Home » Archives » "Survivor recovers, comes back to Iraq post"

Survivor recovers, comes back to Iraq post

May-22-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

Link to Full Article

MATT MISTEREK; The News Tribune

MOSUL, Iraq – Spc. Don Larson couldn’t see. His skin felt like it was on fire and his legs hurt like somebody had whacked them with a bat.

It was Dec. 21 and a suicide bomber had just blown himself to bits in the dining facility – DFAC, in Army shorthand – at Forward Operating Base Marez. Larson lay on the floor with second-degree burns on his face and hands and four shrapnel wounds in his legs. He didn’t yet know the blindness would pass.

But the Fort Lewis soldier and Steilacoom resident had a wife and a son back home, with another boy on the way. He was determined to stay as upbeat as possible.

“From the moment they picked me up from the DFAC that day, I said to myself, ‘It will do me no good to be negative,’” Larson recounted last week. “‘I will not scream out in pain because there are enough people around me already in pain.’”[...]

Those who didn’t make it

As the danger passed and the minutes crawled by, Larson found out about some of the 22 who didn’t make it. He knew Capt. William Jacobsen from religious services on base. He was acquainted with Spc. Jonathan Castro, who used to bring his weapon into the small arms shop.

From Baghdad to Balad, from Landstuhl, Germany, to San Antonio, Texas, Larson said he received good medical care, and he won’t forget the nurses who stayed by his bedside. Back home in Washington, his wife, Stacy, and his sons gave him plenty of incentive to heal quickly.

He returned to Marez this month to find a swankier and more secure chow hall.

“When I went through it the first time, I went through all the emotions of ‘It’s OK, I’m going to be all right here, I’m safe.’”

There’s no way to make sense of the violence that day five months ago, but for Larson it has helped to make it personal and to find it within his power to even the score.“(The enemy’s) mission was to take me away from my unit,” he said. “My mission was to get back to my unit, because it makes the enemy that less effective.

“Coming back was a victory for me.”


Advertisements