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Monday, September 26, 2005
Wounded in Iraq: Survivors face a painful and lonely road to recovery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
White dots glow like stars across Sgt. Jim Kirchner’s chest X-ray. Each is a piece of shrapnel he carried home from Iraq. Kirchner has counted 28 throughout his body.
CURTIS COMPTON / AJC Army National Guard Sgt. Jim Kirchner of Paulding County still feels pain in his arm and shoulder from the mortar attack that nearly killed him June 12 in Iraq.
One is working its way out his left arm near a tattoo of a purple hooded Grim Reaper. Others, such as the pair close to his heart, aren’t going anywhere. Doctors told him it would be too risky to pull them out.
The Georgia Army National Guard soldier carries his X-ray images around on a compact disc. He shows them off to friends and gripes about getting hassled at airport metal detectors.
“I’m going to print some of them off to give to my son to do connect-the-dots,” said the father of four from Paulding County.
His sense of humor helps him cope. But he still hurts, sometimes intensely. An insurgent mortar attack on June 12 essentially ended his 18-year military career.
Kirchner’s unit, the 48th Brigade Combat Team, has drawn considerable attention in recent months for the combat deaths it has suffered. Since the brigade arrived in Iraq in early June, 18 members have died, 14 in insurgent bomb attacks. But more than 100 others have been wounded, some severely. And they rarely attract the same attention as those who have died.
CURTIS COMPTON / AJC Kirchner and his wife, Cynthia, had been married only one day when he received orders to Iraq.
Since the start of the war in Iraq, more than 14,500 American service members have been wounded, including nearly 7,000 whose injuries prevented them from returning to duty for at least 72 hours. Many of the more seriously wounded probably would have died in earlier wars but were saved by advanced medical procedures and quicker evacuation to field hospitals.
Federal privacy laws prohibit the military from identifying the wounded and the extent of their injuries without their consent, said Jim Driscoll, a spokesman for the Georgia National Guard. But 17 soldiers from the 48th, including Kirchner, have suffered “serious” or “very serious” injuries, Driscoll said. The group includes two amputees, a soldier with serious burns and others with shrapnel and gunshot wounds.
All have returned to the United States, although some are still recuperating in hospitals.
As of Sept. 13, 31 soldiers from the 48th had received Purple Hearts. Kirchner has not received his medal yet, although his unit nominated him for it.
The 48th also has counted 106 “non-serious” injuries, including concussions, broken bones and minor shrapnel wounds. Most of those soldiers were treated and returned to duty. Five were evacuated from the Middle East and remain in U.S. hospitals.
For those recuperating from their wounds, especially those with serious injuries, the struggle can be difficult, lonely and painful, as Kirchner has discovered.
Kirchner, 37, said the Army will retire him after his medical care is complete. He plans to return to his civilian job as a product specialist for a software company. That will be a challenge, however, because the job requires typing.
After five surgeries, parts of his neck, right arm and right hand remain paralyzed. His medical records say he can no longer carry a weapon or even salute. The doctors limit him to carrying no more than 5 pounds. He walks, but gingerly.
“I can’t give my kids a big hug. That sucks,” Kirchner said in a measured tone. “I’ll never play catch with my sons. I’ll never be able to teach my son to throw a baseball. That kind of stuff hurts me emotionally.”
Kirchner remembers many details about the mortar attack. It was his third day at Forward Operating Base Michael, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. He had just finished night guard duty.
He took off his body armor and helmet and lay in his cot half asleep. Some time that morning, a mortar round exploded just outside his tent, spraying his back, shoulders, right arm and head with shrapnel. The deafening blast threw him to the floor.
He glanced around and tried unsuccessfully to raise himself off the floor. He was injured too badly. He remembers seeing sunlight pouring through holes in the tent wall and thinking, “All of that is inside you.” His blood pooled beneath him on the plywood floor.
“My back was shredded. My arm was just bleeding like a pig. I was screaming, ‘I’m hit! I’m hit! Medic! Medic!’ “
Staff Sgt. Joe Wilson was also in the tent during the attack. He and other soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 108th Armor Regiment rushed to Kirchner’s aid.
“I couldn’t hear anything because my ears had been blasted,” Wilson, of Canton, said in a telephone interview from Iraq. “I had temporary hearing loss. The tent was full of smoke and dust. Of course Jim was screaming in pain and bleeding. And I reached for my vest to throw over him to protect him from what else was going to happen.”
Wilson joined Kirchner in yelling for medics. Help arrived in less than a minute.
At least three or four more mortar rounds exploded that morning, Kirchner said, seriously wounding two other soldiers and a civilian contract worker.
He said he nearly bled to death in the moments after the blast. His left lung collapsed. The explosion damaged his liver, pancreas and a kidney. Doctors cut him open to repair his damaged organs. A nearly foot-long red scar stretches up his belly and around his belly-button.
When Kirchner was returned to the United States for treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, his wife, Cynthia, stayed by his bedside. She put her hands on his wounded body and prayed with an open Bible beside her.
“It is a miracle he survived,” she said. “It is a true blessing.”
The couple were married last Nov. 7, the day before he learned he would be going to Iraq.
Despite her constant presence, the nightmares started at Walter Reed. Kirchner screamed for medics in his sleep. Doctors diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental condition in which people relive combat experiences.
“I couldn’t hide it at all,” he said. “I was basically reliving getting blown up.”
When he was finally able to go on convalescent leave from the hospital, Kirchner and his wife went to dinner at a local TGI Friday’s. There, he admitted something to her: He wanted to be back in Iraq with his unit.
“It broke me,” Cynthia Kirchner said. “I cried all through dinner.”
She didn’t fully understand her husband’s bond with the other soldiers until last month, she said, when she saw him grieve for three who had died in a vehicle accident in Iraq.
The couple recently talked about his long recovery, sitting across from each other at the Georgia Army National Guard armory in Douglasville. Kirchner brightened when she arrived and grinned as they talked. She was picking him up from his first day back at work. He didn’t want to drive, because he was taking powerful painkillers. Kirchner spent that first day at work dealing with his medical paperwork and answering phones. The armory felt lonely. At times, he was the only one in the nondescript brick building. With the soldiers away, parts of the facility remain dark and empty.
But Kirchner has something to focus on. He is in charge of a big renovation of the decades-old armory. On his list: new flooring and paint and a good pressure washing.
He plans to get inmates from the local jail to do the work. He won’t let them cut corners. He wants the place to look nice for when his buddies return. He misses the soldiers, the ones he trained with, the ones who saved his life.
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