A side note to the story below: Most people would never connect these two words: stroke and trauma. But stroke is a problem that affects at least 10% of our clients, yet such strokes are never diagnosed acutely. Strokes in automobile wrecks happen predominantly in two ways:
First, the twisting of the neck in the whiplash mechanism, damages a cerebral artery (one that takes blood to the brain). This damage can result in the formation of a blood clot, that when it releases, flows to the brain and causes a clot. This is called an “artery dissection.
The second way is that many people after a whiplash injury to their neck go see a chiropractor for the neck stiffness and pain. The process of torquing a neck in a neck manipulation can cause an artery dissection, similar to the way it happens in an accident.
I will blog on this topic more in the coming weeks, but if a motor vehicle wreck survivor starts to have stroke type symptoms, not only insist on an ER visit, but insist that they be given the same medication that stroke victims get. The ER doctors may be slow on the uptake on this, but perhaps a story like the below AP story, can help get their attention.
VA quadruples payment to vets with brain injuries
Date: 9/23/2008 6:23 PM
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The government is more than quadrupling monthly payments to some veterans suffering brain injuries, as the number of such war wounds mounts from the roadside bombings of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new compensation is based on the assessment that even some troops who have the mildest form of traumatic brain injury could end up with chronic headaches, memory loss, anxiety or other symptoms that will hurt their chances of getting a job or job advancement — thus reducing their lifetime earnings by 40 percent.
In a regulation announced Tuesday by the Department of Veterans Affairs, officials changed the way they evaluate the injuries. Depending on the extent of their injuries, vets now can be judged up to 40 percent disabled in such cases. The previous rating of 10 percent for such injuries was set by a 1961 regulation.
The rating change means that an unmarried veteran, who now receives $117 monthly in compensation, could receive as much as $512. Extra money would also be calculated for troops with spouses and children.
Mild traumatic brain injury is basically a form of concussion that results from severe shaking of the brain after a blast. It can cause blurred vision, insomnia, irritability and other problems.
The VA change represents the “best judgment of medical experts about what the impact” of such injuries is and how best to evaluate veterans who come to the VA for help, said Tom Pamperin, a deputy director for the department’s compensation and pension service.
The change goes into effect in 30 days and those receiving compensation under the old system can have their cases reviewed.
Roughly 1.7 million American troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and a RAND Corporation study estimated early this year that up to 320,000 may have suffered a traumatic brain injury. Officials say that the vast majority of the cases are mild — and that most veterans recover in weeks or months. The new, higher disability rating is for the smaller percentage who suffer permanent damage, Pamperin said.
The extra disability compensation is expected to cost nearly $124 million through 2017. That’s based on the assumption that the number of troops who get such payments will rise steadily in the coming years to 5,100 for 2017 from about 800 new cases a year now, Pamperin said.
He said about 200 troops with brain injuries annually went to the VA before the start of the Iraq war, where insurgent use of roadside explosives and car-bombs has made brain injuries, amputations, burns and post-traumatic stress disorder the vast majority of wounds from the campaign. Insurgents are also increasingly using explosives in Afghanistan.
Officials believe compensation levels are already correct for troops with moderate and severe traumatic brain injury that can involve open head wounds.
Though most troops with the severe cases already can be rated at 100 percent disabled, an increase has been approved for additional care they might need. That is, a single vet who needs assisted care can get $3,145 a month compared to the current $2,527 payment.
___
On the Net:
Department of Veterans Affairs www.va.gov
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The government is more than quadrupling monthly payments to some veterans suffering brain injuries, as the number of such war wounds mounts from the roadside bombings of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new compensation is based on the assessment that even some troops who have the mildest form of traumatic brain injury could end up with chronic headaches, memory loss, anxiety or other symptoms that will hurt their chances of getting a job or job advancement — thus reducing their lifetime earnings by 40 percent.
In a regulation announced Tuesday by the Department of Veterans Affairs, officials changed the way they evaluate the injuries. Depending on the extent of their injuries, vets now can be judged up to 40 percent disabled in such cases. The previous rating of 10 percent for such injuries was set by a 1961 regulation.
The rating change means that an unmarried veteran, who now receives $117 monthly in compensation, could receive as much as $512. Extra money would also be calculated for troops with spouses and children.
Mild traumatic brain injury is basically a form of concussion that results from severe shaking of the brain after a blast. It can cause blurred vision, insomnia, irritability and other problems.
The VA change represents the “best judgment of medical experts about what the impact” of such injuries is and how best to evaluate veterans who come to the VA for help, said Tom Pamperin, a deputy director for the department’s compensation and pension service.
The change goes into effect in 30 days and those receiving compensation under the old system can have their cases reviewed.
Roughly 1.7 million American troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and a RAND Corporation study estimated early this year that up to 320,000 may have suffered a traumatic brain injury. Officials say that the vast majority of the cases are mild — and that most veterans recover in weeks or months. The new, higher disability rating is for the smaller percentage who suffer permanent damage, Pamperin said.
The extra disability compensation is expected to cost nearly $124 million through 2017. That’s based on the assumption that the number of troops who get such payments will rise steadily in the coming years to 5,100 for 2017 from about 800 new cases a year now, Pamperin said.
He said about 200 troops with brain injuries annually went to the VA before the start of the Iraq war, where insurgent use of roadside explosives and car-bombs has made brain injuries, amputations, burns and post-traumatic stress disorder the vast majority of wounds from the campaign. Insurgents are also increasingly using explosives in Afghanistan.
Officials believe compensation levels are already correct for troops with moderate and severe traumatic brain injury that can involve open head wounds.
Though most troops with the severe cases already can be rated at 100 percent disabled, an increase has been approved for additional care they might need. That is, a single vet who needs assisted care can get $3,145 a month compared to the current $2,527 payment.
___
On the Net:
Department of Veterans Affairs www.va.gov
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Iraq Long Haul – PART VI: An ambush produces a hero
Date: 8/8/2008 12:00 AM
BC-The Long Haul VI,2nd Ld-Writethru/2166
PART VI: An ambush produces a hero
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — An insurgent ambush yields a hero, and a wounded soldier recovers back home. Sixth of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
It all looked as if a video game had come to life.
Through his night vision goggles, Staff Sgt. Chad Malmberg saw the insurgents scurrying from berms to canals. Some popped up, ran a few yards, then fell to the Americans’ gunfire. But others kept advancing toward his convoy.
Malmberg’s rocket counterattack hadn’t stopped the enemy. And Truck 4, at the back of the convoy, had just radioed two urgent pleas for help.
It was running out of ammunition. And the enemy was within shouting distance.
Once again, Malmberg ordered his truck to race to the back — this time with two other Humvees, one of which supplied .50-caliber machine gun bullets.
The insurgents, once five or six football-field lengths away, were now within 50 feet, hunkered in a ditch. When their muzzles flashed, Malmberg saw their faces and their turbans.
When his truck stopped, he flung open his door and hopped out, quickly lobbing a grenade into the ditch.
“Frag out!” he shouted so others could take cover, then repeated the alert on the radio. Then his truck stopped again and Malmberg’s driver threw a second grenade.
Finally, that threat was eliminated.
Still, the fight wasn’t over. Insurgents near the front of the convoy, where Malmberg now returned, were launching rocket-propelled grenades as all five Humvees sprayed the area with gunfire.
In the midst of this, Malmberg’s gunner alerted him that smoke was billowing from both sides of the cab of a civilian truck. Malmberg looked through his rearview mirror. Surely, he thought, the driver was dead. He radioed an order to a Humvee crew: Remove the body.
But when the sergeant opened the door, the driver popped out and hugged him. Miraculously, the man had survived, so frightened that he then crawled under his truck for safety.
The sergeant pulled him out. They had to go. Now! They had to get out of the kill zone.
And they did.
When the Humvees returned to base, Malmberg and the others set up a board to reconstruct what had happened in the 55-minute firefight. It was almost impossible. There had been so much chaos. The gunners had shot so many targets. No one knew for sure how many of perhaps 30 to 40 insurgents were killed.
They did know this: No one in the convoy — soldiers or civilian drivers — was dead. No one was even injured.
And Malmberg, whose greatest worry was that he might somehow fail his men, would be decorated as a hero.
___
U.S. troops were not the only targets of the violence that flared across parts of Iraq in early 2007. Ordinary Iraqis, too, found themselves in the middle of a firestorm.
Sgt. 1st Class Cassandra Houston was in her second day as a nurse in the intensive care unit at the sprawling Balad Hospital when an Iraqi family was wheeled in for “comfort care” — the father, mother and son were about to die. All she could do was help them go peacefully.
They’d all been shot in the head, apparent victims of sectarian hatred, and the parents succumbed quickly.
Their son, around 14, was unconscious but still breathing. Houston suctioned blood from the boy’s mouth, changed the gauze bandage on his head and tenderly held his hand.
She wanted to make sure he did not die alone.
She thought of her son, Josh, who was about the same age.
Afternoon gave way to evening as Houston stayed by the boy’s side. She watched the monitors as his labored breathing subsided, his blood pressure dropped and his heartbeat dwindled.
When the boy died, a chaplain returned, and Houston, along with other nurses, gathered around his bed for a prayer.
That night, back in her room, she cried. She called Josh and told him she missed him.
And she was back in intensive care the next morning.
As she stood by others — including wounded, frightened troops — in the months that followed, her eyes might tear up but she learned not to cry every time she saw something terrible.
At times, she wondered if she had a heart anymore.
___
At the end of February, a dump truck loaded with gravel and explosives veered into a crowd of worshippers leaving a Sunni mosque in Habbaniyah where the imam had spoken out against extremists.
Dr. Joe Burns heard the sirens wailing. Within minutes, dozens of injured Iraqis arrived at the gates of Al Taqaddum Air Base.
One was a little boy, around 8. He was unconscious. The top of his head was wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, a bone jutted through his left leg. His breathing was shallow, his pulse rapid.
Burns called for breathing tubes and when he removed the bandage from the boy’s matted hair, he saw a hole the size of a quarter in the back of his skull. The gray matter of the brain was visible.
He gingerly felt for shrapnel or any foreign material, but found none. That was good news.
Suddenly, the boy regained consciousness, sat up, started crying and reached for his head.
He told the interpreter his name was Youssef — Joseph, like the doctor — but little else before lapsing back into unconsciousness.
Burns and others lifted Youssef’s stretcher from the floor, weaving through a crowded hallway toward an open bed. As Burns prepared to give Youssef medicine so he could insert a breathing tube down his throat, an emergency room doctor arrived.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Open fracture. Open head wound,” Burns replied.
The doctor shook his head.
“No,” he said, “make him expectant.” Put him aside to die, because others could be saved.
Burns protested gently.
No, he talked, he regained consciousness, Burns said. He’s young, this isn’t beyond hope.
Eying the boy again, the doctor reconsidered.
“OK,” he said, “do you want me to fix the head wound?”
The doctor sutured the scalp as Burns trained a flashlight on it and held a temporary breathing tube in the other hand. He and five other doctors worked shoulder to shoulder, their arms, legs and heads tangled around a nest of tubes, cables and medical equipment. Dozens of other doctors and nurses struggled to save other patients, wading through ankle-high piles of torn-off bandages.
Some died, but others survived.
And Youssef? Once the boy was stabilized, he was flown to Baghdad for treatment.
Later, Burns would try to check on the boy whose life he helped save, using a computer that tracks patients. For six weeks, Youssef’s name appeared. Then suddenly one day, it was gone. Burns heard rumors the boy had gone home; he would never know for sure.
But on that February day when he fought for Youssef’s life, the North Dakota doctor had a final duty.
He walked a mile to a base morgue to establish the cause of death for two Iraqi civilians killed in the blast and two U.S. soldiers.
He signed the paperwork, then ended his 19-hour day with an e-mail to his wife, Becky. He feared she’d hear news of the bombing and worry. “I am fine,” he wrote. “Disregard news reports.”
As it turned out, she hadn’t seen the news at all.
___
At Walter Reed, a new reality was setting in for Sgt. J.R. Salzman, recovering after the loss of his lower right arm.
He’d thought he would get a prosthetic arm, rebound quickly and be just fine. But after several surgeries — including the amputation of his left ring finger — it was becoming clear: This wasn’t a two-week recovery. It would be months, even years.
Salzman, who had been the go-to guy when a Humvee needed fixing in Iraq, now had to learn how to do the most rudimentary things: Zip a jacket. Brush his teeth. Write with his left hand.
He was haunted by nightmares. Sometimes he dreamed he saw the flash of an IED explosion. Other times, he woke screaming that his arm was gone, begging for a tourniquet.
The methadone and Lyrica he took for nerve pain left him dizzy, confused, drowsy. He had trouble remembering appointments.
Even proud moments turned into ordeals.
When Salzman was invited to the president’s State of the Union address, it took 20 minutes and help from his wife, Josie, just to put on his dress uniform. It was his first trip outside Walter Reed; he didn’t like leaving his safe haven.
As they listened to the speech, which was interrupted several times by applause, J.R. couldn’t clap. Josie felt like crying, and applauded loudly on his behalf.
Josie was insistent that J.R. talk with a therapist. She didn’t want to put it off. Her husband, an athlete, a champion log roller, had lost his right hand. He needed to talk with someone about it.
When they finally arranged to meet together with a therapist, it did not go well.
Josie thought J.R. wasn’t being honest, that he said he was eating and sleeping well, when he was having nightmares and living on pudding snacks.
Tensions mounted. He threatened to send her home. He thought she expected him to be the same person with whom she had fallen in love, and he wasn’t.
But as the months passed, Josie stayed and J.R. improved. He learned to write left-handed, to dress himself, even to fly fish with a prosthetic arm.
His sadness, though, lingered. He found himself remembering small details about the hand he lost, down to the scars he had from carpentry work. He’d think about that day when his wedding ring was snipped off by bolt cutters at the Green Zone Hospital in Baghdad.
Salzman knew others had worse injuries. He wanted to be positive, but sometimes it was hard.
“I think having given two years of my life and my right arm is more than enough for my country,” he wrote in his blog. “Now I want to get back to my private life, and learn how to live again all over.”
___
As spring approached, Sgt. John Kriesel prepared to take his first steps on prosthetic legs.
He wanted to walk earlier, but he had to heal from back surgery needed so he could bear weight on his legs. His spine, sacrum and pelvis had to be fused.
Kriesel had prepared for months, watching other amputees being fitted with prosthetic legs. His left leg — which was amputated above the knee — was replaced with an aluminum limb that bends like a real leg; a computer chip inside senses if he’s going to fall and lock ups to prevent it.
His artificial right leg — shorter because his leg was amputated six inches below the knee — has a carbon-fiber foot with a high-tech shock absorber.
On March 12, 2007, Kriesel donned a stars-and-stripes T-shirt and red shorts, wheeled into the therapy room, grabbed the parallel bars and stood.
At first, he felt as if he was on stilts.
But he was thrilled to look at people at eye level and kiss his wife, Katie, standing up. He walked back and forth, heel to toe, heel to toe, to perfect his form.
A doctor had warned Katie that because John’s spine was fused, he’d lose mobility in his lower back and would waddle. His gait, though, was smooth.
Kriesel worked up a sweat but was reluctant to quit. Only when therapists started switching off the lights at the other side of the room did he stop. They locked up his prosthetic legs so he didn’t try to practice when no one else was around.
Five days later, Kriesel graduated to a walker.
Two weeks later, he had two canes.
___
At the end of April, Dr. Joe Burns headed home.
When the plane refueled in New Jersey, some soldiers kissed the American soil. For Burns, the smell of humidity and the sight of greenery almost made him giddy.
After a debriefing in Texas, he flew to North Dakota on April 25, his 26th wedding anniversary. When the plane pulled up to the gate at Fargo, Burns’ daughters, Anna and Sarah, waited, along with his wife, Becky.
His gift to Becky, purchased in Kuwait, was a brass Aladdin’s lamp, the kind you rub to make a wish.
His own wish had already come true.
Shortly before midnight, Burns arrived home. Within minutes, Becky was asleep. A teacher, she had to be at school the next day.
But Burns was wired.
He wanted to savor the comfort of his own bed, the closeness of his family, the quiet he had desperately missed. And the peace.
Finally, he fell asleep.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
BC-The Long Haul VI,2nd Ld-Writethru/2166
PART VI: An ambush produces a hero
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — An insurgent ambush yields a hero, and a wounded soldier recovers back home. Sixth of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
It all looked as if a video game had come to life.
Through his night vision goggles, Staff Sgt. Chad Malmberg saw the insurgents scurrying from berms to canals. Some popped up, ran a few yards, then fell to the Americans’ gunfire. But others kept advancing toward his convoy.
Malmberg’s rocket counterattack hadn’t stopped the enemy. And Truck 4, at the back of the convoy, had just radioed two urgent pleas for help.
It was running out of ammunition. And the enemy was within shouting distance.
Once again, Malmberg ordered his truck to race to the back — this time with two other Humvees, one of which supplied .50-caliber machine gun bullets.
The insurgents, once five or six football-field lengths away, were now within 50 feet, hunkered in a ditch. When their muzzles flashed, Malmberg saw their faces and their turbans.
When his truck stopped, he flung open his door and hopped out, quickly lobbing a grenade into the ditch.
“Frag out!” he shouted so others could take cover, then repeated the alert on the radio. Then his truck stopped again and Malmberg’s driver threw a second grenade.
Finally, that threat was eliminated.
Still, the fight wasn’t over. Insurgents near the front of the convoy, where Malmberg now returned, were launching rocket-propelled grenades as all five Humvees sprayed the area with gunfire.
In the midst of this, Malmberg’s gunner alerted him that smoke was billowing from both sides of the cab of a civilian truck. Malmberg looked through his rearview mirror. Surely, he thought, the driver was dead. He radioed an order to a Humvee crew: Remove the body.
But when the sergeant opened the door, the driver popped out and hugged him. Miraculously, the man had survived, so frightened that he then crawled under his truck for safety.
The sergeant pulled him out. They had to go. Now! They had to get out of the kill zone.
And they did.
When the Humvees returned to base, Malmberg and the others set up a board to reconstruct what had happened in the 55-minute firefight. It was almost impossible. There had been so much chaos. The gunners had shot so many targets. No one knew for sure how many of perhaps 30 to 40 insurgents were killed.
They did know this: No one in the convoy — soldiers or civilian drivers — was dead. No one was even injured.
And Malmberg, whose greatest worry was that he might somehow fail his men, would be decorated as a hero.
___
U.S. troops were not the only targets of the violence that flared across parts of Iraq in early 2007. Ordinary Iraqis, too, found themselves in the middle of a firestorm.
Sgt. 1st Class Cassandra Houston was in her second day as a nurse in the intensive care unit at the sprawling Balad Hospital when an Iraqi family was wheeled in for “comfort care” — the father, mother and son were about to die. All she could do was help them go peacefully.
They’d all been shot in the head, apparent victims of sectarian hatred, and the parents succumbed quickly.
Their son, around 14, was unconscious but still breathing. Houston suctioned blood from the boy’s mouth, changed the gauze bandage on his head and tenderly held his hand.
She wanted to make sure he did not die alone.
She thought of her son, Josh, who was about the same age.
Afternoon gave way to evening as Houston stayed by the boy’s side. She watched the monitors as his labored breathing subsided, his blood pressure dropped and his heartbeat dwindled.
When the boy died, a chaplain returned, and Houston, along with other nurses, gathered around his bed for a prayer.
That night, back in her room, she cried. She called Josh and told him she missed him.
And she was back in intensive care the next morning.
As she stood by others — including wounded, frightened troops — in the months that followed, her eyes might tear up but she learned not to cry every time she saw something terrible.
At times, she wondered if she had a heart anymore.
___
At the end of February, a dump truck loaded with gravel and explosives veered into a crowd of worshippers leaving a Sunni mosque in Habbaniyah where the imam had spoken out against extremists.
Dr. Joe Burns heard the sirens wailing. Within minutes, dozens of injured Iraqis arrived at the gates of Al Taqaddum Air Base.
One was a little boy, around 8. He was unconscious. The top of his head was wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, a bone jutted through his left leg. His breathing was shallow, his pulse rapid.
Burns called for breathing tubes and when he removed the bandage from the boy’s matted hair, he saw a hole the size of a quarter in the back of his skull. The gray matter of the brain was visible.
He gingerly felt for shrapnel or any foreign material, but found none. That was good news.
Suddenly, the boy regained consciousness, sat up, started crying and reached for his head.
He told the interpreter his name was Youssef — Joseph, like the doctor — but little else before lapsing back into unconsciousness.
Burns and others lifted Youssef’s stretcher from the floor, weaving through a crowded hallway toward an open bed. As Burns prepared to give Youssef medicine so he could insert a breathing tube down his throat, an emergency room doctor arrived.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Open fracture. Open head wound,” Burns replied.
The doctor shook his head.
“No,” he said, “make him expectant.” Put him aside to die, because others could be saved.
Burns protested gently.
No, he talked, he regained consciousness, Burns said. He’s young, this isn’t beyond hope.
Eying the boy again, the doctor reconsidered.
“OK,” he said, “do you want me to fix the head wound?”
The doctor sutured the scalp as Burns trained a flashlight on it and held a temporary breathing tube in the other hand. He and five other doctors worked shoulder to shoulder, their arms, legs and heads tangled around a nest of tubes, cables and medical equipment. Dozens of other doctors and nurses struggled to save other patients, wading through ankle-high piles of torn-off bandages.
Some died, but others survived.
And Youssef? Once the boy was stabilized, he was flown to Baghdad for treatment.
Later, Burns would try to check on the boy whose life he helped save, using a computer that tracks patients. For six weeks, Youssef’s name appeared. Then suddenly one day, it was gone. Burns heard rumors the boy had gone home; he would never know for sure.
But on that February day when he fought for Youssef’s life, the North Dakota doctor had a final duty.
He walked a mile to a base morgue to establish the cause of death for two Iraqi civilians killed in the blast and two U.S. soldiers.
He signed the paperwork, then ended his 19-hour day with an e-mail to his wife, Becky. He feared she’d hear news of the bombing and worry. “I am fine,” he wrote. “Disregard news reports.”
As it turned out, she hadn’t seen the news at all.
___
At Walter Reed, a new reality was setting in for Sgt. J.R. Salzman, recovering after the loss of his lower right arm.
He’d thought he would get a prosthetic arm, rebound quickly and be just fine. But after several surgeries — including the amputation of his left ring finger — it was becoming clear: This wasn’t a two-week recovery. It would be months, even years.
Salzman, who had been the go-to guy when a Humvee needed fixing in Iraq, now had to learn how to do the most rudimentary things: Zip a jacket. Brush his teeth. Write with his left hand.
He was haunted by nightmares. Sometimes he dreamed he saw the flash of an IED explosion. Other times, he woke screaming that his arm was gone, begging for a tourniquet.
The methadone and Lyrica he took for nerve pain left him dizzy, confused, drowsy. He had trouble remembering appointments.
Even proud moments turned into ordeals.
When Salzman was invited to the president’s State of the Union address, it took 20 minutes and help from his wife, Josie, just to put on his dress uniform. It was his first trip outside Walter Reed; he didn’t like leaving his safe haven.
As they listened to the speech, which was interrupted several times by applause, J.R. couldn’t clap. Josie felt like crying, and applauded loudly on his behalf.
Josie was insistent that J.R. talk with a therapist. She didn’t want to put it off. Her husband, an athlete, a champion log roller, had lost his right hand. He needed to talk with someone about it.
When they finally arranged to meet together with a therapist, it did not go well.
Josie thought J.R. wasn’t being honest, that he said he was eating and sleeping well, when he was having nightmares and living on pudding snacks.
Tensions mounted. He threatened to send her home. He thought she expected him to be the same person with whom she had fallen in love, and he wasn’t.
But as the months passed, Josie stayed and J.R. improved. He learned to write left-handed, to dress himself, even to fly fish with a prosthetic arm.
His sadness, though, lingered. He found himself remembering small details about the hand he lost, down to the scars he had from carpentry work. He’d think about that day when his wedding ring was snipped off by bolt cutters at the Green Zone Hospital in Baghdad.
Salzman knew others had worse injuries. He wanted to be positive, but sometimes it was hard.
“I think having given two years of my life and my right arm is more than enough for my country,” he wrote in his blog. “Now I want to get back to my private life, and learn how to live again all over.”
___
As spring approached, Sgt. John Kriesel prepared to take his first steps on prosthetic legs.
He wanted to walk earlier, but he had to heal from back surgery needed so he could bear weight on his legs. His spine, sacrum and pelvis had to be fused.
Kriesel had prepared for months, watching other amputees being fitted with prosthetic legs. His left leg — which was amputated above the knee — was replaced with an aluminum limb that bends like a real leg; a computer chip inside senses if he’s going to fall and lock ups to prevent it.
His artificial right leg — shorter because his leg was amputated six inches below the knee — has a carbon-fiber foot with a high-tech shock absorber.
On March 12, 2007, Kriesel donned a stars-and-stripes T-shirt and red shorts, wheeled into the therapy room, grabbed the parallel bars and stood.
At first, he felt as if he was on stilts.
But he was thrilled to look at people at eye level and kiss his wife, Katie, standing up. He walked back and forth, heel to toe, heel to toe, to perfect his form.
A doctor had warned Katie that because John’s spine was fused, he’d lose mobility in his lower back and would waddle. His gait, though, was smooth.
Kriesel worked up a sweat but was reluctant to quit. Only when therapists started switching off the lights at the other side of the room did he stop. They locked up his prosthetic legs so he didn’t try to practice when no one else was around.
Five days later, Kriesel graduated to a walker.
Two weeks later, he had two canes.
___
At the end of April, Dr. Joe Burns headed home.
When the plane refueled in New Jersey, some soldiers kissed the American soil. For Burns, the smell of humidity and the sight of greenery almost made him giddy.
After a debriefing in Texas, he flew to North Dakota on April 25, his 26th wedding anniversary. When the plane pulled up to the gate at Fargo, Burns’ daughters, Anna and Sarah, waited, along with his wife, Becky.
His gift to Becky, purchased in Kuwait, was a brass Aladdin’s lamp, the kind you rub to make a wish.
His own wish had already come true.
Shortly before midnight, Burns arrived home. Within minutes, Becky was asleep. A teacher, she had to be at school the next day.
But Burns was wired.
He wanted to savor the comfort of his own bed, the closeness of his family, the quiet he had desperately missed. And the peace.
Finally, he fell asleep.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Long Haul PART IV: For 2 soldiers, families, lives changed
Date: 8/6/2008 12:00 AM
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — Roadside bomb blasts change everything for two soldiers and their families back home. Fourth of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
In that dreadful December, every day brought bloodshed, every week hundreds of attacks on Americans and Iraqis.
Car bombings. Drive-by shootings. Kidnappings. Torture. Bullet-riddled bodies. Sectarian fighting. It was a horrible end to a horrible year in the Iraq war.
And for two young soldiers, December 2006 was the month that changed everything, forever.
The sky was clear on Dec. 2 when Sgt. John Kriesel’s armored Humvee rolled out to check a report of suspicious activity: people digging on a dirt road near Fallujah.
His Humvee was turning a corner when the left front tire ran over something. Riding shotgun in the vehicle, Kriesel heard a metallic plink — like a rock striking a 55-gallon drum.
Then: BOOOM!
The Humvee flew into the air, its doors blowing open, the gunner shooting out of the turret like a Roman candle before the vehicle crashed down on its side.
Kriesel’s helmet and glasses flew off as he was thrown to the ground. Rocks rained down in a concrete storm, and Kriesel heard the screeching of twisted metal, then moans, groans, screams.
Strangely, he was calm. He saw the underside of the Humvee; the axle was blown off.
Then he looked down.
His left leg was nearly severed, still tucked in his pants leg, hanging by a piece of skin. His left thigh was split open like a baked potato, with a bone jutting out and blood oozing.
His right leg, from about six inches below the knee, was badly mangled, as if it had gotten stuck in a wood chipper.
“I’m going to die,” he told himself. “This is how it ends.”
Sgt. Kriesel, the eternal optimist, had lost faith.
He tried to get up, but it was useless. The bones of his lower left arm were broken; the arm flapped like a door off its hinge. Kriesel, who had trained to be a paramedic, was clear-minded enough to brace his arm to his chest, hoping to avoid nerve damage.
His right biceps had burst; they were peppered with shrapnel. A bracelet in honor of a fallen soldier sliced his right wrist down to the bone.
Kriesel closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see more.
“Help me! I need help,” Kriesel cried.
“Stay still,” said Sgt. Adam Gallant, who had jumped out of the Bradley ahead of him and had run back. Gallant did a quick assessment. One soldier was dead, another trapped and likely gone. Two others were walking. Kriesel was top priority.
“Kries,” he said, “I’m not going to lie to you, man. Your legs are real bad.”
But he tried to comfort him, too.
“You’re going to be OK,” he said. “We’re going to take care of you.”
Gallant and another soldier wrapped tourniquets on Kriesel’s legs. They propped him up on stacked boxes of MREs so blood would flow to his organs. No one knew it then, but beneath his armor the force of the 200-pound bomb had ripped open his abdomen, and his intestines were exposed.
Kriesel closed his eyes. It was almost like the movies: His life really was flashing before his eyes. He thought of Little League back in Minnesota, his elementary school days…
Then he felt someone shaking his shoulder.
“Keep your eyes open,” he heard. He didn’t want to.
He thought of his wife, Katie.
His gunner sat by his side to keep him awake. But the blast had left him with a concussion, and he kept asking Kriesel the same questions:
What’s your wife’s name?
Your kids’ names?
What state do you live in?
Kriesel answered over and over, until he lost patience.
“Leave me alone!” he snapped. “Let me die.”
The soldiers needed to move Kriesel so they could tip the Humvee wreckage and remove another soldier trapped beneath it.
“I ain’t going to lie to you, buddy,” Gallant said. “This is really going to suck.”
“What could suck worse?” Kriesel said. “Just go! Let’s do it.”
As they picked him up, Kriesel’s nearly detached leg flopped onto his chest. He howled in pain. No one knew then that his pelvis was shattered.
He was getting cold. Again, he felt sure he was going to die.
“Tell Katie I love her,” he implored.
“Shut up, you’re going to tell her yourself,” Gallant said.
When a young medic arrived, he administered morphine, and Kriesel was loaded onto a chopper. The drug was kicking in. But he managed to give his Social Security number.
Then he closed his eyes again.
At the hospital at the Al Taqaddum Air Base, six surgeons worked on Kriesel as a chaplain stood by in a corner. Once Kriesel was stabilized for transfer to another hospital in Iraq and then to Germany, the doctors placed him in a “hot pocket” — a heated nylon bag from which only a breathing tube was visible.
Some of those who saw him wheeled by felt sure he was dead.
A doctor tried to reassure them. His heart is still beating, he said. He’s still alive.
___
It was almost midnight in Minnesota, and Katie Kriesel was asleep when the phone rang.
“Katie, I need you to sit up,” her mother-in-law said.
John must be dead, she thought.
He wasn’t, but the news was grim: John had lost both his legs, one above the knee, the other below.
Katie Kriesel started crying. She called her mother, who lived about a mile away, but she was so choked up, her mother thought something had happened to the boys. She was getting dressed, she said; she’d be right over.
The commotion woke 4-year-old Broden, and Katie tried to calm him, stretching out in his bed, where he dozed off again but she simply watched the clock, hour by hour, waiting for morning and more news.
Over the next two days, Katie tried to maintain normal routines — even taking the boys for a breakfast with Santa — and struggled to keep her voice steady and her eyes dry.
As calmly as she could, she told her sons their dad was hurt and she had to go to Germany to help him.
What kind of hurt? they asked.
“Dad doesn’t have his legs anymore,” she said.
They looked puzzled.
Everything will be OK, she said. He’ll get a wheelchair.
Later as Katie read her sons a bedtime story, 5-year-old Elijah had a question.
“Are Dad’s legs going to grow back?” he asked.
“No, honey, they don’t grow back.”
“I just don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Elijah said.
___
That Sunday, Sgt. Travis Ostrom received a call at home.
Terrible news for the 1st Brigade Combat Team: Three casualties from an IED attack. John Kriesel was badly injured, and two other Minnesota National Guardsmen — Specs. Corey Rystad and Bryan McDonough — had been killed.
Rystad, just a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday, was an avid hunter and a natural athlete, a quiet guy who was always asking questions, always interested in learning how to be a better soldier. McDonough, 22, liked to crack jokes; everyone enjoyed being around him. But he had a serious side, too. In an online entry, he had written that he was proud to defend his country and there was “no other place I would rather be.”
Ostrom had to start coordinating the military aspects of two funerals.
It was the most unwelcome part of a job he never wanted.
Ostrom, who had served in Bosnia, Somalia and the Persian Gulf, had expected to be a platoon sergeant in Iraq, but he never got there. A knee injury at the worst possible time, during pre-deployment training in Mississippi, had sidelined him.
While his comrades fought, he was ass igned to a lonely armory in Minnesota serving those on the home front.
He felt guilty, but plunged into the crucial job helping families with bills, cutting red tape — and, as now, making preparations for final goodbyes.
That December day, Ostrom quickly called other Bravo Company soldiers on home leave. That way, they’d hear the news from him first. Also, some would be among the dozens of soldiers he’d tap for the sad necessities at hand: to carry flags in honor guards, to drive dignitaries at the two funerals, and to serve as pallbearers.
He scheduled rehearsals at the armory, bringing in a borrowed casket. The soldiers practiced folding the flag, synchronizing the 21-gun salute.
The dutiful sergeant had the same message for all of them: You have just one chance to do it right.
___
“Did everybody make it out OK?”
It was John Kriesel’s first question when he woke up more than a week later at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had no memory of the nine or 10 surgeries he’d undergone, first in Iraq, then at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
The look on his wife Katie’s face gave him the answer even before she spoke. His two buddies had been killed.
Though Kriesel couldn’t recall some things, he knew he had lost his legs.
In fact, he had come close to dying: His back was broken, his stomach, arms and face were pocked with shrapnel. His left arm was broken and part of his colon had to be removed. His pelvis and spine had to be fused with screws and pins.
He’d hardly had a day without surgery.
But already, Kriesel looked better than when Katie had arrived in Germany. She had fallen to her knees when she first saw his swollen face and blood seeping from his wounds. She decided immediately to sleep by his side every night, convinced if he knew, he’d fight harder to survive.
Kriesel wanted to see their sons, and in time he was well enough. Katie already had conferred with a child psychologist about how to prepare them and to describe what they’d see. Elijah and Broden had never visited a hospital or been around anyone disabled.
Put one hand under your knee and one hand above the other knee, Katie told the boys. Now pretend there isn’t anything below that anymore. That, she said, is what Dad is like.
When the boys arrived in the lobby, they weren’t interested in hearing explanations about bandages, machines or wounds. Dad. Dad. Dad. They just want to see Dad.
As Elijah entered his father’s room, Kriesel covered his amputated legs with a blanket.
“You don’t have to cover up your ovals, Dad,” said the boy, describing the shape of his wounds. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
___
That bitter December was winding down when Sgt. J.R. Salzman, just back from home leave, heard about Kriesel. His convoy commander happened to be Kriesel’s cousin.
On Dec. 19, Salzman was in the scout truck leading three other Humvees and a 20-vehicle fuel tanker convoy through northwest Baghdad to Tallil Air Base. He was talking with his driver, when there was an enormous blast.
He lost consciousness, then woke to the sound of his gunner screaming obscenities; hot shrapnel had spattered over his legs.
Salzman smelled something sickening, like burning wires, mixing with the smell of burning flesh.
Bleeding and trapped in the still-idling Humvee, he thought of his wife, Josie, whom he’d married just nine months before. He muttered her name.
He tried to grab the right door lever to get out. But he couldn’t.
He felt terrible burning and when he looked down, he realized why: His right hand and wrist were gone. About six inches above his wrist, he saw two bones sticking out from chewed-up flesh.
Salzman’s Humvee had been hit by an armor-piercing bomb called an EFP — an explosively formed penetrator — that was hidden in a pile of rocks on the right side of the road.
Despite excruciating pain, he kept his cool, checking quickly to see if his left hand was there. It was. But it was swelling in his glove, and he couldn’t move two fingers.
He continued the inventory of his body. He rotated his shoulders. He felt below his waist. Everything was there.
He shuffled his feet — and at that moment, he had an incongruous thought that carried him far away, if only for a split second: He could still log roll, something he’d loved since he was 5, something that had made him a champion.
Then his mind snapped back: He needed a tourniquet. He carried two but there was no way he could put one on. He tried to call for help, pressing a radio button with his left thumb, but the blast had fried the electronic equipment.
“Get the medic up here,” he ordered his driver and gunner, “… if I don’t get a tourniquet on, I’m going to bleed out.”
Salzman wondered if this was the end, then pushed that thought away.
“No. No. NO WAY am I dying here,” he said to himself. “Not here. Not now. Not today. Not in this country, I’m not dying.”
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — Roadside bomb blasts change everything for two soldiers and their families back home. Fourth of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
In that dreadful December, every day brought bloodshed, every week hundreds of attacks on Americans and Iraqis.
Car bombings. Drive-by shootings. Kidnappings. Torture. Bullet-riddled bodies. Sectarian fighting. It was a horrible end to a horrible year in the Iraq war.
And for two young soldiers, December 2006 was the month that changed everything, forever.
The sky was clear on Dec. 2 when Sgt. John Kriesel’s armored Humvee rolled out to check a report of suspicious activity: people digging on a dirt road near Fallujah.
His Humvee was turning a corner when the left front tire ran over something. Riding shotgun in the vehicle, Kriesel heard a metallic plink — like a rock striking a 55-gallon drum.
Then: BOOOM!
The Humvee flew into the air, its doors blowing open, the gunner shooting out of the turret like a Roman candle before the vehicle crashed down on its side.
Kriesel’s helmet and glasses flew off as he was thrown to the ground. Rocks rained down in a concrete storm, and Kriesel heard the screeching of twisted metal, then moans, groans, screams.
Strangely, he was calm. He saw the underside of the Humvee; the axle was blown off.
Then he looked down.
His left leg was nearly severed, still tucked in his pants leg, hanging by a piece of skin. His left thigh was split open like a baked potato, with a bone jutting out and blood oozing.
His right leg, from about six inches below the knee, was badly mangled, as if it had gotten stuck in a wood chipper.
“I’m going to die,” he told himself. “This is how it ends.”
Sgt. Kriesel, the eternal optimist, had lost faith.
He tried to get up, but it was useless. The bones of his lower left arm were broken; the arm flapped like a door off its hinge. Kriesel, who had trained to be a paramedic, was clear-minded enough to brace his arm to his chest, hoping to avoid nerve damage.
His right biceps had burst; they were peppered with shrapnel. A bracelet in honor of a fallen soldier sliced his right wrist down to the bone.
Kriesel closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see more.
“Help me! I need help,” Kriesel cried.
“Stay still,” said Sgt. Adam Gallant, who had jumped out of the Bradley ahead of him and had run back. Gallant did a quick assessment. One soldier was dead, another trapped and likely gone. Two others were walking. Kriesel was top priority.
“Kries,” he said, “I’m not going to lie to you, man. Your legs are real bad.”
But he tried to comfort him, too.
“You’re going to be OK,” he said. “We’re going to take care of you.”
Gallant and another soldier wrapped tourniquets on Kriesel’s legs. They propped him up on stacked boxes of MREs so blood would flow to his organs. No one knew it then, but beneath his armor the force of the 200-pound bomb had ripped open his abdomen, and his intestines were exposed.
Kriesel closed his eyes. It was almost like the movies: His life really was flashing before his eyes. He thought of Little League back in Minnesota, his elementary school days…
Then he felt someone shaking his shoulder.
“Keep your eyes open,” he heard. He didn’t want to.
He thought of his wife, Katie.
His gunner sat by his side to keep him awake. But the blast had left him with a concussion, and he kept asking Kriesel the same questions:
What’s your wife’s name?
Your kids’ names?
What state do you live in?
Kriesel answered over and over, until he lost patience.
“Leave me alone!” he snapped. “Let me die.”
The soldiers needed to move Kriesel so they could tip the Humvee wreckage and remove another soldier trapped beneath it.
“I ain’t going to lie to you, buddy,” Gallant said. “This is really going to suck.”
“What could suck worse?” Kriesel said. “Just go! Let’s do it.”
As they picked him up, Kriesel’s nearly detached leg flopped onto his chest. He howled in pain. No one knew then that his pelvis was shattered.
He was getting cold. Again, he felt sure he was going to die.
“Tell Katie I love her,” he implored.
“Shut up, you’re going to tell her yourself,” Gallant said.
When a young medic arrived, he administered morphine, and Kriesel was loaded onto a chopper. The drug was kicking in. But he managed to give his Social Security number.
Then he closed his eyes again.
At the hospital at the Al Taqaddum Air Base, six surgeons worked on Kriesel as a chaplain stood by in a corner. Once Kriesel was stabilized for transfer to another hospital in Iraq and then to Germany, the doctors placed him in a “hot pocket” — a heated nylon bag from which only a breathing tube was visible.
Some of those who saw him wheeled by felt sure he was dead.
A doctor tried to reassure them. His heart is still beating, he said. He’s still alive.
___
It was almost midnight in Minnesota, and Katie Kriesel was asleep when the phone rang.
“Katie, I need you to sit up,” her mother-in-law said.
John must be dead, she thought.
He wasn’t, but the news was grim: John had lost both his legs, one above the knee, the other below.
Katie Kriesel started crying. She called her mother, who lived about a mile away, but she was so choked up, her mother thought something had happened to the boys. She was getting dressed, she said; she’d be right over.
The commotion woke 4-year-old Broden, and Katie tried to calm him, stretching out in his bed, where he dozed off again but she simply watched the clock, hour by hour, waiting for morning and more news.
Over the next two days, Katie tried to maintain normal routines — even taking the boys for a breakfast with Santa — and struggled to keep her voice steady and her eyes dry.
As calmly as she could, she told her sons their dad was hurt and she had to go to Germany to help him.
What kind of hurt? they asked.
“Dad doesn’t have his legs anymore,” she said.
They looked puzzled.
Everything will be OK, she said. He’ll get a wheelchair.
Later as Katie read her sons a bedtime story, 5-year-old Elijah had a question.
“Are Dad’s legs going to grow back?” he asked.
“No, honey, they don’t grow back.”
“I just don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Elijah said.
___
That Sunday, Sgt. Travis Ostrom received a call at home.
Terrible news for the 1st Brigade Combat Team: Three casualties from an IED attack. John Kriesel was badly injured, and two other Minnesota National Guardsmen — Specs. Corey Rystad and Bryan McDonough — had been killed.
Rystad, just a few weeks shy of his 21st birthday, was an avid hunter and a natural athlete, a quiet guy who was always asking questions, always interested in learning how to be a better soldier. McDonough, 22, liked to crack jokes; everyone enjoyed being around him. But he had a serious side, too. In an online entry, he had written that he was proud to defend his country and there was “no other place I would rather be.”
Ostrom had to start coordinating the military aspects of two funerals.
It was the most unwelcome part of a job he never wanted.
Ostrom, who had served in Bosnia, Somalia and the Persian Gulf, had expected to be a platoon sergeant in Iraq, but he never got there. A knee injury at the worst possible time, during pre-deployment training in Mississippi, had sidelined him.
While his comrades fought, he was ass igned to a lonely armory in Minnesota serving those on the home front.
He felt guilty, but plunged into the crucial job helping families with bills, cutting red tape — and, as now, making preparations for final goodbyes.
That December day, Ostrom quickly called other Bravo Company soldiers on home leave. That way, they’d hear the news from him first. Also, some would be among the dozens of soldiers he’d tap for the sad necessities at hand: to carry flags in honor guards, to drive dignitaries at the two funerals, and to serve as pallbearers.
He scheduled rehearsals at the armory, bringing in a borrowed casket. The soldiers practiced folding the flag, synchronizing the 21-gun salute.
The dutiful sergeant had the same message for all of them: You have just one chance to do it right.
___
“Did everybody make it out OK?”
It was John Kriesel’s first question when he woke up more than a week later at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He had no memory of the nine or 10 surgeries he’d undergone, first in Iraq, then at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
The look on his wife Katie’s face gave him the answer even before she spoke. His two buddies had been killed.
Though Kriesel couldn’t recall some things, he knew he had lost his legs.
In fact, he had come close to dying: His back was broken, his stomach, arms and face were pocked with shrapnel. His left arm was broken and part of his colon had to be removed. His pelvis and spine had to be fused with screws and pins.
He’d hardly had a day without surgery.
But already, Kriesel looked better than when Katie had arrived in Germany. She had fallen to her knees when she first saw his swollen face and blood seeping from his wounds. She decided immediately to sleep by his side every night, convinced if he knew, he’d fight harder to survive.
Kriesel wanted to see their sons, and in time he was well enough. Katie already had conferred with a child psychologist about how to prepare them and to describe what they’d see. Elijah and Broden had never visited a hospital or been around anyone disabled.
Put one hand under your knee and one hand above the other knee, Katie told the boys. Now pretend there isn’t anything below that anymore. That, she said, is what Dad is like.
When the boys arrived in the lobby, they weren’t interested in hearing explanations about bandages, machines or wounds. Dad. Dad. Dad. They just want to see Dad.
As Elijah entered his father’s room, Kriesel covered his amputated legs with a blanket.
“You don’t have to cover up your ovals, Dad,” said the boy, describing the shape of his wounds. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
___
That bitter December was winding down when Sgt. J.R. Salzman, just back from home leave, heard about Kriesel. His convoy commander happened to be Kriesel’s cousin.
On Dec. 19, Salzman was in the scout truck leading three other Humvees and a 20-vehicle fuel tanker convoy through northwest Baghdad to Tallil Air Base. He was talking with his driver, when there was an enormous blast.
He lost consciousness, then woke to the sound of his gunner screaming obscenities; hot shrapnel had spattered over his legs.
Salzman smelled something sickening, like burning wires, mixing with the smell of burning flesh.
Bleeding and trapped in the still-idling Humvee, he thought of his wife, Josie, whom he’d married just nine months before. He muttered her name.
He tried to grab the right door lever to get out. But he couldn’t.
He felt terrible burning and when he looked down, he realized why: His right hand and wrist were gone. About six inches above his wrist, he saw two bones sticking out from chewed-up flesh.
Salzman’s Humvee had been hit by an armor-piercing bomb called an EFP — an explosively formed penetrator — that was hidden in a pile of rocks on the right side of the road.
Despite excruciating pain, he kept his cool, checking quickly to see if his left hand was there. It was. But it was swelling in his glove, and he couldn’t move two fingers.
He continued the inventory of his body. He rotated his shoulders. He felt below his waist. Everything was there.
He shuffled his feet — and at that moment, he had an incongruous thought that carried him far away, if only for a split second: He could still log roll, something he’d loved since he was 5, something that had made him a champion.
Then his mind snapped back: He needed a tourniquet. He carried two but there was no way he could put one on. He tried to call for help, pressing a radio button with his left thumb, but the blast had fried the electronic equipment.
“Get the medic up here,” he ordered his driver and gunner, “… if I don’t get a tourniquet on, I’m going to bleed out.”
Salzman wondered if this was the end, then pushed that thought away.
“No. No. NO WAY am I dying here,” he said to himself. “Not here. Not now. Not today. Not in this country, I’m not dying.”
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Long Haul Part III: A funeral and a birth
Date: 8/5/2008 12:00 AM
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — Troops and families at home count the many milestones missed and made. Third of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
The Ferris wheel at the Minnesota State Fair offered a bird’s-eye view of an end-of-summer, mid-American ritual. From the top, you could see the places where 4-H kids showed off their prized hogs and cows, where farmers ogled gleaming tractors, and where throngs lined up for food-of-every-kind-on-a-stick.
Robert and Kathy Hanson had walked the Midway, had seen the sights. And they were on their way home, in their car, when the cell phone buzzed.
It was the military, and what the officer would not say spoke volumes about their son, Josh, on duty in Iraq. Something was terribly wrong.
Robert knew if Josh had just been injured he’d get details on the phone. But the caller had news that had to be delivered in person.
Gripping the wheel, Robert didn’t know whether to hurry home, or slow down and delay the inevitable.
Finally, the Hansons reached their house deep in the woods outside Dent, Minn. They didn’t have to wait long.
Within minutes, two officers in dress uniforms knocked on the door.
It was their sad duty to report the death of Staff Sgt. Joshua Robert Hanson.
On Saturday, Sept. 9, 2006, several hundred people filed into the gym of Pelican Rapids High School for Hanson’s funeral, paying tribute to him with prayer and song.
Classmates, teachers, friends and family remembered the high school linebacker whose football team won the state’s 1997 AA championship. The duck, pheasant and deer hunter who loved the outdoors and tubing on the Otter Tail River. The taekwondo black belt who collected a row of trophies. The happy-go-lucky guy who was always smiling and got a kick out of making up funny words. “Truly an unfairity,” was a favorite phrase.
At the end, there was a rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
“‘Twas grace that brought us safe thus far,” sang Josh’s younger brother, Jake. “And grace will lead us home.”
___
The funerals mounted (eventually, there would be 21, in all), as did the happy occasions the soldiers missed during what’s been called the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
Proms and graduations. Recitals and soccer tournaments. Holiday dinners and anniversaries. Small events, maybe, in normal times but magnified to those closest in a time of war.
As fall approached, Sgt. 1st Class Janelle Johnson scheduled home leave so she could take her 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, to her first day of kindergarten.
It was a two-week chance to be a mother again. She shopped with Elizabeth for a pink jumper, curled her daughter’s hair and watched her step aboard the yellow school bus. She marveled that her 18-month-old daughter, Emily, who had no hair and blue eyes when she last saw her, had blossomed into a blonde-haired, green-eyed, walking, talking toddler.
Her husband, Chad, was doing a great job.
But in the blink of an eye, the two weeks were over. Before Janelle could begin to settle in, she was back in Iraq — and, strangely, at a school that made her think of the kindergarten back home.
Her unit was delivering soccer balls and backpacks stuffed with school supplies, another mission designed to give an Iraqi community a helping hand.
The school was little more than a collection of desks in a mud building surrounded by a dirt yard and a fence; children who couldn’t attend because they didn’t own shoes watched forlornly outside as the soldiers arrived with their offerings.
Later, when Janelle received a photo scrapbook of Elizabeth’s first months at school, she thought about what she had seen and she was grateful for her daughter’s fortunate life at Knight Elementary School in Randall, Minn. She sent a thank you note to Elizabeth’s teacher with a special gift: an American flag that had flown over her base.
“As the days got long … there was always one thing that would brighten my day, seeing the American flag,” she wrote. “Every morning it was raised and reminded me of what a great nation I come from. … I hope this flag also brings you and your class the joy and contentment it has brought me.”
___
Seth Goehring had prepared for fatherhood, as best he could from a war zone.
He had monitored his wife’s pregnancy with photos she had sent by e-mail, storing them chronologically in computer folders. The doctors even obliged by providing ultrasound images — with labels for the boy parts.
In another era, a father-to-be would have to wait weeks for letters and, if he was lucky, a snapshot or two. But Seth and Alicia were in constant, electronic contact. They mulled over possible names for their son. Alicia sent a list of possible of strong “cowboy” names before they settled on Kolton.
On a November afternoon, returning from patrol, Seth got the word from his platoon sergeant: The Red Cross had relayed the message that Alicia had gone to the hospital.
He quickly dialed the cell phone of his mother, who’d proxied for him at his wedding and now proxied for the delivery room doctor.
“Congratulations!” she declared. “You’re a father.”
Within hours, Seth had e-mail photos of his new son taken by Alicia, who held black-haired Kolton in her arms and snapped pictures with her cell phone.
___
On Nov. 22, Col. David Elicerio turned 49 — and the commander of the 1st Brigade, along with a small group of his soldiers, journeyed to a remote spot in the desert for a special treat.
“My friend, this is for you,” a local sheik named Ali told Elicerio, handing him the reins of a camel. “I understand this is your birthday. We’ve come to celebrate.”
He also handed Elicerio an Arab headdress, a shawl, a robe — and a shotgun. Elicerio had confided to the sheik earlier that he loved the outdoors and hunting wild game. And so here they were, in the middle of a war, chasing wild rabbits. It all seemed unreal.
When they were done, a sheep in the back of one of the trucks was slaughtered, and there in the desert, Elicerio sat at a campfire, eating the roasted meat with flat bread, tomatoes and onions.
The year before, he had spent his birthday with his family, in Las Vegas.
___
A few days later, an Army convoy rolled up in a swirl of dust toward a concrete slab of a building on the edge of Qaryat al Majarrah, a village of squat yellow brick houses.
“Mister, mister!” some Iraqi kids yelled, following the truck. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”
The answer to their questions could be glimpsed in the vehicles, which looked like a movable flea market bearing piles of medical supplies, clothes, soccer balls and Beanie Babies.
Stepping from one truck was Dr. Joe Burns, a North Dakota emergency room doctor who had arrived weeks earlier for a six-month stint with the 1st Brigade Combat Team. He was in this village to join Iraqi Army personnel in a goodwill mission — a daylong health clinic.
Burns, a colonel, had been to war before, serving in Bosnia. But everything about Iraq was different, including his new home, a dusty metal storage container.
With his wire-frame glasses and rosy complexion, Burns was a man comfortable in his own skin. He had a healthy dose of Midwestern common sense and an unflappable manner.
He’d need it. His temporary clinic was a building with no heat, electricity or water. It was surrounded by a concertina wire perimeter unfurled by U.S. troops. Visitors were searched for weapons and explosives.
Burns shared his duty with an Iraqi doctor, a colonel who told him a harrowing story — his 11-year-old son was kidnapped near his school and released only in exchange for several thousand dollars.
As patients filed in, Burns felt like a frontier doctor. He knew what was wrong, but couldn’t do much to help.
When a 7-year-old Iraqi girl born with her heart on the right side asked, through an interpreter, if the Americans could do anything, Burns told her no, regrettably he couldn’t.
When she said her 15-year-old sister, frail and bundled in a long coat and a head scarf, was tired and cold all the time, Burns felt the girl’s neck for a pulse. Her heart rate was 110, about 50 percent above normal, even when she sat still.
Checking her heart with a stethoscope, Burns heard an incredibly loud sound: Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, like a washing machine.
He suspected the girl had had rheumatic fever that had scarred her heart valves so the blood didn’t flow as quickly at it should. He drew the girl a picture on a scrap of paper showing her the valves and explaining her illness.
Burns knew she needed surgery, but her family didn’t have money. He also knew she wasn’t likely to get help.
His final visitor was a father in his 30s, dressed in white flowing robes, his face creased by the sun. He was clutching CAT scans.
He said his 15-month-old daughter had become ill months earlier. The symptoms — stiffness, a high fever, aching head — sounded like meningitis to Burns.
By the time the father had arrived with his daughter at an Iraqi hospital, she was blind and having seizures. The Iraqi doctors told him she needed a brain wave test and a brain scan. They also prescribed medicine.
Burns studied the CAT scans, holding them up to a dust-caked window for light. He saw no abnormalities. He assured the father the medicine she was prescribed was good.
But the father had a request: Could they fly his sick daughter to America for the brain tests?
The Iraqi doctor, who was treating another patient, said nothing. He and Burns shared a knowing glance — no tests would change the daughter’s prognosis now.
Burns put a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. No father wants his children to suffer, he said, adding that he had four children himself. The best thing to do, Burns said, is continue giving her the medicine.
The father thanked him, took the CAT scans and left.
Had the day’s mission done any good? Burns wondered.
“How much different will things be for Iraq as a result of today?” he wrote in his journal. “Will the insurgents have a less receptive hiding place? Will IEDs become less frequent? Will the children of this town be more likely to have a future with less hatred?”
Joe Burns hoped so, but that was about all he could do.
And in the weeks to come, hope became much harder to sustain.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — Troops and families at home count the many milestones missed and made. Third of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
The Ferris wheel at the Minnesota State Fair offered a bird’s-eye view of an end-of-summer, mid-American ritual. From the top, you could see the places where 4-H kids showed off their prized hogs and cows, where farmers ogled gleaming tractors, and where throngs lined up for food-of-every-kind-on-a-stick.
Robert and Kathy Hanson had walked the Midway, had seen the sights. And they were on their way home, in their car, when the cell phone buzzed.
It was the military, and what the officer would not say spoke volumes about their son, Josh, on duty in Iraq. Something was terribly wrong.
Robert knew if Josh had just been injured he’d get details on the phone. But the caller had news that had to be delivered in person.
Gripping the wheel, Robert didn’t know whether to hurry home, or slow down and delay the inevitable.
Finally, the Hansons reached their house deep in the woods outside Dent, Minn. They didn’t have to wait long.
Within minutes, two officers in dress uniforms knocked on the door.
It was their sad duty to report the death of Staff Sgt. Joshua Robert Hanson.
On Saturday, Sept. 9, 2006, several hundred people filed into the gym of Pelican Rapids High School for Hanson’s funeral, paying tribute to him with prayer and song.
Classmates, teachers, friends and family remembered the high school linebacker whose football team won the state’s 1997 AA championship. The duck, pheasant and deer hunter who loved the outdoors and tubing on the Otter Tail River. The taekwondo black belt who collected a row of trophies. The happy-go-lucky guy who was always smiling and got a kick out of making up funny words. “Truly an unfairity,” was a favorite phrase.
At the end, there was a rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
“‘Twas grace that brought us safe thus far,” sang Josh’s younger brother, Jake. “And grace will lead us home.”
___
The funerals mounted (eventually, there would be 21, in all), as did the happy occasions the soldiers missed during what’s been called the longest deployment of the Iraq war.
Proms and graduations. Recitals and soccer tournaments. Holiday dinners and anniversaries. Small events, maybe, in normal times but magnified to those closest in a time of war.
As fall approached, Sgt. 1st Class Janelle Johnson scheduled home leave so she could take her 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, to her first day of kindergarten.
It was a two-week chance to be a mother again. She shopped with Elizabeth for a pink jumper, curled her daughter’s hair and watched her step aboard the yellow school bus. She marveled that her 18-month-old daughter, Emily, who had no hair and blue eyes when she last saw her, had blossomed into a blonde-haired, green-eyed, walking, talking toddler.
Her husband, Chad, was doing a great job.
But in the blink of an eye, the two weeks were over. Before Janelle could begin to settle in, she was back in Iraq — and, strangely, at a school that made her think of the kindergarten back home.
Her unit was delivering soccer balls and backpacks stuffed with school supplies, another mission designed to give an Iraqi community a helping hand.
The school was little more than a collection of desks in a mud building surrounded by a dirt yard and a fence; children who couldn’t attend because they didn’t own shoes watched forlornly outside as the soldiers arrived with their offerings.
Later, when Janelle received a photo scrapbook of Elizabeth’s first months at school, she thought about what she had seen and she was grateful for her daughter’s fortunate life at Knight Elementary School in Randall, Minn. She sent a thank you note to Elizabeth’s teacher with a special gift: an American flag that had flown over her base.
“As the days got long … there was always one thing that would brighten my day, seeing the American flag,” she wrote. “Every morning it was raised and reminded me of what a great nation I come from. … I hope this flag also brings you and your class the joy and contentment it has brought me.”
___
Seth Goehring had prepared for fatherhood, as best he could from a war zone.
He had monitored his wife’s pregnancy with photos she had sent by e-mail, storing them chronologically in computer folders. The doctors even obliged by providing ultrasound images — with labels for the boy parts.
In another era, a father-to-be would have to wait weeks for letters and, if he was lucky, a snapshot or two. But Seth and Alicia were in constant, electronic contact. They mulled over possible names for their son. Alicia sent a list of possible of strong “cowboy” names before they settled on Kolton.
On a November afternoon, returning from patrol, Seth got the word from his platoon sergeant: The Red Cross had relayed the message that Alicia had gone to the hospital.
He quickly dialed the cell phone of his mother, who’d proxied for him at his wedding and now proxied for the delivery room doctor.
“Congratulations!” she declared. “You’re a father.”
Within hours, Seth had e-mail photos of his new son taken by Alicia, who held black-haired Kolton in her arms and snapped pictures with her cell phone.
___
On Nov. 22, Col. David Elicerio turned 49 — and the commander of the 1st Brigade, along with a small group of his soldiers, journeyed to a remote spot in the desert for a special treat.
“My friend, this is for you,” a local sheik named Ali told Elicerio, handing him the reins of a camel. “I understand this is your birthday. We’ve come to celebrate.”
He also handed Elicerio an Arab headdress, a shawl, a robe — and a shotgun. Elicerio had confided to the sheik earlier that he loved the outdoors and hunting wild game. And so here they were, in the middle of a war, chasing wild rabbits. It all seemed unreal.
When they were done, a sheep in the back of one of the trucks was slaughtered, and there in the desert, Elicerio sat at a campfire, eating the roasted meat with flat bread, tomatoes and onions.
The year before, he had spent his birthday with his family, in Las Vegas.
___
A few days later, an Army convoy rolled up in a swirl of dust toward a concrete slab of a building on the edge of Qaryat al Majarrah, a village of squat yellow brick houses.
“Mister, mister!” some Iraqi kids yelled, following the truck. “What are you doing? Why are you here?”
The answer to their questions could be glimpsed in the vehicles, which looked like a movable flea market bearing piles of medical supplies, clothes, soccer balls and Beanie Babies.
Stepping from one truck was Dr. Joe Burns, a North Dakota emergency room doctor who had arrived weeks earlier for a six-month stint with the 1st Brigade Combat Team. He was in this village to join Iraqi Army personnel in a goodwill mission — a daylong health clinic.
Burns, a colonel, had been to war before, serving in Bosnia. But everything about Iraq was different, including his new home, a dusty metal storage container.
With his wire-frame glasses and rosy complexion, Burns was a man comfortable in his own skin. He had a healthy dose of Midwestern common sense and an unflappable manner.
He’d need it. His temporary clinic was a building with no heat, electricity or water. It was surrounded by a concertina wire perimeter unfurled by U.S. troops. Visitors were searched for weapons and explosives.
Burns shared his duty with an Iraqi doctor, a colonel who told him a harrowing story — his 11-year-old son was kidnapped near his school and released only in exchange for several thousand dollars.
As patients filed in, Burns felt like a frontier doctor. He knew what was wrong, but couldn’t do much to help.
When a 7-year-old Iraqi girl born with her heart on the right side asked, through an interpreter, if the Americans could do anything, Burns told her no, regrettably he couldn’t.
When she said her 15-year-old sister, frail and bundled in a long coat and a head scarf, was tired and cold all the time, Burns felt the girl’s neck for a pulse. Her heart rate was 110, about 50 percent above normal, even when she sat still.
Checking her heart with a stethoscope, Burns heard an incredibly loud sound: Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, like a washing machine.
He suspected the girl had had rheumatic fever that had scarred her heart valves so the blood didn’t flow as quickly at it should. He drew the girl a picture on a scrap of paper showing her the valves and explaining her illness.
Burns knew she needed surgery, but her family didn’t have money. He also knew she wasn’t likely to get help.
His final visitor was a father in his 30s, dressed in white flowing robes, his face creased by the sun. He was clutching CAT scans.
He said his 15-month-old daughter had become ill months earlier. The symptoms — stiffness, a high fever, aching head — sounded like meningitis to Burns.
By the time the father had arrived with his daughter at an Iraqi hospital, she was blind and having seizures. The Iraqi doctors told him she needed a brain wave test and a brain scan. They also prescribed medicine.
Burns studied the CAT scans, holding them up to a dust-caked window for light. He saw no abnormalities. He assured the father the medicine she was prescribed was good.
But the father had a request: Could they fly his sick daughter to America for the brain tests?
The Iraqi doctor, who was treating another patient, said nothing. He and Burns shared a knowing glance — no tests would change the daughter’s prognosis now.
Burns put a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. No father wants his children to suffer, he said, adding that he had four children himself. The best thing to do, Burns said, is continue giving her the medicine.
The father thanked him, took the CAT scans and left.
Had the day’s mission done any good? Burns wondered.
“How much different will things be for Iraq as a result of today?” he wrote in his journal. “Will the insurgents have a less receptive hiding place? Will IEDs become less frequent? Will the children of this town be more likely to have a future with less hatred?”
Joe Burns hoped so, but that was about all he could do.
And in the weeks to come, hope became much harder to sustain.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Long Haul Part II: Welcome to Iraq, and a long separation
Date: 8/4/2008 12:01 AM
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — National Guard troops reach their stations in Iraq while family members back home begin a hard adjustment. Second of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
The phone call surprised Katie Kriesel, so soon after her husband, John, shipped out.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I am where I need to be,” he answered cryptically, not wanting to disclose his exact location in Iraq. He probably would have waited to call home to Minnesota, but April 8, 2006, was special — it was Katie’s 26th birthday.
Kriesel was at Camp Fallujah, just east of the city where U.S. contractors had been hanged from a bridge, where Marines had battled insurgents in some of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Soon after his arrival, Kriesel saw a tent near his living quarters that had been hit by enemy mortar fire, twisting the metal support beams and shredding the canvas.
Welcome to Iraq.
But Kriesel wanted to be in thick of the action, not sitting in a tower or standing guard in a mess hall. He’d always been gung-ho; even as a kid he had watched the Gulf War on TV and proclaimed: “If I can get paid to do that, then I’m in.”
Kriesel had trouble sleeping his first night in Iraq. His gear hadn’t arrived, the air conditioning in his tent was going full blast and he had no blankets.
Some guys, he noticed, were sleeping in their body armor. He used his as a pillow. If a mortar lands here, he thought, it won’t matter if I’m wearing chain mail. I’m a goner.
As he settled into the soldier’s life, Katie established a routine in Minnesota.
She dropped off their sons, Elijah, almost 5, and Broden, 3, at day care in the morning, headed to work at a freight-forwarding company, then picked up the boys. Every evening it was dinner, baths, then time to check the computer for messages from Dad or await his call. Some days there was special mail — “Operation Iraqi Freedom” T-shirts or coins that Elijah brought to show-and-tell.
Like so many other families with soldiers in Iraq, the Kriesels lived in a wired world: They often communicated by phone or e-mail — John had his laptop computer with him.
But reminders of those at war came home in less comforting ways, too. One day, Elijah, waiting in a gym for Katie, saw a TV news story about a soldier who died in Iraq.
“Is Dad going to die?” he asked his mother.
No, she assured him — that’s why the family prayed every night to keep Dad safe.
By spring 2006, however, the war was entering its fourth year, more than 2,000 U.S. troops were dead, and it was clear no place in Iraq was secure.
No road seemed off-limits to improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, no building impervious to attacks. Not the fortressed Green Zone, not the United Nations headquarters, not the forward operating bases where thousands of soldiers made a ready target.
The 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division — not just Minnesotans, but incorporating soldiers from 36 states — was headquartered at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq near Nasiriyah. But the thousands of troops were stationed throughout the central and southern parts of the country.
They were both combatants and goodwill ambassadors, fighting insurgents with rocket launchers and handing out Beanie Babies to Iraqi kids. They escorted fuel and food convoys, conducted patrols, provided security, tended to the sick and wounded, delivered books and supplies to schools, paved roads, helped start newspapers and built and repaired water treatment plants.
They worked together in close quarters, and inevitably, became surrogate family.
But they longed for home.
Janelle Johnson, a battalion supply sergeant, tried not to dwell on all the once-in-a-lifetime moments of motherhood she was missing. Her baby girl, Emily, was taking her first steps, speaking her first words.
Her husband, Chad, faithfully chronicled these events, sending Janelle DVDs and e-mail photos, though he was reluctant to tell his wife one of Emily’s first words was “Da-da.”
There was one family event, though, that Janelle was determined not to miss: the 5th birthday of her other daughter, Elizabeth.
On that May day, Janelle set her alarm early. By 4 a.m., she was riding a borrowed bike in the darkness at Camp Adder. Reaching a computer room at an outpost a mile away, Janelle clicked on a Web cam.
In a moment, she was at the party in Minnesota: Year-old Emily pressed her face to the screen, pointed to her mother, smiled and laughed.
Elizabeth blew out the candles and opened her gifts. Janelle and Chad had bought her a pink bike with pink streamers, her first without training wheels.
But as the moments ticked away — and especially when the images and audio faltered and they had to communicate in text — Janelle felt increasingly homesick. Yes, the technology was amazing, but really there was no way to be part of a family event on a different continent, in the middle of a war.
After a half-hour, Sgt. Johnson rode back to her trailer and went to sleep.
___
That same month, another brigade soldier was NOT present for a major milestone in life: his wedding.
Spec. Seth Goehring was in Iraq, but he had signed papers so his mother, Julie, could stand in for him at a proxy ceremony.
He and Alicia Dowling had been high school sweethearts and had planned a Lutheran church wedding and big VFW hall reception for 2007. But before he went to war, they changed their minds.
Instead, on May 26, 2006, Alicia — accompanied by her mother and future mother-in-law — headed to Montana, a state that allows proxy weddings. The bride and groom would be more than 6,500 miles apart.
Alicia wore her gray “Proud to be An Army Fiancee” sweatshirt and jeans; the strapless satin dress with a beaded train she had bought at a bridal shop trunk show remained in her closet. Alicia wanted to be comfortable for the 5½-hour ride to Glendive, Mont.; also she was pregnant.
“I, Seth, take thee …”
When Julie Goehring, representing her son before a justice of the peace, solemnly recited the vows and then gave Alicia a peck on the cheek, the bride giggled. Her mother’s stern look reminded her this was serious stuff, no matter how surreal.
Someday, she thought, this would be a great story for the children.
Alicia, like many others, joined a support group while her husband was away. The spouses got together to swap stories and lean on each other.
Mandy Gazelka did the same back home outside Bemidji, Minn.
On Sunday afternoons during the summer of 2006, she hosted a weekly barbecue in her back yard for the wives and children of soldiers. She provided the meat for the grilling, her guests brought the trimmings. It was like group therapy, she joked.
Mandy filled the emptiness in the house with a new companion, a Pomeranian poodle named Vinny, rescued from a puppy mill. She e-mailed Dathan a photo of the scrawny dog.
He was not impressed. A dog’s not a dog, he believed, unless it’s bigger than a squirrel.
Now Sam, his Golden retriever-Labrador mix — there was a dog. And Sam patrolled the homestead now, with his master away.
One day, Sam sounded the alarm, barking furiously. Something was outside. Mandy grabbed a .38-caliber handgun she kept on the bedstand for protection and opened the door.
A porcupine had attacked Sam, then scrambled up a tree.
Mandy dispatched the critter with .38 slugs. Eleven of them.
Mandy poured herself into her job as a real estate agent, even doing some business with clients in Iraq. Dathan and the other soldiers sometimes talked houses during their down time. And whe n someone was in the market, Mandy sent photos online, and if need be, drove girlfriends or parents to look at the places. She sealed four deals.
But her workload didn’t take her mind off the dangers of Iraq. And her fears intensified with the news that came on June 22, 2006.
Dathan’s Humvee was following his brother Daniel’s truck as they inched along the top of a canal road trying to intercept insurgents smuggling IEDs out of Ramadi.
In a flash, Daniel’s Humvee exploded. The deafening blast lifted the front of the vehicle like a kid’s bike doing a wheelie.
Dathan reached to open his door and rescue his brother. But his training kicked in.
That would be crazy. Snipers might be waiting. Or someone might be out there waiting with a remote control to set off another bomb.
His Humvee backed up to give a better view of the area, then edged closer once it seemed there was no threat. Apart from some hearing damage, everyone was OK, and Dathan could relax a bit — even pulling out his camera to shoot some souvenir photos for Daniel.
The bombed Humvee’s crew crowded into other gun trucks and waited for a tow — and were jolted when a truck escorting the recovery team hit a second bomb, which blew the hood off but again caused no serious injuries.
When Dathan later called Mandy, he downplayed the incident. This is war, these things happen. He and Daniel were OK, he reported. He didn’t want her to worry.
But she did. The pressures of work, being apart and the war were taking a toll.
By July, Mandy had severe headaches and back pains. She underwent a brain scan and other tests before a chiropractor treated her for what he said was a neck vertebra out of place.
She didn’t want to alarm Dathan, and didn’t even call him about it.
But it isn’t easy keeping a secret from this war’s electronic grapevine. Dathan found out through another soldier who had heard from his wife.
___
As July ended, Staff Sgt. Joshua Hanson e-mailed his parents with a breezy note and some special requests:
“I was thinking about stuff you could send … snacks clams oysters stuff like that. “
Hanson, who had recently graduated from college and planned to become a deputy sheriff, signed up to go to Iraq to be with buddies he had served with in Bosnia.
In his e-mail, he told his parents he was no longer working the guard towers and was back on patrols. He signed off: “I love you both.”
His mother, Kathy, always reminded Josh — a former altar boy — to bless himself.
Kathy had a habit. She never said goodbye to Josh when they chatted on the phone. When her husband, Robert, wasn’t around, Josh had to hang up first.
Aug. 22 was Josh’s 27th birthday and he talked with his parents. Something special was coming up next week. He didn’t say much more.
Eight days later, at noon, two Bradley vehicles and a Humvee edged out onto the gravel roads on the edge of Khalidiyah, a village of mud huts and palm trees in west-central Iraq.
The plan was to fake out the insurgents and make it look as if they’d abandoned the area while Marine snipers hid, waiting to see if the enemy would plant more IEDs in the road.
Then, it happened.
As the vehicles rolled along at 10 mph, the rear wheel of Hanson’s Humvee hit a double stack anti-tank mine. His truck flew in the air, twisting and landing on its wheels.
Sgt. James Bakkila, who was at the rear of the Bradley following the Humvee, saw spare tires and the luggage rack flying, along with shrapnel. The vehicle’s doors were blown off or flung open. The gas tank had ruptured. Flames shot in the air.
There were five guys inside. One, two, three, four got out.
“Someone’s still in the Humvee!” screamed Bakkila’s driver.
It was Josh Hanson, who had been sitting in the rear passenger side, above the diesel tank.
His buddies knew instantly he was gone.
The next day, soldiers stood in silent salute as his flag-draped casket was loaded on a C-130. Soon afterward, the company commander observed simply, “There goes Josh,” looking up as the big transport plane passed overhead, starting the long trip home to Minnesota.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — National Guard troops reach their stations in Iraq while family members back home begin a hard adjustment. Second of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the war.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
The phone call surprised Katie Kriesel, so soon after her husband, John, shipped out.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I am where I need to be,” he answered cryptically, not wanting to disclose his exact location in Iraq. He probably would have waited to call home to Minnesota, but April 8, 2006, was special — it was Katie’s 26th birthday.
Kriesel was at Camp Fallujah, just east of the city where U.S. contractors had been hanged from a bridge, where Marines had battled insurgents in some of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Soon after his arrival, Kriesel saw a tent near his living quarters that had been hit by enemy mortar fire, twisting the metal support beams and shredding the canvas.
Welcome to Iraq.
But Kriesel wanted to be in thick of the action, not sitting in a tower or standing guard in a mess hall. He’d always been gung-ho; even as a kid he had watched the Gulf War on TV and proclaimed: “If I can get paid to do that, then I’m in.”
Kriesel had trouble sleeping his first night in Iraq. His gear hadn’t arrived, the air conditioning in his tent was going full blast and he had no blankets.
Some guys, he noticed, were sleeping in their body armor. He used his as a pillow. If a mortar lands here, he thought, it won’t matter if I’m wearing chain mail. I’m a goner.
As he settled into the soldier’s life, Katie established a routine in Minnesota.
She dropped off their sons, Elijah, almost 5, and Broden, 3, at day care in the morning, headed to work at a freight-forwarding company, then picked up the boys. Every evening it was dinner, baths, then time to check the computer for messages from Dad or await his call. Some days there was special mail — “Operation Iraqi Freedom” T-shirts or coins that Elijah brought to show-and-tell.
Like so many other families with soldiers in Iraq, the Kriesels lived in a wired world: They often communicated by phone or e-mail — John had his laptop computer with him.
But reminders of those at war came home in less comforting ways, too. One day, Elijah, waiting in a gym for Katie, saw a TV news story about a soldier who died in Iraq.
“Is Dad going to die?” he asked his mother.
No, she assured him — that’s why the family prayed every night to keep Dad safe.
By spring 2006, however, the war was entering its fourth year, more than 2,000 U.S. troops were dead, and it was clear no place in Iraq was secure.
No road seemed off-limits to improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, no building impervious to attacks. Not the fortressed Green Zone, not the United Nations headquarters, not the forward operating bases where thousands of soldiers made a ready target.
The 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division — not just Minnesotans, but incorporating soldiers from 36 states — was headquartered at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq near Nasiriyah. But the thousands of troops were stationed throughout the central and southern parts of the country.
They were both combatants and goodwill ambassadors, fighting insurgents with rocket launchers and handing out Beanie Babies to Iraqi kids. They escorted fuel and food convoys, conducted patrols, provided security, tended to the sick and wounded, delivered books and supplies to schools, paved roads, helped start newspapers and built and repaired water treatment plants.
They worked together in close quarters, and inevitably, became surrogate family.
But they longed for home.
Janelle Johnson, a battalion supply sergeant, tried not to dwell on all the once-in-a-lifetime moments of motherhood she was missing. Her baby girl, Emily, was taking her first steps, speaking her first words.
Her husband, Chad, faithfully chronicled these events, sending Janelle DVDs and e-mail photos, though he was reluctant to tell his wife one of Emily’s first words was “Da-da.”
There was one family event, though, that Janelle was determined not to miss: the 5th birthday of her other daughter, Elizabeth.
On that May day, Janelle set her alarm early. By 4 a.m., she was riding a borrowed bike in the darkness at Camp Adder. Reaching a computer room at an outpost a mile away, Janelle clicked on a Web cam.
In a moment, she was at the party in Minnesota: Year-old Emily pressed her face to the screen, pointed to her mother, smiled and laughed.
Elizabeth blew out the candles and opened her gifts. Janelle and Chad had bought her a pink bike with pink streamers, her first without training wheels.
But as the moments ticked away — and especially when the images and audio faltered and they had to communicate in text — Janelle felt increasingly homesick. Yes, the technology was amazing, but really there was no way to be part of a family event on a different continent, in the middle of a war.
After a half-hour, Sgt. Johnson rode back to her trailer and went to sleep.
___
That same month, another brigade soldier was NOT present for a major milestone in life: his wedding.
Spec. Seth Goehring was in Iraq, but he had signed papers so his mother, Julie, could stand in for him at a proxy ceremony.
He and Alicia Dowling had been high school sweethearts and had planned a Lutheran church wedding and big VFW hall reception for 2007. But before he went to war, they changed their minds.
Instead, on May 26, 2006, Alicia — accompanied by her mother and future mother-in-law — headed to Montana, a state that allows proxy weddings. The bride and groom would be more than 6,500 miles apart.
Alicia wore her gray “Proud to be An Army Fiancee” sweatshirt and jeans; the strapless satin dress with a beaded train she had bought at a bridal shop trunk show remained in her closet. Alicia wanted to be comfortable for the 5½-hour ride to Glendive, Mont.; also she was pregnant.
“I, Seth, take thee …”
When Julie Goehring, representing her son before a justice of the peace, solemnly recited the vows and then gave Alicia a peck on the cheek, the bride giggled. Her mother’s stern look reminded her this was serious stuff, no matter how surreal.
Someday, she thought, this would be a great story for the children.
Alicia, like many others, joined a support group while her husband was away. The spouses got together to swap stories and lean on each other.
Mandy Gazelka did the same back home outside Bemidji, Minn.
On Sunday afternoons during the summer of 2006, she hosted a weekly barbecue in her back yard for the wives and children of soldiers. She provided the meat for the grilling, her guests brought the trimmings. It was like group therapy, she joked.
Mandy filled the emptiness in the house with a new companion, a Pomeranian poodle named Vinny, rescued from a puppy mill. She e-mailed Dathan a photo of the scrawny dog.
He was not impressed. A dog’s not a dog, he believed, unless it’s bigger than a squirrel.
Now Sam, his Golden retriever-Labrador mix — there was a dog. And Sam patrolled the homestead now, with his master away.
One day, Sam sounded the alarm, barking furiously. Something was outside. Mandy grabbed a .38-caliber handgun she kept on the bedstand for protection and opened the door.
A porcupine had attacked Sam, then scrambled up a tree.
Mandy dispatched the critter with .38 slugs. Eleven of them.
Mandy poured herself into her job as a real estate agent, even doing some business with clients in Iraq. Dathan and the other soldiers sometimes talked houses during their down time. And whe n someone was in the market, Mandy sent photos online, and if need be, drove girlfriends or parents to look at the places. She sealed four deals.
But her workload didn’t take her mind off the dangers of Iraq. And her fears intensified with the news that came on June 22, 2006.
Dathan’s Humvee was following his brother Daniel’s truck as they inched along the top of a canal road trying to intercept insurgents smuggling IEDs out of Ramadi.
In a flash, Daniel’s Humvee exploded. The deafening blast lifted the front of the vehicle like a kid’s bike doing a wheelie.
Dathan reached to open his door and rescue his brother. But his training kicked in.
That would be crazy. Snipers might be waiting. Or someone might be out there waiting with a remote control to set off another bomb.
His Humvee backed up to give a better view of the area, then edged closer once it seemed there was no threat. Apart from some hearing damage, everyone was OK, and Dathan could relax a bit — even pulling out his camera to shoot some souvenir photos for Daniel.
The bombed Humvee’s crew crowded into other gun trucks and waited for a tow — and were jolted when a truck escorting the recovery team hit a second bomb, which blew the hood off but again caused no serious injuries.
When Dathan later called Mandy, he downplayed the incident. This is war, these things happen. He and Daniel were OK, he reported. He didn’t want her to worry.
But she did. The pressures of work, being apart and the war were taking a toll.
By July, Mandy had severe headaches and back pains. She underwent a brain scan and other tests before a chiropractor treated her for what he said was a neck vertebra out of place.
She didn’t want to alarm Dathan, and didn’t even call him about it.
But it isn’t easy keeping a secret from this war’s electronic grapevine. Dathan found out through another soldier who had heard from his wife.
___
As July ended, Staff Sgt. Joshua Hanson e-mailed his parents with a breezy note and some special requests:
“I was thinking about stuff you could send … snacks clams oysters stuff like that. “
Hanson, who had recently graduated from college and planned to become a deputy sheriff, signed up to go to Iraq to be with buddies he had served with in Bosnia.
In his e-mail, he told his parents he was no longer working the guard towers and was back on patrols. He signed off: “I love you both.”
His mother, Kathy, always reminded Josh — a former altar boy — to bless himself.
Kathy had a habit. She never said goodbye to Josh when they chatted on the phone. When her husband, Robert, wasn’t around, Josh had to hang up first.
Aug. 22 was Josh’s 27th birthday and he talked with his parents. Something special was coming up next week. He didn’t say much more.
Eight days later, at noon, two Bradley vehicles and a Humvee edged out onto the gravel roads on the edge of Khalidiyah, a village of mud huts and palm trees in west-central Iraq.
The plan was to fake out the insurgents and make it look as if they’d abandoned the area while Marine snipers hid, waiting to see if the enemy would plant more IEDs in the road.
Then, it happened.
As the vehicles rolled along at 10 mph, the rear wheel of Hanson’s Humvee hit a double stack anti-tank mine. His truck flew in the air, twisting and landing on its wheels.
Sgt. James Bakkila, who was at the rear of the Bradley following the Humvee, saw spare tires and the luggage rack flying, along with shrapnel. The vehicle’s doors were blown off or flung open. The gas tank had ruptured. Flames shot in the air.
There were five guys inside. One, two, three, four got out.
“Someone’s still in the Humvee!” screamed Bakkila’s driver.
It was Josh Hanson, who had been sitting in the rear passenger side, above the diesel tank.
His buddies knew instantly he was gone.
The next day, soldiers stood in silent salute as his flag-draped casket was loaded on a C-130. Soon afterward, the company commander observed simply, “There goes Josh,” looking up as the big transport plane passed overhead, starting the long trip home to Minnesota.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
The Long Haul I
For weeks on this blog, I wrote about the Iraq War and brain injury, with my last blog on that topic being http://tbilaw.blogspot.com/2008/07/brain-injury-is-not-new-to-iraq.html My first blog on that topic began in June with http://tbilaw.blogspot.com/2008/06/suicide-and-terror-continues-for-our.html Below is the first in a seven part series from AP, by Sharon Cohen on the toll of these long wars. I will publish all seven part here, with occasional comments where my perspective seems to add something of value.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 8/2/2008 12:07 PM
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — Called to arms from their civilian life, members of a National Guard unit say their goodbyes to their loved ones, not knowing that they are about to depart on the longest deployment of the Iraq war. The first of seven parts.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — In the end, Chad Malmberg put his framed Silver Star on the wall and stowed away his helmet, some old uniforms and the dusty combat boots he had worn in the Iraqi desert.
He was a hero, now, and proud of it. Malmberg had quickly entered his last semester of college, blending easily into the anonymity of campus life. Within months, he had his degree.
It took months, too, to break some habits. Such as hugging the center line when he drove and swerving whenever he saw anything on the road, fearing hidden bombs. And ticking off a check list — gun, ammo, food — every time he went outside.
He was home, he was safe, he was whole.
So many others could not say as much: John Kriesel, Josh Hanson, J.R. Salzman, Corey Rystad, Bryan McDonough … some came back with broken bodies, some came back to eulogies and grieving loved ones and final resting places.
But none of them — none of the 5,000 men and women of the 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard — came back unchanged by their 22-month deployment, and their sojourn into the cauldron of Iraq.
Their time at war won a commendation in Congress as “the longest continuous deployment of any United States ground combat military unit during Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
And for every man and woman who served, there was someone at home, hoping and waiting for their return.
There was the young wife who scoured the Internet each morning, searching for news stories about the area where her husband was based — trying to gauge the dangers. The little boys who eagerly checked e-mail every night for messages from their soldier-father.
There was the father who wondered how to break it to his soldier-wife that their baby girl had uttered her first words — and she had missed it. The mother who walked to work praying for her soldier-son’s safety — telling herself if she arrived without a phone call he was OK.
This was a war where families were sometimes just a mouse-click away from their soldiers, where a mother who had just given birth dispatched cell phone photos of the baby to her soldier-husband, where home front celebrations — graduations, birthdays, even weddings — were shared across the continents, via Web cams and video hookups.
But there also were moments in Iraq, some terrifying, some heartbreaking, that could not be shared with others far away.
The day a doctor pleaded on behalf of a wounded Iraqi boy, knowing his words could mean the difference between life and death for the child. The afternoon a husband grieved his loss by softly muttering his wife’s name on a bomb-scarred road. The day troops gathered to remember a buddy at a memorial service that closed with a somber roll call, the soldier’s name repeated three times to no reply.
There were many such experiences in nearly 500 days in Iraq.
Over that long haul, the soldiers drove 2.4 million convoy miles, conducted 5,200 patrols, discovered 462 improvised explosive devices, captured more than 400 suspected insurgents.
This is the story of a very long deployment of a very long war — of how members of the 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division lived and died in Iraq, how their families endured while they were gone, and how what happened in a far distant land still resonates today.
___
Malmberg’s mother, Teri Walen, didn’t want him to go to Iraq. She didn’t support the war, didn’t think her only son should be there. She tried to talk him out of it.
“Do you think war is a good thing?” she asked when he called one night.
“No,” he replied. “What do you think, I’m crazy?”
But Malmberg was stubborn and determined, and convinced his mother he had good reasons for going. Wiry and intense, a mixed martial arts buff and former Army welterweight boxer, Malmberg had eight years of military training — including a stint as a paratrooper at Fort Bragg, N.C. — but he had never served his country in combat. Now he had the chance.
On July 15, 2006, the official word came down: The 1st Brigade Combat Team — nicknamed the Red Bulls — would be deployed. Some 2,600 folks from Minnesota, bolstered by two Guard units from Iowa and Nebraska and troops from 33 other states, would put their lives on hold to take up arms.
These were not, for the most part, full-time soldiers. They were members of the National Guard, farmers and factory workers, salespeople and mechanics, doctors and students. Among them were fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, pool-playing buddies, former high school football rivals, classmates and neighbors.
Malmberg was just a semester shy of finishing college, but his degree would have to wait. He bought a $400,000 life insurance policy and named his sister, Jessica, as the beneficiary.
But Teri’s biggest worry really wasn’t that her son would die in Iraq.
Her fear was that he’d be disabled and need care the rest of his life — that he would be unable to pursue a childhood dream and become a police officer, like his father and uncle.
Death or disfigurement were not the things Chad feared; he was afraid only that he might fail the soldiers who depended upon him to lead an infantry squad.
And so he packed his gear and headed south, to Camp Shelby, Miss., where the 1st Brigade Combat Team holed up for six months in barracks that had been flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
There, amid downed trees and buildings that had lost their roofs, they trained, practiced their marksmanship, studied Iraqi culture and learned to work as a team.
As they edged closer to Iraq, some made big changes in their lives.
John Kriesel and his longtime partner, Katie, dashed down to City Hall in St. Paul, Minn., with their two sons, Elijah, 4, and Broden, 3, to wed.
Kriesel — the kind of guy who dressed up in his brother’s Army fatigues when he was just 10, the kind of guy who persisted in his relationship with Katie only when she confirmed she had voted for George W. Bush — was all pumped up to go to Iraq.
He asked Katie for permission. It’s not a fair question, she said — if she said no, he’d resent her, and if he said yes, she’d blame herself if anything happened to him.
“Will yo u regret it when you’re 30 if you don’t go?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
On a family vacation in Florida, Kriesel talked with his sons about the war. He was going to fight the bad guys, he said, in a faraway place called Iraq so everyone there can be free.
Are you going to die? his boys asked. No, he assured them.
Are you going to come back OK? they asked. Yes, he said, I’ll be fine.
Kriesel talked of death only once, with Katie.
Promise me one thing, he said: If I die, don’t go on TV and criticize the war, as the mother of one fallen soldier did, famously — “Don’t go Cindy Sheehan on me.” And don’t let my boots be used in one of those anti-war demonstrations.
The granddaughter of two World War II veterans, the sister of a soldier, Katie understands the military. You can depend on me, she told her husband.
J.R. Salzman and his fiancee, Josie, also decided to marry before he shipped off to Iraq; if something happened to him, Salzman wanted Josie to receive spousal benefits.
Salzman drew a four-day pass from Camp Shelby, and they eloped to New Orleans. The city was still recovering from Katrina; the courthouse wasn’t open, the phones weren’t working right, but Josie was undeterred. They married in a brief ceremony at a judge’s elegant home.
In Iraq, Salzman would be just another soldier. At home, he was a celebrity of sorts — the five-time world logrolling champion, a title that earned him appearances on ESPN, stunt work in a Steve Martin movie and fan mail from all over.
That was how he met Josie. One day she tuned in to ESPN’s “Great Outdoor Games” and there he was, brown-haired, muscular, confident, agile, rolling along. She dropped him an admiring e-mail. A date at a Steak ‘n Shake followed, along with the discovery they had common interests (including fishing) and small-town roots (he was from Wisconsin, she was from Michigan). Love blossomed.
When they said goodbye, Josie was just 19, and had been a married woman less than a month.
___
Dathan Gazelka was at Camp Shelby, along with his younger brother, Daniel. They left behind a proud father, and a nervous mom.
Dathan would be a team leader in Iraq. As a former Guard recruiter, practically every guy under his command would be someone he signed up. He’d played pool and shared beers with them, he knew their families, too. He felt a special sense of responsibility; they were going because of him. There was no way he’d stay behind.
He wasn’t crazy about leaving his wife, Mandy, and his family. Anyone who wasn’t scared about heading into a war, he thought, was either lying or crazy.
Dathan left behind for his wife two things: a flashlight and a shotgun, just in case she needed them for protection in the remote, wooded area where they live outside Bemidji, Minn.
Mandy may look delicate with her porcelain features; she’s anything but. She’s handy with a gun and has hunted deer, grouse and small game since she was 12. She also knows her way around the tool box: She can fix a hot water heater, replace a flat tire and do any task around the house.
She put on a brave face when she said goodbye to her husband in Mississippi. No tears, she told herself. It wasn’t until days later, when she was home alone, that she cried.
So many goodbyes, none of them easy.
___
Janelle Johnson signed up for the Guard as a teenager, but now she was a full-time Guard member and the mother of two little girls. Emily was not even a year old, and Elizabeth was 4. It was her duty to go, but she wondered: Would her girls forget her? And how would her husband, Chad, manage?
She prepared him as best she could. She created a spreadsheet of all their bills. He would have to write the checks now, take the girls to day care and the doctor, make them dinner, and tuck them in every night.
Her mind raced with questions: Would Chad know when to start using solid baby food for Emily? Would he remember all the appointments with the pediatrician? He hadn’t read all the baby books. She had. He didn’t have a mother’s instincts. How could he?
Janelle knew he would need support. She spread the word to her sister, her mother, the day care teacher: “Take care of my babies.”
She left her girls reminders, too. She videotaped herself holding her daughters in her lap and reading them stories, so Chad could play them when she was gone. She recorded herself playing with baby Emily, so she could see her mom’s face.
Chad works for an environmental drilling firm and he had already told his bosses he couldn’t travel anymore. He needed to be home every night.
Before she left for Iraq, the Johnsons took a vacation together in Florida. Emily was a year old, but her mother had missed nearly half her life while training in Mississippi.
She tried to get her baby to take her first steps, but Emily wasn’t ready.
And when Emily injured herself in a fall and Janelle tried to scoop her up and comfort her, the little girl screamed and looked at her as if her mother was a stranger.
That night, in bed, Janelle cried: Emily doesn’t remember me. Chad tried to reassure her.
A few days later, Janelle kissed her daughters goodbye. You won’t see me for a long time, she told Elizabeth, and with that she returned to Mississippi, her stomach aching with emptiness.
___
Col. David Elicerio, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, had visited Iraq in September 2005 to check out what lay in store for his troops.
A warrior with an authoritative voice and a ramrod posture befitting his 25 years in the military, Elicerio had been deployed with the unit before, in Bosnia.
But he knew this deployment would be different.
The heat, for one thing; a blistering 120-degree day was not unusual. And by comparison, Bosnia was friendly terrain. He did not expect an open-arms embrace in Iraq.
For two weeks, Elicerio rode on convoys. He consulted with the Texas National Guard commander he would replace.
And then, a soldier was killed.
Elicerio accompanied the brigade commander to the memorial, watching and listening to how he soothed his grieving soldiers. It was a helpful lesson.
In the months ahead, Elicerio would have to do the same thing, writing letters of condolence, offering words of comfort and rallying his troops to go on.
___
TO BE CONTINUED …
___
NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Attorney Gordon Johnson
http://subtlebraininjury.com
http://tbilaw.com
http://waiting.com
http://vestibulardisorder.com
http://youtube.com/profile?user=braininjuryattorney
g@gordonjohnson.com
800-992-9447
©Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr. 2008
Date: 8/2/2008 12:07 PM
By SHARON COHEN
EDITOR’S NOTE — Called to arms from their civilian life, members of a National Guard unit say their goodbyes to their loved ones, not knowing that they are about to depart on the longest deployment of the Iraq war. The first of seven parts.
By SHARON COHEN
AP National Writer
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — In the end, Chad Malmberg put his framed Silver Star on the wall and stowed away his helmet, some old uniforms and the dusty combat boots he had worn in the Iraqi desert.
He was a hero, now, and proud of it. Malmberg had quickly entered his last semester of college, blending easily into the anonymity of campus life. Within months, he had his degree.
It took months, too, to break some habits. Such as hugging the center line when he drove and swerving whenever he saw anything on the road, fearing hidden bombs. And ticking off a check list — gun, ammo, food — every time he went outside.
He was home, he was safe, he was whole.
So many others could not say as much: John Kriesel, Josh Hanson, J.R. Salzman, Corey Rystad, Bryan McDonough … some came back with broken bodies, some came back to eulogies and grieving loved ones and final resting places.
But none of them — none of the 5,000 men and women of the 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard — came back unchanged by their 22-month deployment, and their sojourn into the cauldron of Iraq.
Their time at war won a commendation in Congress as “the longest continuous deployment of any United States ground combat military unit during Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
And for every man and woman who served, there was someone at home, hoping and waiting for their return.
There was the young wife who scoured the Internet each morning, searching for news stories about the area where her husband was based — trying to gauge the dangers. The little boys who eagerly checked e-mail every night for messages from their soldier-father.
There was the father who wondered how to break it to his soldier-wife that their baby girl had uttered her first words — and she had missed it. The mother who walked to work praying for her soldier-son’s safety — telling herself if she arrived without a phone call he was OK.
This was a war where families were sometimes just a mouse-click away from their soldiers, where a mother who had just given birth dispatched cell phone photos of the baby to her soldier-husband, where home front celebrations — graduations, birthdays, even weddings — were shared across the continents, via Web cams and video hookups.
But there also were moments in Iraq, some terrifying, some heartbreaking, that could not be shared with others far away.
The day a doctor pleaded on behalf of a wounded Iraqi boy, knowing his words could mean the difference between life and death for the child. The afternoon a husband grieved his loss by softly muttering his wife’s name on a bomb-scarred road. The day troops gathered to remember a buddy at a memorial service that closed with a somber roll call, the soldier’s name repeated three times to no reply.
There were many such experiences in nearly 500 days in Iraq.
Over that long haul, the soldiers drove 2.4 million convoy miles, conducted 5,200 patrols, discovered 462 improvised explosive devices, captured more than 400 suspected insurgents.
This is the story of a very long deployment of a very long war — of how members of the 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division lived and died in Iraq, how their families endured while they were gone, and how what happened in a far distant land still resonates today.
___
Malmberg’s mother, Teri Walen, didn’t want him to go to Iraq. She didn’t support the war, didn’t think her only son should be there. She tried to talk him out of it.
“Do you think war is a good thing?” she asked when he called one night.
“No,” he replied. “What do you think, I’m crazy?”
But Malmberg was stubborn and determined, and convinced his mother he had good reasons for going. Wiry and intense, a mixed martial arts buff and former Army welterweight boxer, Malmberg had eight years of military training — including a stint as a paratrooper at Fort Bragg, N.C. — but he had never served his country in combat. Now he had the chance.
On July 15, 2006, the official word came down: The 1st Brigade Combat Team — nicknamed the Red Bulls — would be deployed. Some 2,600 folks from Minnesota, bolstered by two Guard units from Iowa and Nebraska and troops from 33 other states, would put their lives on hold to take up arms.
These were not, for the most part, full-time soldiers. They were members of the National Guard, farmers and factory workers, salespeople and mechanics, doctors and students. Among them were fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, pool-playing buddies, former high school football rivals, classmates and neighbors.
Malmberg was just a semester shy of finishing college, but his degree would have to wait. He bought a $400,000 life insurance policy and named his sister, Jessica, as the beneficiary.
But Teri’s biggest worry really wasn’t that her son would die in Iraq.
Her fear was that he’d be disabled and need care the rest of his life — that he would be unable to pursue a childhood dream and become a police officer, like his father and uncle.
Death or disfigurement were not the things Chad feared; he was afraid only that he might fail the soldiers who depended upon him to lead an infantry squad.
And so he packed his gear and headed south, to Camp Shelby, Miss., where the 1st Brigade Combat Team holed up for six months in barracks that had been flooded by Hurricane Katrina.
There, amid downed trees and buildings that had lost their roofs, they trained, practiced their marksmanship, studied Iraqi culture and learned to work as a team.
As they edged closer to Iraq, some made big changes in their lives.
John Kriesel and his longtime partner, Katie, dashed down to City Hall in St. Paul, Minn., with their two sons, Elijah, 4, and Broden, 3, to wed.
Kriesel — the kind of guy who dressed up in his brother’s Army fatigues when he was just 10, the kind of guy who persisted in his relationship with Katie only when she confirmed she had voted for George W. Bush — was all pumped up to go to Iraq.
He asked Katie for permission. It’s not a fair question, she said — if she said no, he’d resent her, and if he said yes, she’d blame herself if anything happened to him.
“Will yo u regret it when you’re 30 if you don’t go?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
On a family vacation in Florida, Kriesel talked with his sons about the war. He was going to fight the bad guys, he said, in a faraway place called Iraq so everyone there can be free.
Are you going to die? his boys asked. No, he assured them.
Are you going to come back OK? they asked. Yes, he said, I’ll be fine.
Kriesel talked of death only once, with Katie.
Promise me one thing, he said: If I die, don’t go on TV and criticize the war, as the mother of one fallen soldier did, famously — “Don’t go Cindy Sheehan on me.” And don’t let my boots be used in one of those anti-war demonstrations.
The granddaughter of two World War II veterans, the sister of a soldier, Katie understands the military. You can depend on me, she told her husband.
J.R. Salzman and his fiancee, Josie, also decided to marry before he shipped off to Iraq; if something happened to him, Salzman wanted Josie to receive spousal benefits.
Salzman drew a four-day pass from Camp Shelby, and they eloped to New Orleans. The city was still recovering from Katrina; the courthouse wasn’t open, the phones weren’t working right, but Josie was undeterred. They married in a brief ceremony at a judge’s elegant home.
In Iraq, Salzman would be just another soldier. At home, he was a celebrity of sorts — the five-time world logrolling champion, a title that earned him appearances on ESPN, stunt work in a Steve Martin movie and fan mail from all over.
That was how he met Josie. One day she tuned in to ESPN’s “Great Outdoor Games” and there he was, brown-haired, muscular, confident, agile, rolling along. She dropped him an admiring e-mail. A date at a Steak ‘n Shake followed, along with the discovery they had common interests (including fishing) and small-town roots (he was from Wisconsin, she was from Michigan). Love blossomed.
When they said goodbye, Josie was just 19, and had been a married woman less than a month.
___
Dathan Gazelka was at Camp Shelby, along with his younger brother, Daniel. They left behind a proud father, and a nervous mom.
Dathan would be a team leader in Iraq. As a former Guard recruiter, practically every guy under his command would be someone he signed up. He’d played pool and shared beers with them, he knew their families, too. He felt a special sense of responsibility; they were going because of him. There was no way he’d stay behind.
He wasn’t crazy about leaving his wife, Mandy, and his family. Anyone who wasn’t scared about heading into a war, he thought, was either lying or crazy.
Dathan left behind for his wife two things: a flashlight and a shotgun, just in case she needed them for protection in the remote, wooded area where they live outside Bemidji, Minn.
Mandy may look delicate with her porcelain features; she’s anything but. She’s handy with a gun and has hunted deer, grouse and small game since she was 12. She also knows her way around the tool box: She can fix a hot water heater, replace a flat tire and do any task around the house.
She put on a brave face when she said goodbye to her husband in Mississippi. No tears, she told herself. It wasn’t until days later, when she was home alone, that she cried.
So many goodbyes, none of them easy.
___
Janelle Johnson signed up for the Guard as a teenager, but now she was a full-time Guard member and the mother of two little girls. Emily was not even a year old, and Elizabeth was 4. It was her duty to go, but she wondered: Would her girls forget her? And how would her husband, Chad, manage?
She prepared him as best she could. She created a spreadsheet of all their bills. He would have to write the checks now, take the girls to day care and the doctor, make them dinner, and tuck them in every night.
Her mind raced with questions: Would Chad know when to start using solid baby food for Emily? Would he remember all the appointments with the pediatrician? He hadn’t read all the baby books. She had. He didn’t have a mother’s instincts. How could he?
Janelle knew he would need support. She spread the word to her sister, her mother, the day care teacher: “Take care of my babies.”
She left her girls reminders, too. She videotaped herself holding her daughters in her lap and reading them stories, so Chad could play them when she was gone. She recorded herself playing with baby Emily, so she could see her mom’s face.
Chad works for an environmental drilling firm and he had already told his bosses he couldn’t travel anymore. He needed to be home every night.
Before she left for Iraq, the Johnsons took a vacation together in Florida. Emily was a year old, but her mother had missed nearly half her life while training in Mississippi.
She tried to get her baby to take her first steps, but Emily wasn’t ready.
And when Emily injured herself in a fall and Janelle tried to scoop her up and comfort her, the little girl screamed and looked at her as if her mother was a stranger.
That night, in bed, Janelle cried: Emily doesn’t remember me. Chad tried to reassure her.
A few days later, Janelle kissed her daughters goodbye. You won’t see me for a long time, she told Elizabeth, and with that she returned to Mississippi, her stomach aching with emptiness.
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Col. David Elicerio, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, had visited Iraq in September 2005 to check out what lay in store for his troops.
A warrior with an authoritative voice and a ramrod posture befitting his 25 years in the military, Elicerio had been deployed with the unit before, in Bosnia.
But he knew this deployment would be different.
The heat, for one thing; a blistering 120-degree day was not unusual. And by comparison, Bosnia was friendly terrain. He did not expect an open-arms embrace in Iraq.
For two weeks, Elicerio rode on convoys. He consulted with the Texas National Guard commander he would replace.
And then, a soldier was killed.
Elicerio accompanied the brigade commander to the memorial, watching and listening to how he soothed his grieving soldiers. It was a helpful lesson.
In the months ahead, Elicerio would have to do the same thing, writing letters of condolence, offering words of comfort and rallying his troops to go on.
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TO BE CONTINUED …
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NOTE: The story of 1st Brigade Combat Team/34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard and its tour in Iraq was reconstructed from scores of interviews with more than 20 soldiers and members of their families. Most quotations are as remembered by the speakers. In addition, the series draws upon numerous official documents, including after-action reports; videos of news conferences; correspondence provided by the families (including e-mails and letters); television coverage of the unit’s return; personal journals and blog postings.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
Brain Injury is not New to Iraq
Today’s blog, is a video blog, a bit of a rant about someone who should know better, who made this statement:
“Correct if I am wrong, but I think Traumatic Brain Injury is a new injury unique to the war in Iraq. Suffered by people who have concussive injuries from being near the explosions, not from being hit directly, but from reverberations of the explosion. And um doctors are still trying to figure out how to deal with it. I think there are a lot of questions about medical compensation for it. “
The question came from Terry Gross on an NPR Podcast, Fresh Air. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90696597
The link to my Youtube video in response to that statement is here. http://youtube.com/watch?v=9huVQtkN2ZY
“Correct if I am wrong, but I think Traumatic Brain Injury is a new injury unique to the war in Iraq. Suffered by people who have concussive injuries from being near the explosions, not from being hit directly, but from reverberations of the explosion. And um doctors are still trying to figure out how to deal with it. I think there are a lot of questions about medical compensation for it. “
The question came from Terry Gross on an NPR Podcast, Fresh Air. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90696597
The link to my Youtube video in response to that statement is here. http://youtube.com/watch?v=9huVQtkN2ZY