Trying to make a life
After a battlefield injury, endless challenges
That's certainly the case with veterans like Adams, Recio, and Mayorga. At dawn on Jan. 19, 2003, they rolled out of the armory in North Miami so fast there was hardly time for goodbyes. "Whatever you do, don't let them hurt my baby," Summer Adams, 30, called out as her husband of six years left for a month of training at Fort Stewart, Ga. Spc. James Bissett laughed: "Don't worry, we'll only be gone six months, tops. We won't see any action. We're the National Guard."
He couldn't have been more wrong. About 40 percent of the U.S. soldiers in Iraq are from National Guard or Reserve units. Joining up with the expectation of responding to emergencies and natural disasters, many guardsmen and women have scant training for conflicts like Iraq. Of the 39,536 National Guard soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, 149 have died, 1,046 have been wounded.
"Tip of the sword." The men of Charlie Company wound up in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad in the so-called Sunni triangle where the Iraqi insurgency has been so lethal. Despite assurances they would leave earlier, Charlie Company wound up staying almost a year. Ninety-five soldiers returned in March 2004. They were blessed to have no deaths in their company, but many were wounded. Twenty-three soldiers received Purple Hearts.
When Charlie Company first landed in Ramadi, soldiers were unaware of the city's volatility. Instead, they were cocky. "We were untouchable," says Sgt. Mario Vega, 27. "We became the tip of the sword." That ended abruptly on July 5. Around 11:30 that night, Sgt. Jose Mateo's platoon had to cover a major intersection along the Euphrates River. It was their fourth night out on the same mission. Lt. Ben Baar, 38, protested to the brass about taking the same route at the same time so many nights in a row. We might as well just write up our plans in Arabic, he thought, and pass them around town. Mateo, 34, also had a sinking feeling. "We are going to get hit tonight," he told his guys. "The enemy knows we are tired. They are going to be expecting us." Baar, a 20-year career soldier, was driving the unarmored humvee, or as he called it, the "four-wheel-drive aluminum can."
Spc. Jason Recio, a 23-year-old history major at Florida International University, was in his favorite spot, manning the big gun, an M-240 Bravo. Recio loved action. He had been an offensive lineman at his Catholic all-boys high school and hoped to become a paramedic or a firefighter. Nearby sat Mayorga, a pal who had emigrated from Nicaragua at age 4 and longed to become a U.S. citizen. For Mayorga, 22, the first in his family to go to college, the Guard was a way to show his love for his adopted land--and pay for nursing classes at Florida International University. The platoon medic, Mayorga was joined by yet another Miami friend, Spc. Esteban Lora, 21. He was the radio man.
Recio had just put a dip of chewing tobacco in his mouth when there was suddenly a blistering white flash. It looked like thousands of tiny meteors were flying around the humvee. No one was sure whether it was a rocket-propelled grenade, a bomb, or a land mine. There was silence, then bullets spattered the humvee. "Anyone hit?" Mateo yelled. Baar was sprawled on the steering wheel. Mayorga was screaming, holding his left hand minus several fingers. "Doc got hit! Doc got hit!" Lora yelled. Nearby, Recio cried, "My leg! My leg! My leg!" Shrapnel had torn through his calves. Mayorga wrapped his hand in bandages, then turned to Lora, the only man uninjured, giving him step-by-step instructions on how to save Recio's life. In pain, Mayorga quipped, "Hey, Lora, I'd give you a hand, but I only have one left." Mateo remembers a salty smell and thought it was the nearby river. It turned out to be blood. It was everywhere in the humvee.
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