Pfc. Chris Shipley, who lost his right eye in the battle
for Baghdad, sorts mail in his new desk job
at Fort Stewart. He and other wounded soldiers
will march in Atlanta today.
Posted on 07/03/2003 8:56:38 PM PDT by Pokey78
FORT STEWART, Ga. -- They wear their wounds with the casual irreverence of young soldiers still trying to grow into their scars.
They joke with one another about their patches, casts and splints, but feel uncomfortable when strangers stare and ask what happened.
For three soldiers from Charlie Company of the 3rd Infantry Division's Task Force 1-64, the war in Iraq ended three months ago when they were seriously wounded in the battle for Baghdad. Since then, they have endured nearly 10 surgeries among them, with more to come.
But they say they have no regrets.
"I did my job knowing full well I could be injured. I'd do it again if I had to," said Pfc. Chris Shipley, 19, of Glendale, Ariz.
Shipley lost his right eye April 5 in the Baghdad battle. Today, he will be among 80 Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans from Fort Stewart who will march in the Salute 2 America parade in downtown Atlanta.
Shipley will be virtually indistinguishable from the other soldiers in his desert camouflage uniform and floppy "boonie" hat -- except for the black patch over his right eye.
Shipley was hit in the forehead by a bullet or shrapnel as Task Force 1-64 was driving into the heart of the Iraqi capital in a dramatic show of U.S. military force that later became known as the "Thunder Run."
"All I can remember is that one minute I was shooting Iraqis and the next I woke up in the hospital," Shipley said.
Riding in the same armored personnel carrier was Pfc. Don Schafer, 23, of Baltimore. Schafer was hit at least twice almost at the same instant as Shipley. The bullets shattered Schafer's right arm and penetrated his right lung. He said he was told he nearly died on the operating table.
Pfc. K.C. Brons, 20, of Dallas, lost the little finger on his left hand and his ring finger was badly damaged when he was hit by shrapnel from an explosion in the southern suburbs of Baghdad on April 4.
A fourth soldier from Charlie Company, Staff Sgt. Chhay Mao, 23, of Modesto, Calif., suffered a flesh wound April 7 in Baghdad when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the side of his tank. But medics patched up an impatient Mao and sent him back into the fight within minutes.
They were the only four Charlie Company soldiers wounded in nearly four weeks of intense fighting in and around the Iraqi capital.
Humor masks hurt
In addition to losing the eye, Shipley is dealing with other physical problems as a result of the wound. He has no depth perception, has difficulty seeing at night and, because his sinus cavity was badly damaged, has lost his senses of smell and taste.
"You could stick a cologne bottle up my nose and I couldn't smell it," Shipley said with the sardonic sense of humor for which he is known among his buddies.
Shipley hopes to be fitted with a prosthetic eye at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington in the next couple of weeks.
He finds the eye patch distracting, but more to others than to himself. As an example, he cited the time a few weeks ago when he was home on convalescent leave and went to a youth league baseball game with his younger brother.
"I didn't realize until I got there that his team's nickname was the Pirates," Shipley said. "There I was with this eye patch and all these little kids were coming up to me and asking if I was the team mascot or something."
A changed future
Shipley has returned to duty at Fort Stewart, but not as the tank driver he once was. Now, he is sorting mail and helping out with other soldiers' finances, a job he calls "extremely boring."
When he leaves the Army, he wants to go to college to study computer science, but he is not sure when that will be.
While Shipley has no memory of the moment he was wounded, the recollections of Brons and Schafer are, at times, gruesomely vivid. Yet they talk about their wounds in voices that are almost dispassionately clinical.
Brons, a tank driver, had gotten bored driving and decided to switch places with another crew member and use the 7.62 mm machine gun on top of the 70-ton Abrams tank.
Iraqi trucks loaded with ammunition and weapons were blowing up all around the unit as it made its way through Baghdad's southern suburbs.
"I don't remember hearing the explosion, but I saw the light," said Brons, who is married and has an 18-month-old daughter. When he looked down at his left hand, he saw his little finger hanging by a shred of skin and a large gouge out of his ring finger.
His buddies later found pieces of his wedding ring scattered around the tank. They are saving them for him.
Brons has had three surgeries and faces at least one more, plus months' more rehabilitation and therapy. Still in the Army, he will remain on convalescent leave at least until July 17. He could be returned to light duty or sent before a medical board to determine whether he can remain in the service.
"I'm not sure what's going to happen, because I still can't grip anything with my left hand," said Brons, who wants to become a police officer after his Army duty.
Long road to recovery
Schafer is not sure how many surgeries he has had. He remembers at least three, but believes he may have had as many as six.
Much of the work was on the humerus bone in his upper left arm, which was shattered by the 7.62 mm Iraqi bullet that surgeons later dug out.
"I remember everything that happened until I got on the second [medical evacuation] helicopter, but when I try to think back to the gunshot and what happened, all I remember thinking was that I didn't want to lose my arm," Schafer said.
Schafer had been a loader on a tank but was displaced by another soldier after that soldier's tank caught fire during the battle. Schafer found a spot in the armored personnel carrier.
After he was hit, Schafer was taken to a military hospital in Rota, Spain, where he and Shipley ended up in beds next to one another. It was only then that Schafer began to experience any pain.
"I didn't feel any pain after I was hit, and I didn't feel any pain while I was on the helicopter. The recovery was more painful than the actual injury itself," he said. "I told the doctors, 'I can take the gunshots; I can't take this.' "
Schafer said he has limited use of his right arm and tires easily because of the damage to his lung.
He said he hasn't decided whether he will remain in the Army. If he does, he would like to become an X-ray technician, something that fascinated him while he was hospitalized.
Schafer only recently had a large steel stabilizing rod removed from his arm. While he and Shipley were in the hospital, Shipley used the rod to hang his intravenous drip bag when the two went to watch movies.
An infection Schafer caught in the hospital in Spain has been cured and he is now able to travel. This week, he was visiting relatives in South Carolina and hoped to get to Fort Stewart to visit his buddies.
He also wants to return to Iraq, not to fight but to let the soldiers of Charlie Company still stationed there know how he and the others are doing.
"I just want to tell them that nobody was to blame for what happened to us, that we're all doing fine," he said.
Like Shipley and Brons, Schafer has no regrets.
"If it was the same situation again, I wouldn't do anything different," he said.
Brons, a tank driver, had gotten bored driving and decided to switch places with another crew member and use the 7.62 mm machine gun on top of the 70-ton Abrams tank. (Remember that...he was "bored"...)
Iraqi trucks loaded with ammunition and weapons were blowing up all around the unit as it made its way through Baghdad's southern suburbs. (Hm, I really can't fathom that being all that "boring"???)
"I don't remember hearing the explosion, but I saw the light," said Brons, who is married and has an 18-month-old daughter. When he looked down at his left hand, he saw his little finger hanging by a shred of skin and a large gouge out of his ring finger. His buddies later found pieces of his wedding ring scattered around the tank. They are saving them for him."
Let's see here...he gets hit in the hand and his buddies find his wedding ring all around the tank? Seems to me if MY tank got hit, I'd be movin' it away from the zone where it got tagged and chasing the SOB who nailed the tank!
Ya maybe smell some media hype (bolstered by some military "political correctness"?) This account doesn't quite hold water (very similar to PFC Lynch!)
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