US Military
Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan:
A Running Log (earliest stories)
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Send stories about the wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan to The Memory Hole: russ@mindpollen.com See newer stories of the wounded Photo gallery of the wounded [The Memory Hole] |
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Brian
Alaniz Fund-raising efforts for a Twentynine Palms man who lost his leg while serving with the military in Iraq are still going strong, even as he undergoes physical therapy on the East Coast. Source: Gormley, Lois. "Endeavor to assist injured veteran continues." Desert Sun (Palm Desert, CA), 31 Aug 2003. Link |
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Ryan Elliot A 1996 Richfield Springs High School graduate is home recuperating from injuries in a ambush in Baghdad on July 8, family and army officials said. Ryan Elliott, 25, of Columbia was team sergeant with the Army's 414th Civil Affairs Battalion, working near Baghdad, when the Humvee he was driving, with two other soldiers and civilian interpreter passengers, came under fire, according to accounts provided by the Army. "People
ask me, `Was I scared when it happened?'" he said on Thursday from
his parent's home, where he is about halfway through a 30-day medical
leave, according to army officials. "The vehicle at this point was defenseless. Ryan was hit in the ankle during the first volley." "Despite
being injured," Huntley said, "Ryan continued to focus on removing
his team from the ambush kill zone. He accelerated at a high rate of speed
and succeeded in preventing any further casualties." Source: Boshnack, Mark. "Hurt soldier home to heal." Daily Star (Oneonta, NY), 30 Aug 2003. Link |
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Unnamed soldier Tikrit, Iraq-AP -- A U-S soldier is listed in critical condition after spending nearly two minutes under water when his Humvee plunged into a canal. The incident occurred as U-S troops prepared to carry out a pre-dawn raid on the outskirts of a village about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The Humvee had its lights turned off while soldiers relied on night-vision goggles to prevent potential ambushes. The injured soldier was evacuated by helicopter. Associated Press. "U-S soldier nearly drowns as Iraqi police stage raids." KPLC (Lake Charles, LA), undated. Link |
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Don
Peters ... "All of a sudden you heard a noise and there it was," said Peters. "It happened so fast there was nothing you could do about it." Peters suffered a broken pelvis, femur and ribs and had a hole in his side. He
is at home with his wife and three children, but still has a lot of pain
from an infection and a leg that's numb from the knee down. |
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Daniel
Millard Army Specialist Daniel Millard, son of Dan and Barb Millard of 1013 Beech St., Oil City, is recuperating from a gunshot wound received during deployment in Iraq. "He
is recovering at home in Tennessee and has a couple more months of rehabilitation
he has to go through. He was shot in the upper right hip while on guard
duty near Talafar," said his mother. Source: unsigned. "Son of Oil City couple recovering from gunshot wound in Iraq." Derrick and News Herald (Oil City, PA), 29 Aug 2003. Link |
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Cory McCarthy Cory,
21, a medic with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was injured in Iraq on Aug.
9 when two rocket-propelled grenades hit his company while on patrol. On Friday, surgeons opened a flap in his stomach and sewed his hand to the area in an attempt to grow tissue on the hand. Source: Stevens, Megan. "Road to recovery." Gilroy Dispatch, 28 Aug 2003. Link |
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Todd Rauch An Iraqi explosive blew off his fingers and tore a hole in his shoulder, but Mattoon native Todd Rauch remains optimistic, his grandfather says. Spc. Rauch, 20 years old and assigned to the 527th Military Police Company, was wounded early Aug. 21 while serving in Baghdad. His parents and twin brother, Ryan, are now in Washington, D.C., at Walter Reed Medical Center, where Rauch is recovering after surgeons reattached the fingers of his right hand at a German hospital. His grandfather, Jack Barton of Mattoon, said Rauch remains convinced he'll regain use of his dominant hand and is willing to do the necessary physical therapy. "They
told him he may not get any mobility back in his hand," Barton said.
"But he's unstoppable. I called him Sunday, and he said, 'I can move
my finger one centimeter.'" "A week ago Wednesday night, they were teaching Iraqi cops how to scan for mines. When they were told which area they were going into, his group had gone over to make sure nothing was dangerous," Barton said. Whether it was a land mine or grenade, a device exploded near Rauch. "They
realized something was wrong when Todd looked down and tried to pick up
his weapon," Barton said. "He couldn't. All his fingers on his
right hand were blown off." "His wrist was shattered; that's our main worry. He's lost a lot of weight. He has several operations to go through and a lot of rehabilitation...." Source: Wood, Paul. "Blast in Iraq injured soldier from Mattoon." News-Gazette (Champaine, IL), 28 Aug 2003. Link |
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Heather Awner Heather Awner has been going out with friends for the last few days, and no doubt has the best stories about how she spent her first full summer out of high school. A splint on the 19-year-old’s left wrist has a series of straps and laces that keep one finger straight, and is adorned with a sticker of a Powerpuff Girl. The splint is the last apparent remnant of an Iraqi land mine that went off beneath Awner’s Army transport vehicle in July. "A
piece of shrapnel severed a tendon," explains Pfc. Awner, an MP attached
to the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. "They say if I flex
the finger I’ll tear the scar tissue." Gannon, Michael. "Injured GI gets some R&R back home." New Haven Register, 26 Aug 2003. Link |
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Shane
Millay ... "I was pretty much in shock when it happened," Millay said. "I could feel the pain - I was screaming - but I really didn't know what happened. "Most of my arm was just hanging." Medics
amputated the arm at the scene to save Millay's life. He was flown to
Kuwait for further treatment and eventually on to the massive Landstuhl
Medical Center near Frankfurt, Germany. He's been at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington for about a week. Vaughn, Marlon. "Wounded Fenton Twp. soldier recalls time in Iraq." Flint (MI) Journal, 25 Aug 2003. Link |
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Sam Ross ... He lost his eyesight in the blast and the hearing in one ear. His left leg was so severely injured that doctors had to amputate it. Shrapnel tore a fist-sized wound in his right leg and other wounds all over his body. His skull was fractured and his sinuses smashed. Doctors
initially did not expect Ross to live. But after 14 surgeries and two
months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Ross was
able to return home last month to Fayette County, where he is recuperating. Source: Lee, Carmen J. "Hometown pride: Fayette County honors soldiers wounded in Iraq." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 25 Aug 2003. Link |
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Robert Acosta Specialist Robert Acosta, 20, of Santa Ana, Calif., was assigned to Headquarters Company, First Battalion 501st Regiment, First Armored Division, at Baghdad International Airport. Acosta and a friend drove off base in a Humvee on July 13 to buy a few cans of soda from peddlers on the street. "A hand grenade came through the window and landed on the radio between me and my buddy who was driving," Acosta said. "I could see the spoon" -- the handle -- "was gone and a little smoke was coming out the top. Just as I grabbed for it, my buddy hit the gas and rammed the truck in front of us, trying to get out of that area. The grenade fell between my legs on the floor. I grabbed for it again and had it maybe 6 inches off the floor when it exploded." The blast took off Acosta's right arm and smashed his left ankle and foot. "I told my buddy, `I'm going to die; tell my mom and dad I love them.' He hollered: `Shut up! You ain't dying. Tell them yourself!' I was more scared than hurt." He added: "All I want to do is be able to run again." Acosta said he would leave the Army because he was afraid he'd end up behind a desk, "and I couldn't stand that. I would rather be out there with my buddies." Acosta
said he heard that intelligence sources reported it was a 13-year-old
Iraqi boy who tossed the grenade. Source: Galloway, Joseph L. "Soldiers return from hostilities fighting for life." Knight Ridder News Service via San Jose Mercury News, 24 Aug 2003. Link |
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Jason Bill ... Bill and two other men were riding in a Humvee a month ago in Baghdad. The vehicle crashed or rolled -- Bill doesn't know or remember. Both his lower legs were crushed, his lower left arm was broken, and his left elbow was dislocated. One soldier was killed in the accident and another was hospitalized with Bill. He's
heading home, but one leg is in an intricate contraption of metal rods,
a substitute for a plaster cast for 16 weeks while the shattered bones
heal. Source: Galloway, Joseph L. "Soldiers return from hostilities fighting for life." Knight Ridder News Service via San jose Mercury News, 24 Aug 2003. Link |
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Robert Armstrong ... But
the danger was not from the outside, but inside the hospital. "Someone
dropped a hand grenade off a balcony of the hospital and it blew me up,"
Armstrong said. He lost his right leg and his left eye. His wife, Esther,
said she was told that he nearly died twice. Source: Galloway, Joseph L. "Soldiers return from hostilities fighting for life." Knight Ridder News Service via San Jose Mercury News, 24 Aug 2003. Link |
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Kevin
Hannah ... "The bullet's still in there," he said. "And it's in such a place they can't get it out." Hannah is in no immediate danger. But he lives with the ever-present danger that the bullet could move and result in permanent paralysis. "And that sort of bothers me," he said, trying to force a laugh. Sina Hannah said her son "just isn't the same boy who left here in January." "Some days are better than others," he admits. "I get nervous a lot, and I always seem to be hyper." His double vision has corrected itself. Some hearing has returned to his left ear and his shrapnel wounds are healing. "He's
making progress," said Sina Hannah of Kevin, the middle child among
her three, "but he's still not the same." Source: Walsh, Mick. "Wounded soldier copes with recovery." Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, OH), 18 Aug 2003. Link |
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Rashaan Canady Army
Staff Sgt. Rashaan Canady was in a convoy on Highway 8 in Iraq not far
from Saddam International Airport one spring afternoon when an explosion
tore through his Humvee. His boss, Capt. Tristan Aitken of San Antonio, was killed instantly as a rocket-propelled grenade smashed into their truck. Canady, of New York City, was blown out the driver's side door but, tethered to the vehicle by a seat belt, found himself being dragged along the ground as the truck rolled forward. Once free, he lay bloodied and dazed, his right arm severed at the elbow and right eye temporarily blinded. "I just kind of laid on my back for about a minute or two, and I thought that was going to be it for me," he said, thinking back to the April 4 RPG attack. "I thought that was the time to go to the pearly gates." Canady, a 3rd Infantry Division forward artillery observer awarded the Silver Star for running back to the truck and using it to crush three Iraqis and leading his convoy out of the firefight to the next checkpoint, has discovered another kind of courage as he rebuilds his life at Brooke Army Medical Center. His
battle for health is made among strangers, far from family and friends,
and comrades in Iraq. He lives at the Fisher House, a home for patients and their families a 5-minute walk from the hospital. He spends time counseling other patients and even taking phone calls from other amputees. Canady
has a long red scar that runs along his left knuckle. He's suffered tendon
damage to three fingers and bears numerous scars from RPG shrapnel. The
rectangular scar on his right leg that looks like a burn from boiling
water is the site where skin was removed so it could be grafted onto his
amputated arm. His eye injury may heal without an operation. Source: Christenson, Sig. "Soldiers, Marines work to recover from war injuries at BAMC." San Antonio Express-News, 18 Aug 2003. Link |
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Brett Gendron
... He repeatedly lifted his shattered left foot 15 inches, then lowered it slowly, stretching muscles weakened by inactivity since an Italian-made land mine blew up his Humvee. Gendron, a one-time West Point wrestler who has endured rehab before, was tired after the workout but optimistic about his chances for a full recovery, which is expected to take a year. If he doesn't recover, Gendron's fledgling Army career will be history. "That's
not my focus right now," he said. "Right now it's just to recover." Source: Christenson, Sig. "Soldiers, Marines work to recover from war injuries at BAMC." San Antonio Express-News, 18 Aug 2003. Link |
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Jordan Johnson ... An MP who headed a security detail for Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, a Rio Grande City native now commanding U.S. forces in Iraq, Johnson was a passenger in a July 20 Humvee accident that badly injured one soldier and killed another. She has a bruised tailbone, a shattered right leg with 10 metal rods in it and seven staples in her head.... Nothing is easy for her, even getting out of bed. Sometimes, that takes 20 minutes. She has been through rehab before, for a knee injury in her senior year at Incarnate Word High School, and feels a tad bitter but pushes herself hard, hoping to heal quickly. "Sometimes
you bleed, sometimes there's pus coming out of your leg, but you work
on trying to bend your leg, you work on many, many stretches that in itself
move your leg," she said. "You work on a lot of things with
crutches as well, because they want to make sure you can get upstairs
with crutches." Source: Christenson, Sig. "Soldiers, Marines work to recover from war injuries at BAMC." San Antonio Express-News, 18 Aug 2003. Link |
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David Pettigrew CBS National Security Correspondent David Marin got a first-hand look at the high cost of the war with Iraq during a visit to army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington where some of the wounded are brought for treatment. "This hospital is overloaded with orthopedics because of things like this; because there're so many amputees coming back from Iraq," said David Pettigrew. Pettigrew lost his right leg when his armored vehicle was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. "I woke up and I could look down and see, 'Wow, look, there's my left leg and my right leg went AWOL,'" he told Martin. The leg is gone but not the pain. "Sometimes
I'll have a phantom pain thing out in my right foot," he said. "I
try and try and tell myself, look you don't have a right foot, you idiot,
you can't hurt because it's not there." "Everything waist up, everything that really matters, everything that keeps you alive and keeps you who you are, like your head and stuff, nothing wrong with any of that stuff," Pettigrew said. His wife knows that as bad as it is, it could have been worse. "There are people here who had both legs gone and an arm. Another guy had both legs gone, an arm, and he's blind," Ann Pettigrew said. And they both know what that simple phrase "wounded in action" really means. "A few wounded is me with a leg gone and my buddy English with shrapnel in his eye and may or may not see properly ever again out of that eye," David Pettigrew said. Source: Unsigned. "The High Cost Of War." CBS News, 15 Aug 2003. Link |
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Brandon Erickson ... He's another young man for whom life will never be the same -- who now has to learn all over again how to do even the simplest of tasks. "The
zipper coat's the hardest thing, you know a simple thing like that, you'd
never think it'd be that hard," he said. Source: Unsigned. "The High Cost Of War." CBS News, 15 Aug 2003. Link |
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Latoya Lucas ... "I
have all my fingers, all my toes," she explained. Source: Unsigned. "The High Cost Of War." CBS News, 15 Aug 2003. Link |
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Unnamed soldier ... On Wednesday, a soldier came in who had been shot through the neck, Cannard said. The soldier was barely able to control one side of his body, a condition called hemiparasis, Latin for half-weakness. The question the neurology team needed to answer was, what was causing the weakness? If the culprit was a lack of adequate blood flow to the spinal cord, it could cause permanent paralysis if the problem weren’t rectified, Cannard said. The only way to find out what was going on was for the neuro team to perform an angiogram, which involves inserting a flexible tube into an artery, usually in the groin area, and guiding it through the arterial system into the heart and into the coronary arteries. A dye is then injected through the tube into the bloodstream and X-rays are taken. The procedure was a success, and showed the doctors that “the concussion [of the bullet’s impact] gave [the soldier] a shock injury to the spinal cord and caused a major blood vessel in the neck to go into spasm,” Cannard said. The
spasm was keeping blood from flowing efficiently to the spinal cord. The
team gave the soldier a blood thinner to make it easier for blood to get
through the narrowed vessel. The patient was transported to Germany for
further treatment, Cannard said. Source: Burgess, Lisa. "Brain surgery in the Iraq desert." Stars and Stripes (European edition), 11 Aug 2003. Link |
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Unnamed soldier
... The patient was a soldier injured by a bomb. The left front side of his head had been torn apart in the blast. “He had bruises both on and in his brain, which grew into blood clots that began to swell,” Cannard said. The soldier was not identified because he was unavailable for comment, and therefore, did not give permission for his name to be used. The swelling brain had only one place to go — through a hole the blast had broken in the soldier’s skull. And once outside the skull, that portion of the brain basically died, Cannard said. Meanwhile, another blood clot outside the brain was crushing it from the other direction — outside in, Cannard said. The neurosurgeons had only one choice: a partial frontal lobotomy to remove the dying portion of the brain. That procedure would open enough space inside the skull to relieve pressure on the surviving part of the brain. “Fortunately, you can lose a little bit up here and still be fine,” Cannard said, pointing above his left temple. The neurosurgeons had another crisis on their hands. The soldier’s carotid artery — the main artery that supplies blood to the brain — was crushed. Without blood to the brain, the soldier would have a stroke and die. So
the team used a shunt — “basically like a drinking straw,”
Cannard said — to bypass the damaged portion of the artery and get
the blood moving again. “We
just got word from his family,” Cannard said. “His wife and
mother report that he’s had a dramatic recovery.” Source: Burgess, Lisa. "Brain surgery in the Iraq desert." Stars and Stripes (European edition), 11 Aug 2003. Link |
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Shane Millay ... Spec. 4 Shane Millay is a medic with the 4th Infantry Division of the 4th Army out of Ft. Hood, said Charles Millay. His unit was supposed to enter Iraq through Turkey when the war began in May, but Turkey wouldn't allow the use of its land, so the infantry division had to go around Turkey and into Iraq via Kuwait. Shane Millay was not expecting a return to Kuwait so soon, but that occurred after last Monday's ambush. He was particularly not planning a trip to Kuwait as a patient on a medical helicopter. "He was riding in the armored vehicle. The RPG came in the back hatch," Chalres Millay explained. "The first RPG knocked him to the floor. He was trying to get up when the second one came in. "He's lucky to be alive," he continued. "One is bad enough." Charles Millay said his grandson was taken to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit, where the arm was amputated at the shoulder. "He was doing his job," Charles Millay told the Flint Journal for a story published Saturday. "That was what he told us when he left. He was trained to be a medic and he was going over there to take care of everybody else. And they had to take care of him, instead." Shane
Millay also sustained an injury to his eye, but his grandfather said doctors
assure Shane that he will regain his sight. Source: Adams, Rich. "Wolverine man is injured in Iraq." Cheboygan (MI) Daily Tribune, 11 Aug 2003. Link |
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Jeff LaMont ... One
was for U.S. Army soldier Jeff LaMont of Blue Earth. He was wounded in
June in Iraq. LaMont was at Walter Reed Hospital for several weeks in
Washington, D.C. while recovering from three bullet wounds. Source: Cahalan, Bill. "Fund-raiser helps locals in military." Sentinel (Fairmont, Minnesota), 11 Aug 2003. Link |
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Randy Chasten, Robert "BJ" Jackson, and two others The news of a Des Moines soldier having his legs amputated after an explosion in Baghdad sounded all too familiar Saturday to the family of a Cedar Rapids soldier. Spc. Randy Chasten, 31, of Cedar Rapids was injured July 24 when his Humvee drove over a land mine in Iraq. He broke his jaw and his teeth were knocked out. His legs later became infected from the shrapnel. Chasten, an Army reservist with the 389th Engineering Battalion of Iowa City, was initially sent to a military hospital in Germany. He was flown Tuesday to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., to try to get the infection under control. "I'm concerned that they can get infection under control - that he doesn't lose his leg," said Lisa Chasten of Des Moines, Randy's sister-in-law. The incident is similar to one Thursday that injured Spc. Robert "B.J." Jackson, 22, of Des Moines, who was in Iraq with the 186th Military Police Company. He had been driving a Humvee in a commercial area of Baghdad during an explosion. Jackson continued to recover Saturday in a U.S. Army hospital in Germany, said Col. Robert King, a spokesman for the Iowa National Guard. His unit, which is based at Camp Dodge in Johnston and has 124 members, was mobilized in late February. Both
of Jackson's legs have been amputated. Source: Okamoto, Lynn. "Families of Iowa soldiers worry and wait for news." Des Moines Register, 10 Aug 2003. Link |
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William
David Alford and Mike McMahan Tennessee National Guard officials say two military police officers from Rutherford County have been wounded in Iraq during a grenade attack. Guard spokesman Randy Harris in Nashville says the soldiers' wounds aren't life-threatening, but one has been brought back to the states. Harris says William David Alford of Murfreesboro and Mike McMahan of Christiana were hurt last week when an attacker lobbed a grenade onto a convoy from an overpass. Harris says McMahan suffered lacerations and some hearing loss, but has returned to service. He says Alford was taken first to a Baghdad hospital, then evacuated to Germany for surgery to remove shrapnel from his arm. He's now in rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Both
are members of the 269th Military Police Company. Source: Associated Press. "Two Murfreesboro MPs Wounded by Grenade in Iraq." WATE (Knoxville, TN), 07 Aug 2003. Link |
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James "Alf" Alford ... His mother, Janet Massey, said the Humvee he was riding in was hit by a grenade. Alford was thrown from the vehicle and lay on the ground about 10 minutes before a helicopter took him to a M.A.S.H. unit about two hours away from where he was hurt. From there, he went to a hospital in Germany where three surgeries were done to repair damage to his right arm. Although he's now at Walter Reed Hospital, he expects to go to Fort Campbell, Ky., within the next few days and from there return to Nashville, Tenn., where he lives with his wife, Annette, and two children, Victoria, 10, and Christian, 4. He
still has about 20 weeks of therapy ahead of him in hopes he'll regain
full use of his right hand, Massey said. She said now he is able to move
his fingers a little bit, but still has numbness where shrapnel went the
deepest. Source: Miller, Sharon. "Mtn. Home graduate injured in Iraq." Baxter (AR) Bulletin, 06 Aug 2003. Link |
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Keith
E. Deutsch ... Deutsch was evacuated through Kuwait to Germany and could be transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., as soon as this weekend. Harris would not say when or where in Iraq that Deutsch was injured. Deutsch
was a reservist with the 367th Engineer Battalion in Mankato. He was attached
to the 244th Engineer Battalion, 4th Infantry Division in Iraq. Source: Associated Press. "Two Minnesota soldiers wounded in Iraq." In St. Paul Pioneer Press, 02 Sept 2003. Link |
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Ryan Frank ... His
sister, Apryl Radel, said Frank spent six hours in surgery in Baghdad
to remove shrapnel from the left side of his body, including his jaw.
He was then flown to an American military hospital in Germany. Source: Associated Press. "Two Minnesota soldiers wounded in Iraq." In St. Paul Pioneer Press, 02 Sept 2003. Link |
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| originally posted 08 Sept 2003 | copyright 2003 Russ Kick |
