BillingsGazette.com :: Laurel soldier recovering from injuries sustained in Iraq

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Laurel soldier recovering from injuries sustained in Iraq

By NOELLE STRAUB
Gazette Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - They had finished their patrol and were back at base when a new order came in.

A Raven, a small remote-controlled aircraft, had crashed near Qarghuli Village in Iraq where the infantry unit was stationed. They had to go back out and get it. Hurrying, Army Specialist Aharon Scribner, usually a driver, offered to take the gunner's spot because he already had extra armor with him.

Four humvees and crews headed out, Scribner's vehicle at the back. Just 800 meters out, his humvee was hit by a blast that flipped the truck end over end.

"The last thing I remember before getting knocked out is the whole truck getting lifted up and thinking, 'Here we go again,' " Scribner recalled recently. He had been injured two weeks before, also by an improvised explosive device.

The fourth humvee was hit first, then the lead vehicle, and finally the middle two. Coming to, lying on the floorboards, Scribner could hear bullets hitting the truck. The insurgents also were dropping mortar shells.

"What they were trying to do was blow up my truck and the front truck so they could lock everyone up ... and try to kill all of us," he said.

He crawled out of the truck and saw the driver and truck commander lying in a ditch where they had been thrown. With three broken vertebrae, Scribner crawled to them amid the chaos. He saw one was totally out.

"I laid on top of him while we were getting shot at, until he was aware and responsive," he said.

That action later earned him an Army Commendation Medal for Valor.

Scribner had lost his weapon when the IED blew up the vehicle. He took some shrapnel from a mortar round. "Our truck was fried, we didn't even have a weapon system on our truck anymore," he said.

The attack continued until Apache helicopter gunships arrived.

"As soon as the Apaches showed up, the bad guys took off," he said. "At that point it wasn't a firefight anymore, it became an evacuation situation."

Amazingly, no Americans died in the incident. Scribner was flown four miles down the road to a battle position where he got morphine for his pain. He spent two days in Baghdad, another couple of days in a hospital in Germany and then was flown to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The attack happened on Jan. 24. Scribner remains at Walter Reed and is awaiting his discharge from the military.

•••

Aharon Scribner grew up in Laurel, graduated from high school there in 2001 and attended a year of college at Montana State University Billings. He joined the Army at 21, largely to honor his father.

His father had suffered a stroke, and Scribner watched his father's health decline for three months until he died.

"I dived into a bottle," Scribner said. "I pretty much came to realize I needed to get away from home for a while or I wasn't going to make it. I pretty much did it for him."

He graduated from basic training in 2005 and spent nearly a year at Fort Drum, N.Y., before being deployed to Iraq with Delta Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.

The rest of his unit is returning to the U.S. just before Thanksgiving. Scribner will take two weeks of leave to spend the holiday with his girlfriend and his mother, Lore Scribner, in Billings. He plans to visit his brothers-in-arms at Fort Drum in December.

•••

Scribner and his unit deployed on Aug. 15 last year. When they landed in Kuwait, the temperature was 128 degrees.

They were eventually stationed at Qarghuli Village, about 25 miles southwest of Baghdad on the Euphrates River.

"We were just out there to kind of show a presence and monitor the presence of suspected terrorists and basically just to provide security to that region," he said.

They were up against a "pretty sophisticated terrorist cell," he said. The insurgents detonated bombs using cell phones or infrared sensors similar to those that stop a garage door if a child runs through it. When the tires of the U.S. vehicles hit the beam, the IED would go off, he said.

"Pretty much every patrol that went out got hit by an IED," he said. Most weren't catastrophic; they would blow a tire or shatter the windshield, he said.

They patrolled Route Malibu, the only road in and out of the area. Americans controlled a six-mile stretch of the road. They also conducted foot patrols and made door-to-door searches for weapons caches.

Iraqis would watch the Americans patrolling the road, time how long it took them to do a loop, and plant a bomb with minutes to spare, he said.

The unit had known the area would be seething with unrest. A year before, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division had raped a young Iraqi woman nearby.

"Going in we knew it was going to be pretty tough," he said. "You pretty much wait and see what happens."

•••

Scribner's first combat wound came just two weeks before the one that landed him at Walter Reed.

On the night of Jan. 11, an IED detonated under the middle of his truck. A driver and a designated marksman, he was behind the wheel when the explosion blew right under the transmission. The blast came straight up through the radio mount, between the driver and passenger seats. Luckily, Scribner had his sniper rifle wedged next to him.

"It's the only thing that saved my right arm from being blown off," he said.

The weapon took the bulk of the shrapnel, but Scribner took some in his right arm and leg. He was taken to a hospital in Baghdad, and went back to his unit a week later.

Scribner, 24, now has two Purple Hearts.

•••

In May, while Scribner was at Walter Reed, seven soldiers from his company were ambushed in Iraq. Four were killed outright, three were captured. The body of one of the captives was found in the Euphrates; the other two are still missing.

"I buried two in Arlington (National Cemetery)," he said. Learning how they died prompted his decision to leave the military. He's now working on getting out.

"I was really angry with the command decision that left my guys out there to get captured and killed," he said.

The command knew how sophisticated the insurgents were, he said, yet sent the soldiers out about 400 meters from a battle position at night to watch for insurgents.

"In a combat zone, 400 meters is a long ways," he said. "You don't put seven guys that far away from support when the bad guys are as organized as they are, and my command knew it. You don't put seven guys out to dry like that."

That happened months after the attack on Scribner's four-humvee patrol. Commanders knew the insurgents were well organized, he said, and that feelings were running high after the rape.

"It should have been an indication to command we needed more than one company," he said. "For them to put us out there short-handed like that, I don't understand why that was allowed to happen. That's pretty much what cemented my decision to get out of the Army."

Scribner said there were about 80 soldiers in Delta Company at the time.

"The command decisions that were made were inexcusable in my opinion," he said.

Scribner is also disappointed, angry even, that none of the state's members of Congress have contacted him, not even a phone call to thank him for his service.

•••

When he got to Walter Reed, Scribner could walk but not well. His back still gives him pain, and he still has some shrapnel in his body. He does physical therapy and also sees a doctor for post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

He has nightmares every now and again, he said. Crowds bother him, as do strange noises. The sensation of riding an elevator makes him feeling like he's back in the truck, flipping over.

Scribner lives at the 200-room Mologne House, an Army hotel on the Walter Reed campus. Many wounded soldiers recover there.

Despite media attention to shortcomings at Walter Reed, Scribner says the medical staff is "state-of-the-art, top-notch. ... I can't really complain about this place, because it's great."

The problem is with the bureaucracy, he said, although that's getting better, too. There's a lack of communication between the doctors, the Veterans Administration and the chain of command, he said.

It will be early next year before Scribner can be discharged. He has already gone through part of the long process to determine his disability rating, but must remain on active duty while that plays out. It can take months or even years to complete the process.

Congress, veterans' advocates and inspector general reports have all focused on problems of the disability rating system.

It begins with the Medical Evaluation Board, when physicians examine patients. If their injuries are found to make them unfit for duty, the Physical Evaluation Board then determines whether the problem was service-related and assigns the disability rating.

Those with at least a 30 percent disability rating receive disability retirement pay, medical benefits and commissary privileges. Below 30 percent, veterans receive severance pay, but no benefits.

Scribner said many of his friends at Walter Reed have been given such low percentages on their disability ratings that they and their families will not qualify for monthly checks, health insurance and other benefits. Many soldiers just want to go home, Scribner said, so they give up and accept a low rating.

Scribner signed off recently on the Medical Evaluation Board report and awaits action by the next board. He has vowed to appeal his rating if it comes in low.

He wants to move back to Montana and finish college. He would like to become a game warden. If that doesn't work out, he'll try law enforcement, maybe doing border patrol along the Hi-Line, he said.

No matter what he does, he'll stay in Montana.

"I joined (the Army) more for Montana than I did for the United States," he said. "I just love our state. ... I wouldn't trade Montana for anything."

And if he had it to do over again? Aharon Scribner said he would still join the Army "in a heartbeat."

Published on Monday, November 05, 2007.
Last modified on 11/5/2007 at 12:53 am

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Chuck Feney said 1 month ago

Thank you for your sacrifice, but the whole idea that this country got suckered into Cheney's no-bid profit machine makes me want to throw up. What a waste of human potential. American's need to wake up and put the criminals who led us into the Iraq debacle in irons.

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