself. If I hadn't dropped it, I would still have my hand."...

"When we get injured, all it says is `one soldier wounded,' " Specialist Acosta said, echoing others at Walter Reed. "Not that a soldier has lost an arm or a leg, or how hard that is."

Banerjee, Neela. "Rebuilding Bodies, and Lives, Maimed by War." New York Times, 16 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Edward Platt

After his unit entered Iraq in the spring, it went north to Mosul. On Sept. 23, a rocket-propelled grenade near the Syrian border tore away Specialist Platt's right knee and the top of his shin, but a flap of skin and muscle along the back of his leg still attached his thigh to the lower leg and foot.

"I could still wiggle my toes," he said.

Specialist Platt arrived at Walter Reed with his lower leg, but after realizing that surgical reconstruction would very likely fail, he decided in early October to have the leg removed a few inches above the knee.

Banerjee, Neela. "Rebuilding Bodies, and Lives, Maimed by War." New York Times, 16 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Ryan Kelly

Sergeant Kelly and his wife, 21, were both in Iraq as civil affairs officers with the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion, she in Baghdad and he in Ramadi. On July 14, a group of seven from Sergeant Kelly's unit left the base just after dawn in two Humvees for a health and education conference. The convoy came under attack as it neared Baghdad.

"I don't remember a blast," Sergeant Kelly said of the roadside bomb. "It was a gorgeous morning, that time when it's still cool. Then everything went black for a second, like when your TV goes out, and then the film comes back.

"I couldn't hear anything but a loud tone," he said. "The Humvee filled with dust and this smell, this smell that I can't describe. And the blood. The windshield was shattered, and we went from 70 to 40.

"I was knocked backward and I tried to use my foot to get back up and it felt like there was nothing under my foot, like there was a hole in the floor of the Humvee, and I pulled back my foot and I couldn't see it, the way it was hanging.

"I looked at Zayas, the driver, and there was blood all over his face and I said, my leg is gone," Sergeant Kelly said. "My leg is out on the road back there. I switched my weapon to fire and emptied it. I was scared out of my mind and furious at the same time."

Sergeant Kelly said he joked with the soldiers who evacuated him, though he knew he would probably lose his leg, which dangled by a strip of skin. Finally, at the military hospital, he wept, he said. First, when the nurse pulled back the covers to show him his bandaged wound. And then, when his wife arrived.

Banerjee, Neela. "Rebuilding Bodies, and Lives, Maimed by War." New York Times, 16 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Tristan Wyatt, Erick Castro, Mike Meinen

For several seconds after the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) drilled through the back of their armored M113 "battle taxi," the soldiers inside, mainlining adrenaline, continued firing. Then they started screaming. "It blew my leg clean off," says Private First Class Tristan Wyatt, who was standing at the rear of the armored personnel carrier (APC), unloading an M-240 machine gun at a dozen or more Iraqis who had ambushed them minutes before. He was the first to be hit. The RPG then passed through Sergeant Erick Castro's hip, spinning him violently to the floor. His left leg was still attached — but barely. "I picked up my leg and put it on the bench," he says, "and lay down next to it." Finally, the RPG shredded Sergeant Mike Meinen's right leg. "It was pretty much torn off," he says. "There was just some meat and tendons holding it on."

...

The medic, the wounded soldiers and their comrades began a frantic race against the clock. Buddies pressed their hands into Castro's hip wound to keep him from bleeding to death. The wound was so massive that his tourniquet was useless. He handed it to Wyatt, who needed two to stanch the blood flowing from his femoral artery. Amid the mayhem, Meinen, who had been manning a 50-cal. machine gun, noticed that he didn't have any feeling in his right foot. "It felt like it had gone to sleep on me, so I picked my foot up and was trying to massage it, trying to get the feeling back," he says. "But then it dawned on me: it wasn't even connected. So I put it on the floor."

They tried to raise their wounded legs to slow the bleeding. "There was nothing to elevate my leg except for the piece of my leg that had been blown off from the knee down," Wyatt says. "So I took my leg and jammed it under the stump to keep it pointing up. It was kind of messy." It may have been messy, but it worked. Meinen and Wyatt held hands, trying to reassure each other. "We're not gonna die in this track," Meinen said. "We're not gonna die over here." He was right. About an hour after being wounded — thanks to their colleagues and a Black Hawk medevac flight — the three U.S. soldiers were receiving some of the world's best medical care at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, south of Baghdad. Wyatt and Meinen were back in the U.S. about three days later. It was a week before the more seriously wounded Castro landed on U.S. soil.

...

Early-morning light spills into the physical-therapy room at Walter Reed, as wounded soldiers sweat and grimace aboard stationary bicycles. Each man is steadily grinding out the miles with a single leg, his crutches leaning against a nearby wall. This morning happy-go-lucky PFC Wyatt meets with Joseph Miller, the hospital's chief prosthetist, who makes wounded soldiers close to whole again with man-made arms and legs. The types of wounds coming back from Iraq — blast and shrapnel injuries — make his job tougher. "Those kinds of injuries mean more infections and multiple surgeries," he says. Wyatt nods; he knows this from experience. He has had 10 surgeries since being wounded, with several inches of thigh carved off in the process.

...

He has been back home for a month now, preparing for his new leg. "This life has its challenges," he says. "When the baby cries, I can't just run over and pick her up to put her in the crib. I'm kind of a stationary person right now, and sometimes I just have to drag myself across the floor."

Source: Thompson, Mark. "The Wounded Come Home." Time, 03 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Soldiers have been wounded in war since the beginning of time — a fact that armies never like advertising. The Pentagon, which makes terse announcements when U.S. soldiers die in combat in Iraq, doesn't inform the public about those who have been wounded or release month-by-month injury counts. The wounded are mentioned only when some other soldier has been killed in the same attack. "When you join the Army, they send your picture to your hometown paper because they want everybody to know that you're leaving for the military," says Meinen, a dark-haired practical joker from Grangeville, Idaho. "But if you're wounded, the military doesn't tell them, because they might be worried about the public getting negative about what's going on over there." Says the serious, quiet-spoken Castro, from Santa Ana, Calif.: "Nobody knows what happened to us, even though it was one of the biggest ambushes in Iraq. People are only finding out about soldiers who are dying, but American soldiers are getting injured too."

Source: Thompson, Mark. "The Wounded Come Home." Time, 03 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Jose Mateo and John Adams

Those who were there saw a procession of Humvees, each carrying a single soldier. They are the men of 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Division, 124th Infantry of the Florida National Guard.

Among them was the platoon sergeant, Jose Mateo, injured in Ramadi, Iraq, in an ambush July 5, and his best friend, Sgt. John Adams, who took over after Mateo was injured. Adams was injured in Ramadi in another ambush on Aug. 29.

Thirty-one members of the 1st Platoon went to war last winter. Today in Iraq, there are only 21 left in the platoon. Ten have been sidelined by injury, forever bound by what they endured in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom....

‘Frightened to Death’

"I was ambushed, me and my guys were ambushed," remembers Mateo, as he describes what happened on July 5. "It is just unbelievable for me to think that that was actually happening, that we had actually gotten blown up by a land mine."

But for Mateo, the shrapnel, the pain and the terror of that moment were just the beginning. Mateo and two others injured soldiers were airlifted to a military field hospital, just as it came under attack.

"The place was getting attacked by mortars and you could hear the firing outside, and … we were very drugged up because of what happened to us," Mateo says. "That was the most scariest time for me, during the whole period of time that I was over there. That was when I actually felt frightened to death and the mortar rounds kept getting closer and closer. And I remember me and the guys found a flack vest and we threw it over us, and we were hugging and crying and praying to God that, you know, he would help us from there."

Four months later Mateo carries shrapnel from that day in his knee. His hearing has been severely damaged and this once strong, proud soldier now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Shrapnel and Bone in His Brain

Adams is alive too, but his life appears forever altered by his injuries. Like the other men, Adams was a part-time soldier, working in lawn care in suburban Miami before being called into active duty. Now his wife Summer and his friends have to help him with the most basic of tasks.

All that he remembers of the night of Aug 29 is an explosion. It left pieces of shrapnel and fragments of bone in his brain. His speech is now halting and garbled, his movement sluggish.

"We will leave it there," says Adams in his strained voiced, "because if they operate then they will have to take half the brain out."...

Dirty Hospital

It has been a very different experience for Mateo, who is being treated at the military hospital on base at Ft. Stewart, Ga.

"I've been there since September," says Mateo, "and two Fridays ago was the first time that I got my leg checked. And this week was the first time I got my hearing checked, to know that my nerves are damaged."

Ft. Stewart has been in the news recently because of complaints that injured soldiers are not being well treated. Mateo has seen it up close. Twice he has had to pay for accommodation, because there was no place for him to stay or the bunkhouse he was offered just wasn't a place for an injured soldier.

"When I first got there they put me in this one place that, I still had open wounds, and … I've never seen something that dirty," he said. "You know, I'm a soldier, and I don't want to sound like I'm whining or complaining. I'm just sharing some of the things that go on."...

Adams finds himself struggling to get through each day. The future? He offers just two words.

"Me. Better."

His wife Summer is more sanguine.

"I'm a little bit more straightforward than him in certain things," she says. "I know he's not going to be a hundred percent. But I see him. He's going to be working and doing what he wants to do. He's going to be good, and then we're going to get over this. We're going to conquer this."

Summer Adams says before he left for the war, her husband was an active energetic man who loved to fix things and help people. Today, he needs from her to get dressed.

"Sometimes, I sit and I cry," he says determinedly, "because I can't do everything I want to do."

Summer says their future is on hold. The motorcycle she bought for him will sit in the garage. There will be no trip to Disney for their little boys. And the renovations to their modest house will remain unfinished.

David Pettigrew

Sgt. David Pettigrew remembers the night.

He remembers the bang as the rocket-propelled grenade exploded, remembers the blood and the acrid stench, remembers himself "screaming nonsensical bloody murder" over the platoon com system.

He remembers his buddies in the 4th Infantry Division, their shouts and cries as they struggled to get a tourniquet on his leg, and he remembers the stare of his sergeant, who looked at him, "and you could see in his eyes that he thinks that something is massively and horribly wrong."

And Pettigrew, then a corporal, remembers the orthopedic ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and seeing all the amputees back from Iraq.

"It's a crazy place," he says. "It's filled with young guys like me who are all blown up.

"There was a guy there who was missing both legs and an arm," the 26-year-old soldier says. "My last roommate had no hands left at all."

Pettigrew is home in Colorado Springs, learning how to walk on a prosthetic leg and dealing with the memories of that midnight patrol near Tikrit on July 8, when the grenade came shrieking out of the darkness and struck his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Emery, Erin and John Aloysius Farrell. "Troops' horrific injuries are conflict's hidden cost." Denver Post, 23 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

"They seem to underplay it a lot," said Pfc. Tristan Wyatt, of Franktown, who is being treated at Walter Reed after losing his right leg in an August ambush. "They think the war is over, and it's not. It's getting worse and worse with everybody coming here wounded.

"They say 'wounded' like they have a cast, or a splinter. There are people who lost both legs, in wheelchairs, here. That's not wounded: that's (expletive) up. They're giving everything they have for this cause," Wyatt said.

Emery, Erin and John Aloysius Farrell. "Troops' horrific injuries are conflict's hidden cost." Denver Post, 23 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Cam Molina

The mine was buried in an area that was supposed to have been cleared by a mine-detector team.

One minute, Molina was untangling barbed wire for the team near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan; the next, he was flat on his back, dazed and losing blood.

Molina was a combat engineer sergeant assigned to Fort Bragg's 27th Engineer Battalion.

The explosion mangled his left leg, essentially liquefying the flesh. His right leg was riddled with shrapnel and broken in seven places. Part of his right foot was missing. His left buttock was sheared off.

''The mine shot so much debris into my (left) leg it could not be salvaged," Molina said. ''I looked down at my feet and my left foot was flapping and my right foot was pointing the wrong way."

Maurer, Kevin. "War injury changes lives." Fayetteville Observer (NC), 26 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Tyler Hall

Hall has been treated in the center since August, when a convoy traveling near Tikrit came under attack. Terrorists rigged a 155 mm howitzer shell to detonate in the sand as the convoy drove past. The explosion blew through the vehicle's bed and tossed Hall. He landed face down. From the moment he was put on a Blackhawk helicopter until he awoke at Walter Reed a month later, Hall was in a coma caused by the blunt force against his head, despite wearing a Kevlar. He's undergone several surgeries to reconstruct the bones in his face and drain fluid from his brain.

Doctors are treating Hall for several injuries, but it's the head injury that repeatedly threatened to rob Hall of his life, and later the ability to appreciate that he still had a life.

"Day to day I'm getting better. A fog is finally off my eyes. It's frustrating, very frustrating. It's like fighting something you don't see, no one sees, but you can feel it," said Hall, who's improved under intense care at the center but still suffers headaches, nausea, and memory loss. "I still misplace things. I just want to be able to ride in a car again without getting sick."

Wagner, Spc. Chuck. "Brain injuries high among Iraq casualties." Army News Service, 24 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Doctors with the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center say early casualty assessments suggest service members are returning with a wide range of brain injuries — from mild concussions to coma or death — in larger percentages than the military's rule of thumb.

This suspected rise in an injury notoriously debilitating to victims and hard for doctors to diagnose may result from the terrorists' explosive arsenal and vulnerabilities in current U.S. combat gear, according to experts.

"It's always been well known there are going to be brain injuries in combat," said Dr. Louis French, a neuropsychologist and assistant director for clinical services at the brain center. "About 20 percent is usually what's talked about. So far, what we've seen suggests a higher percentage."

Among 105 casualties assessed between June and October, doctors discovered about two-thirds, or 67 percent, to have brain injuries, according to Dr. Laurie Ryan, another neuropsychologist and the assistant director for research.

Wagner, Spc. Chuck. "Brain injuries high among Iraq casualties." Army News Service, 24 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Gary Yoakam

The day before surgeons removed three more inches of his mangled left forearm, Army Sgt. Gary Yoakam sat in his hospital room cradling 2-month-old Layla in his right arm and gauze-covered stump.

"Oh, my God, you got so big," he said in a baby voice to his daughter, born Sept. 27 while Yoakam was home in Ohio on leave from Iraq. "You remember Daddy, huh? Yes, you do. You're my baby girl. Daddy missed you."

Leaning closer, he said, "I can't hold you with my other hand - it's gone. Does that make you mad?"...

For Yoakam, life now is an intense mix of good and bad. He is happy to be alive, to see his baby and to celebrate his wife's 18th birthday. He is also trying to cope with a painful new reality that began a little more than two weeks ago, on Nov. 7. That day in Mosul, Iraq, an exploding rocket-propelled grenade shredded his left hand, forcing its amputation.

Calvert, Scott. "War costs a soldier his hand, leaves him cherishing life more." Baltimore Sun, 23 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Reed Rosenkranz

The ambush came in darkness, as an Army convoy rolled past dirt fields 25 miles south of Baghdad.

Through night-vision goggles, Pfc. Reed Rosenkranz of Pittsburg could make out rubble in the distance. He sat behind the driver in the lead Humvee, a radio pack strapped across his back. A heavy Kevlar vest shielded his torso -- but not his legs, not his arms, not his eyes.

The explosion sent the Humvee spinning. It ripped the goggles from his head. It tore him up.

"All it was was a flash of light, ears ringing and you've got wounds all over you," he said of the Oct. 6 blast that took his right eye, shot shrapnel through his limbs and killed two soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter in the same vehicle....

A shard of shrapnel, about a quarter-inch long, lodged in the back of his right eye. Doctors told him an infection in the blinded eye could creep over to the other eye. They removed the eyeball.

In two plastic bottles, he keeps the sharp chunks that ripped into his face, a wrist and both legs in al-Haswah. About five other pieces remain lodged deep in his leg. His muscles tighten around them. At some point, doctors told him, his body will reject them.

Simerman, John. "The wounds of war." Contra Costa Times, 14 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

The physical therapists on the fifth floor of Walter Reed Army Medical Center have a bulletin board they call their Wall of Heroes. It is crammed with photos of young soldiers in their care -- soldiers wounded in the war in Iraq....

"We didn't start [the bulletin board] when the war began because we didn't have any idea," said Maj. Mary Hannah, a physical therapist. "Even the most experienced people here -- it is beyond their imagining. These are our babies. And they just keep coming, coming, coming."...

"The number is big to me now, bigger than anything I've seen since Vietnam," said Jim Mayer, 57, who lost both legs in that war and now volunteers at the hospital helping amputees. "When we see each other here, me and the other volunteers, our line to each other is, 'They just keep coming and coming.' "

The grounds at Walter Reed are crammed with recuperating soldiers and their families. There are so many spouses, parents and children that the more than 600 rooms in guest houses on the hospital grounds are not enough to hold them. Some are doubling up in single rooms. Hundreds are staying, at Pentagon expense, in hotels nearby.

At least one mother has finagled a bed down the hall from her son's hospital room.
"I have to," says Joyce Gray, mother of Roy, an Army corporal whose leg was torn open by a mortar round. "My son has nightmares."

"I don't think this is going to go away," said Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Kiley, an obstetrician and gynecologist by training who is commander of the hospital. "Our people are pedaling as hard and fast as they can. We can do this for a long time. But at some point, if there's no letup, the casualty demand will have to start affecting what Walter Reed is."

Schrader, Esthar. "Walter Reed staff on hurt GIs: 'They just keep coming'." Los Angeles Times, 15 Nov 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Cher calling into C-Span

Cher:... Uh, I would like to say I had the occasion the other day to spend the entire day with troops that had come back from iraq and had been wounded and, um, I also visited troops during the Vietnam era--but the thing that I was most shocked by, um, as I walked into the hospital the first person I ran into was a boy about 19 or 20 years old who'd lost both of his arms. And when I walked into the hosptial and visited all these boys all day long, uh, everyone had lost either one arm, one limb or two limbs or had lost one limb and there were, there were a lot of legs that seemed to be missing and a couple of the boys told me it was because that their vehicles, that the rockets pierce the vehicles so much it's like being kind of in a tin can. It doesn't have, there isn't, the walls of the humvees are very soft and there's no protection. But three guys in the same vehicle have lost a leg. And another thing that I saw was that, um, if they'd lost one leg that, that shrapnel that had hit the other leg had been so devastating that they were having to pull like the thigh, you know, the muscle and the thigh around the bottom of the calf to try to make the leg workable, but in some cases these boys had lost one leg, and the other leg was so damaged that they weren't sure what they were gonna be able to do.

C-Span Moderator: Where did you spend the day?

Cher: Walter-Reed.

Source: C-Span, 27 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 18 Dec 2003.

Aaron Blakely

Two soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade delayed their reunion with their families and went straight from BWI two weeks ago to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to visit Spec. Aaron Blakely, a buddy from the unit who lost both his feet to a rocket-propelled grenade.

Source: Vogel, Steve. "Rest & Resignation." Washington Post, 15 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Departure from the [amputee ward at Walter Reed] is the dream of most of the soldiers who endure pain and humiliation as their wounds are swabbed, poked and scraped. Painkillers are often useless, and sometimes the doctors and nurses break into tears along with the patient who cries out in pain.

Souce: Duggin, Dennis. "The Growing Legion of Wounded." New York Newsday, 08 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Garth Stewart

Garth Stewart lost his foot in Iraq, in a mine blast that showered his blood and flesh on his buddy and left Stewart writhing and screaming on the road, smoke rising from his wound.

Source: Wood, David. "Amputees Returning to Duty." Times-Picayune, 12 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Andrew McCaffrey

Andrew McCaffrey's right hand was blown off by a grenade in Afghanistan. A Special Forces medic tackled him and knelt on his stump to stanch the bleeding as they waited for the medevac helicopter.
...
"Do not kick me out for this," Sgt. McCaffrey grunted to his commander as the medevac chopper lifted him, with a bleeding, bandaged stump, from a dirt road in Afghanistan on July 1. "I ain't done yet."

McCaffrey, 31, from Massapequa, N.Y., works out in the rehab gym at Walter Reed. He is past the point when he couldn't bear to look at his stump. He fits a self-designed strap on his artificial arm and yanks it to keep his carbon-fiber limb tightly attached while he's doing pull-ups.

Source: Wood, David. "Amputees Returning to Duty." Times-Picayune, 12 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Scott Barkalow

Scott Barkalow's legs were shattered in Afghanistan when a mine detonated beneath his truck. As he lay shivering in the snow, knowing the pain would come, he looked down to find his right leg missing below his knee.
...
"If they'd let me go do what I do with the leg like this -- yeah, I'd go back," said Barkalow, 41, a Special Forces sergeant wounded Feb. 19. "My wife ain't going to like hearing that."

While Barkalow struggles through rehab at Walter Reed, his wife, their 9-year-old stepdaughter and 8-year-old son are at home in Dickson, Tenn.

Source: Wood, David. "Amputees Returning to Duty." Times-Picayune, 12 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

But in a devastation that has gone almost unnoticed, nearly 2,000 G.I.s, Marines, Navy and Air Force members have been wounded in the war.

Many have lost limbs, suffered severe head trauma and shrapnel wounds in combat, vehicle accidents and other mishaps. Additionally, more than 3,000 soldiers have left Iraq with illness or psychiatric problems.

Like a shotgun

Many soldiers wear ceramic body armor — the vests are nicknamed chicken plates — that can stop a bullet from an AK-47 rifle. But it only goes so far.

"The wounds we see here are much more severe than what I've seen at home," said Army Sgt. Albert Gasbarra, working in Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad with the 28th Combat Support Hospital out of Fort Bragg, N.C. A former paramedic for an ambulance corps in New York City, he has seen his share of gunshot wounds.

"Here, it's not unusual to see multiple gunshot wounds," Gasbarra said via E-mail. "They seem to be getting meaner and meaner. At first it was gunshot wounds, then it was RPG's [rocket-propelled grenades] and now it's IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. These things can range in size from a Coke can to a medium size box and even a watermelon. To me, the wounds from these things closely resemble a shotgun wound. Happily, the majority of these guys recover, so I guess it's a debilitating weapon rather than a killing one. Although that's happened too, unfortunately."

Source: O'Shaughnessy, Patrice. "War's Bloody Fallout." New York Daily News. 12 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Wasim Khan

When a rocket propelled grenade struck his checkpoint in Northern Iraq on June 1, Sgt. Wasim Khan of Richmond Hill became part of an unheralded and growing legion of wounded.

When Khan, 27, of the Army's 1st Armored Division, was struck by shrapnel, he was sent to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for five days before being transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
...
Khan has spent the last four months in Ward 57 at Walter Reed, where the maimed lie in limbo waiting for prostheses.

Souce: Duggin, Dennis. "The Growing Legion of Wounded." New York Newsday, 08 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Alex Leonard

Spc. Alex Leonard is expected to return to the United States on Wednesday or Thursday, his parents said. Leonard was serving with the U.S. Army 101st in Mosul, Iraq, when his convey was attacked.
...
His injuries “are extensive but he is very optimistic,” his mother, Sandy, said.

Leonard lost part of his leg below the right knee and also has multiple fractures to his left leg, left arm and elbow, corneal abrasions on both eyes and many open wounds, she said.

Source: unsigned. "Injured Montana soldier to return to United States." Billings Gazette, 01 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Curtis Mills

[Penny] Mills said her husband has a compound fracture of his right arm which will require major reconstructive surgery. He also has serious shrapnel wounds to a flank and his leg, which may require neurosurgery once doctors are able to assess possible damage to his sciatic nerve.

Source: Quimby, Beth. "Wounded reservist back in U.S." Press Herald (Portland, Maine), 30 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Isaiah Pasterski

Susan Pasterski said Isaiah had been on a general mission in Baghdad, and they had already swept for mines. She said there was one man on the road, but before he could react the grenade went off.

"(Isaiah) was hit by shrapnel in the shoulder, face and eye," Pasterski said. "He was the driver of the Humvee. He doesn't remember much, except being pulled from the vehicle and moved to another."

The accident occurred about 7 p.m. Oct. 11 in Baghdad. (Iraq is about nine hours ahead of Central Time in the United States.)

From Kuwait, Isaiah was flown to Germany, where he is waiting in a hospital. He will be flown to Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., sometime this week.

Susan Pasterski said he may have to have the lens replaced in his eye, but that full recovery is expected.

"He has such gorgeous blue eyes," she said Monday. "It's so frightening. It's your worst nightmare - to know your child is hurt and you're not there."

Zarling, patti. "De Pere native injured in Iraq." Green Bay News-Chronicle, 19 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Alex Leonard

A soldier from Billings is recuperating from his eighth surgery since his unit was ambushed in Iraq, his family said.

Spc. Alex Leonard lost his right leg just above the knee and is fighting infection in his left leg, which was badly broken, said his father.

Leonard is recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He also has three fractures in his left arm and a shrapnel wound on the back of his left arm.

Source: Unsigned. "Billings soldier loses most of right leg." Great Falls Tribune (Montana), 17 Oct 2003. Link. Posted 20 Oct 2003.

Tristan Wyatt

[T]he 2001 Ponderosa High School graduate lies in a bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., after being hit with a rocket-propelled grenade fired by anti-American forces in Iraq.

The Aug. 25 ambush claimed much of Wyatt's right leg and occurred while his six-man, light-armored-vehicle squad was policing a region of the Euphrates River valley west of Baghdad, said his father, Todd Wyatt, and stepmother, Jeana Ramirez, of Franktown.

Tristan, 21, is eager to return home, but he is still battling infection in his severed leg, and it could be several weeks before he arrives back, Todd and Ramirez said.
...
Tristan told his stepmother and father he was the first of his squad hit by the grenade explosion.

His leg was severed near his knee, but in the act of looking for his portable .308-caliber submachine gun to defend his fellow soldiers, he did not realize the extent of his wound.

"It was that protective instinct," Todd said. "The camaraderie between them is what kept them alive."

The squad's driver was the only member of the crew uninjured by the attack, and only because of his expert escape training was he able to save the lives of Tristan and the other four squad members, Todd and Ramirez said. Three other squad members lost legs and one was severely burned.

In addition to losing a leg, one member of the squad lost part of his colon, Ramirez said.
...

Source: Hadden, Sean. "Local soldier loses leg in ambush." Douglas County News-Press, 11 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Niles Brush

On June 11, Niles Brush was talking with Iraqis in a car at a military checkpoint in Ad Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad.
...
About 3:45 a.m., as Brush talked to the Iraqis through an interpreter, a large truck came barreling through the roadblock. The truck veered and hit one of the Humvees, which slammed into Brush, throwing him 40 feet through the air. Even now, it's not clear whether the driver hit Brush on purpose or by accident.

Brush remembers nothing of the collision, but its consequences are painfully etched across his 6-foot-6-inch frame. He still wears a neck brace after surgery to repair several bones in that area. One rib was broken. A lung had to be reinflated.

One foot is in a cast, and skin grafts cover his right leg. When he walks, he walks on crutches.

He is smiling and young and full of hope and promise, yet he knows his body may never be the same. He is 28 years old, and some day in the not-too-distant future the military will tell him how disabled he'll be for the rest of his life.

Source: Moore, Michael. "Wounded Butte soldier recounts experiences in Iraq." Montana Lee Newspapers, 10 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Jeremy Feldbusch

Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, the Blairsville RD 2 resident who last spring was severely injured while serving with a U.S. Army Ranger unit while in Iraq, will be honored at a parade at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 20, in Blairsville.

Feldbusch was injured April 3 when he was hit by shrapnel from a mortar attack. Injuries to both eyes have left him blind and a piece of flying shrapnel lodged in his brain, causing other damage. After a long stay at a U.S. Army hospital in Texas, Feldbusch was able to return home this summer. He continues to undergo physical therapy. A longtime family friend, Gail McCrady of Blairsville, said his health is steadily improving.

"He does pretty well," McCrady said Tuesday. Feldbusch's mobility is improving as his muscles strengthen. Doctors still however are not sure of the full extent of damage to his brain.
...

Source: Slater, Mary Ann. "Blairsville to Honor Wounded Soldier." Indiana Gazette, 10 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

In a summer dominated by the Bryant sex case, Arnold's debut in California's recall election and the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons, no hordes of television cameras await the planeloads of wounded soldiers being airlifted back to the states, unloaded at Andrews Air Force Base, and stuffed into wards at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other facilities. We see few photos of them undergoing painful and protracted physical rehabilitation, few visuals of worried families waiting for news of their sons or daughters. The men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the new disappeared.

Source: Berkowitz, Bill. "Wounded, Weary And Disappeared." TomPaine.com, 28 Aug 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Jason Glover

Beth Glover got the call from a military spokesman Saturday morning at 10:30. The information was vague. Her 22-year-old son, a cavalry scout in Iraq, was injured. His humvee rolled over an explosive device, tearing open the vehicle, and he was on his way to a hospital in Germany.

"All I got out of (the spokesman) was that it was serious," Glover said. "It was the worst 24 hours of my life."

When she finally got through to the hospital in Germany, she learned that her son, Army Pfc. Jason Glover, a 1999 graduate of Fontainebleau High School near Mandeville, was in the intensive care unit with multiple injuries. He had lost his spleen, suffered kidney damage, caught shrapnel in his legs and had a neck wound that was constricting his breathing.

But the good news was that he was going to make a full recovery, she said. "He's going to be home soon, hopefully," Beth Glover said.

Source: Stanley, Stephanie A. "Abita man hurt in Iraq." Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 11 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

James Sides

On May 9, the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in which Sides was riding hit a cable during a rescue mission and plunged into the Tigris River near Samarrah, Iraq. Sides, a medic with the 571 st Medical Company (Air Ambulance), was assisting in the rescue of an 11-year-old Iraqi child who had been injured by a land mine.

Sides’ three crew members died in the accident. He remained comatose for six weeks and then endured a slow rehabilitation at a veterans hospital in Tampa, Fla.
...
Before the ceremony Wednesday, Sides proudly showed off progress with his injured right hand.

He held his arm straight out, parallel to the ground, and pulled off a cloth wrap that encased his hand and wrist. He couldn’t do that a few weeks ago. "Now you can shake a real hand," he said to friends.

Source: Heard, Kenneth. "Injured soldier honored." Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 11 Sept 2003. Link Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Erik Selig

...
When she talked with him, he sounded good, Manville [his mother] said. But he also sounded upset at Iraqis who he thinks knew about the bomb but did not report it.

Balad is 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, within the so-called "Sunni Triangle," the area north and west of Baghdad where support for ousted dictator Saddam Hussein remains strong.

Selig's group was headed back from Balad, between Tikrit and Baghdad, when the bomb exploded. He was the only soldier riding exposed at the time. The soldiers in his Humvee got a little shook up, but that's all, he said.

"I was in the first Humvee on top in the turret with my machine gun," Erik Selig wrote in his e-mail. "All of a sudden there was an explosion. It threw me, and I slammed back on the turret. Then I just collapsed and fell inside the Humvee."

He suffered temporary blindness for about a minute, he said. When he regained his vision, he saw that his hand was "torn up" with shrapnel, and he also had a piece of it in his forehead.

"We stopped in a safe area and pulled out some shrapnel," Selig said.

He still has shrapnel in his hand that can't be removed, but he assured her he was fine, Manville said. "He's on light duty. He can't even tie his boots."

His back also is bothering him from when the blast threw him into the turret, he said. Selig has been designated to receive the Purple Heart Award and the Army Commendation with Valor.

"After it was all over, and I was in the hospital getting checked out, I was looking at my sunglasses I was wearing, and they had shrapnel embedded in them," Selig said in the e-mail. "If it weren't for those, I would either be dead or blind."
...

Source: Stewart. Trudy. "Area man wounded in Iraq." Stevens Point Journal (WI), 16 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Bruce Davis

He has been deployed many times, but the deployment to Afghanistan would be his last, a final hurrah. Instead, Davis would finish his career prematurely, in a hospital bed. An accident brought everything to a halt. After six weeks in Afghanistan, Davis broke both feet.

It happened when Davis decided to hang an American flag in his camp. The Germans and Koreans had flags in their camps, Davis said, and he decided that the Americans should, too.

On Aug. 16, Davis climbed to the roof of a building. As he worked to put the flag up, Davis leaned against a piece of wood.

''Pakistani lumber,'' he said later and smiled.

The wood gave way. Davis pitched forward and landed on his heels. He was taken to a field hospital. From there, he was taken to a hospital in Germany, Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and finally to Womack Army Medical Center on Fort Bragg.

''I wasn't planning on leaving Afghanistan like that,'' he said. ''I feel kind of disappointed in myself.''

Doctors operated on his right foot last week. On Tuesday, they worked on the left foot. He hopes to be released from the hospital in a week or so. After that will follow at least eight weeks of physical therapy at home in Colorado. But he will never completely heal.

Source: Williams, Allison. "Casualties of War." Fayetteville (NC) Observer, 11 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Matthew Hayden

Hayden, a Westerly High School graduate who now lives in Warren, will be in Rhode Island for 30 days while he recuperates. He was hit with shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade that exploded near him in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. His hands, arms, legs and spine were injured in the attack.

"I was in Iraq for a few days for surgery, then transferred to Germany for six days," he said.

He was then taken to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington on Aug. 14 and returned to Rhode Island on Thursday.

He now makes daily trips to the Newport Navy Hospital for physical therapy.

"I have about two to three more months of rehab," he said....

Source: Blessing, Ryan. "Westerly Native Returns to US to Recover From His Wounds." The Sun (Westerly, RI), 11 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Patrick Strobel

People lined the streets and cheered as Chief Warrant Officer Patrick Strobel returned to East Butler Wednesday night.

He was injured and lost a portion of his hearing when his humvee ran over a land mine in Fallujah last month.

Source: "Butler Soldier Returns Home From Iraq." WPXI (Pittsburgh), 11 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Roy Gray

U.S. Army Cpl. Roy Gray of Pleasant Hill was injured over the weekend while serving in the military in Iraq

According to Gray's mother, Joyce, a sergeant from Gray's unit called the family Monday morning to tell them Gray had been injured in northern Iraq Saturday.
"He told us that Roy was severely injured with numerous wounds," Joyce said. According to Gray's cousin, Carrie Preston, Gray was injured by shrapnel from a mortar explosion. Other family sources say he was in northern Iraq and was hit seven times.

Joyce said the sergeant provided several phone numbers of other agencies she could call for information on Gray's condition. Eventually she learned that he had surgery in a Baghdad hospital.

"They said he was out of surgery and stable but still very critical," Joyce said.

Source: Pike Press Staff. "Local Soldoer injured in Iraq." Pike Press, 11 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Troops wounded in combat in the nation’s war on terrorism are being handed more than just discharge papers when they leave military hospitals — some also are getting a bill.

At a daily rate of $8.10, hospitalized troops, including those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being charged for their meals.

“I was amazed. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it,” said Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, who has introduced a bill to repeal what he calls an “offensive” law.

“Some things don’t meet the common-sense test, and this is one of them,” said a soldier injured in Iraq in June, and who has received two meal bills, one for $24.30 from the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, and a second for more than $300 from the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

Source: Jontz, Sandra. "Congressman: Wounded troops shouldn't be billed for hospital meals." Stars and Stripes, 12 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Jordon Sorrell

Jordon Sorrell, 21, was injured Monday during a raid in Iraq when a bullet went through his arm. His vest protected his torso, said Sorrell's mother, Wendy Brown.

Sorrell, a graduate of Brattleboro Union High School, sustained nerve damage to his arm and is being treated at an Army base in Germany, his mother said. He will be flown to Washington on Saturday for treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

He is expected to make a full recovery, but will not return to the Middle East, Brown said.
...

Source: Weiss-Tisman, Howard. "Area soldier wounded in Iraq." Brattleboro Reformer, 13 Sept 2003. Link Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Gregory Samuels

...
The commander of a military police unit from Connecticut has been injured while on patrol in Baghdad, the Connecticut National Guard said Wednesday.

Capt. Gregory Samuels, 35, of Hartford suffered shrapnel wounds to his left arm when an explosive device struck his vehicle Tuesday, said Maj. John Whitford, a spokesman for the Connecticut National Guard.
...

Source: Associated Press. "National Guardsman from Hartford injured in Iraq." In Stamford Advocate, 10 Sept 2003. Link. Posted 18 Sept 2003.

Sam Ross

Blood spurted from his shattered legs and from dozens of small gashes all over his body. More blood streamed from wounds on his head and down on his face.

When he cried out that he couldn't see, his frantic buddies poured bottled water over him to wash away the red ooze that matted his hair and eyelashes. But by then, Army Pfc. Sam Ross was aware of only one thing: the wave of pain so intense he was sure he would not live through it.

"I was supposed to be dead. I thought I was actually dead," Ross said, recalling the chaotic moments in May after a live bomblet blew up in front of him in a Baghdad lot while he worked with other U.S. soldiers to disarm and destroy it.

"I said my last words to the guys, words we'll never repeat to anyone," he said. "But the guys with me did exactly what they needed to do for me and they kept me alive."

Against the odds, 20-year-old Sam Ross stayed alive despite injuries so grave that Army doctors expected him to die in a matter of hours.

He forced himself to stay conscious while other soldiers tied a tourniquet around what was left of his left leg and cried out prayers for the chance to get him onto a medical helicopter. He made it through flights to a mobile Army hospital, then on to a hospital in Spain and to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., even though his lungs had collapsed.

He hung on through 14 surgeries, a serious bout of pneumonia and the depression that threatened to swamp him when he learned that he was blind, then later that his left leg had been amputated and that he was partially deaf.
...
At a military hospital in Rota, Spain, and later at Walter Reed, doctors found that shrapnel had nearly sheared off Ross' left leg, leaving it gangrenous and forcing them to amputate it. Debris also had torn through his right calf, leaving a fist-sized hole.

His eyesight was gone in one eye; the other registered only light and darkness despite surgeries to reattach his retinas and transplant a cornea. His left eardrum was punctured, his skull was fractured and his sinuses were smashed. His skin looked like Swiss cheese, pierced in dozens of places by more splinters of shrapnel.
...

Source: Lash, Cindi. "Blinded by bomblet in Iraq, Fayette solider battles back." Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh), 17 Aug 2003. Link • Posted 08 Sept 2003.

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