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Battle for life

Aug-28-2004 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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BY MICK WALSH

Soldier considers himself lucky as he recovers from AK-47 bullet that nicked his spine

A millimeter, a centimeter, certainly no more than that.

As for the bullet that left its shadow on Sgt. Paul Schmitz's spine as it passed through his body, it could not have weighed more than a few grams.

"Luck is what it is," said Schmitz, speaking from his room at Walter Reed Hospital, describing his close encounter, if not with death, then certainly with paralysis.

For if that bullet, fired from an insurgent's AK-47, had not deflected off a bony spur attached to a vertebrae in Schmitz's back, what is now being considered a "miracle" recovery might just have become another tragedy of war.[...]

Schmitz's recollection of that day in Mosul, a town on the Tigris River, is as clear as the desert horizon.

He was a team leader with Bravo Company's third platoon, designated that Aug. 4 day as a Quick Reaction Force. "We were to respond to anything that happened that day." Which meant that when a platoon from Alpha Company got in trouble, Bravo's force came to the rescue.

The 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, out of Fort Lewis, Wash., is a Stryker unit. And upon the Army's newest fighting machine is where Schmitz found himself, firing the grenade launcher attached to his M-4 rifle from the back hatch.

"We were surrounded, 360 degrees surrounded, by men with rifles and RPGs (rocket propelled grenades)," he said. "I had just fired and turned around to fire again when I was hit. I was stunned, a strange sensation went through my entire body, then my legs hyper-extended and I could barely hold myself up. I lost all feeling in my legs."[...]


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