After I found out I was going to be sent to Fort Bragg I was extremely upset. I could not believe it. After I had gone through all the crap, they had the nerve to take me away from my family again. It was so wrong to send me away. I needed to be home with my family to heal. It’s very hard to get better when you are drugged and no one cares if you live or die. I am not exaggerating when I say that not ONE military personnel cared enough to even question where I was. Something that’s even worse is when I contacted Missouri’s “Great” senator; his office took the fax and said they would get back to me that week. Guess what? No calls, not even a sorry letter. From that point on for 6 months I was led to believe that I would go home daily and then forgotten all together. I was lost in the paperwork and shuffled under the desk, not only did they forget they lost ALL my medical documents from when I got hurt. All I needed was some Ruby Red Slippers so I could go home.

When I arrived at Fort Sam Houston I had my 3rd surgery. After the surgery I woke in a “bubble”. They had special rooms for those wounded by explosives sealed off from the regular hospital. Everything was thrown away after it was used; everyone wore a suit protecting them. After seeing all this I wondered “where is my protection?” They were afraid of what I was exposed to so before they would take it off they had sent samples of blood to get checked out. I felt like I was ET, I was wounded, in a bubble and everyone around me looked like a scientist that wanted to poke and prod me.
I really try to make life the best that it can be. It is really hard to when you don’t have clothes on. Remember the whole no clothes thing? Just to let you know I didn’t get any clothes for fourteen days. By the way that was not a miss-type 14 days. However on the 15th day I was given a pair of red shorts… That is all. When my parents arrived they were allowed to take me out of the bubble and take me to the PX. There they have clothes and stuff. Brook Army Medical Center provided me a $500 Gift Card to the PX as part of a program that allows wounded troops to get clothing because they most likely lost everything like me. If you don’t know clothes are expensive at the PX so I didn’t get much, but I was so happy because I was civilized again.

I traveled another 16 hours or so by the most comfortable C-5 plane ever and I arrived at Ft. Andrews AFB. I was tired as you could probably imagine so when I got there I was ready to sleep. When we landed we were greeted by lots of civilians who wanted to thank us but in the process slowed down the speed on which I got to go to sleep. I wasn’t to upset because these were nice and just wanted to show their support and say thank you. This is something that doesn’t happen that often. I have talked to soldiers who have been back for months and I was the first one to say “thanks for your service to our country”. For everything we have all been through it is important to say thanks to those who serve. If they weren’t out there doing the tough stuff we would be short a lot more than the WTC. If the U.S. had never stood up against terrorism they would still be bombing us. If you think it was bad in ’01 what if they hit us with a nuke or a dirty bomb? The media has blasted Bush for going into Iraq for no reason but I have seen WMD all over that country. They hid everything under the sand. We found rockets and facilities that were used to make the chemicals in such weapons all buried. One of the buildings we raided had literally tons of Atropine. If you don’t know it is used as a nerve agent antidote by U.S. soldiers. We also found chemical protective masks. Don’t be alarmed though the media says that there isn’t anything there. I would start planning your next vacation there right away before all the flights on Iraqistani-air are filled up. Good luck and try to avoid the mortars water balloons.

On the second to last day I was in Germany the nurse told me I had to try walking with crutches. “NO” was the only thing I said. She insisted however and I had to. The reason this was a bad idea I thought was any time I even lowered my foot off the 3 pillows that were stacked on my bed, it hurt like crazy. She said it would help me not loose (as much) muscle in my leg. I didn’t care why they wanted me to do it, I just knew it hurt. Any way after the “great” journey down the hall they told me I would be leaving for the United States in the morning, also on the TV I saw that US soldiers had just killed Saddam’s sons. This was the best news so far. This was awesome because the only things I had heard on the news or from family while I was there was bad. Usually it was about how many soldiers were killed or how many insurgents we killed. Never was about anything good like how we helped the people by providing them with salt to clean there water with their filtration system. What about the time we rebuilt two schools that were destroyed by the enemy? Oh and by the way this was just in the small town my team was in, I haven’t even mentioned what went on in the rest of the country. I guess it just doesn’t make as good of a pay check for those reporters to report the “good truth”. I guess one way to look at it though is they did report the truth. Didn’t they?