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Once more to war, with no regrets

Jan-27-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

Link to Full Article
MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

On Lt. Damon Armeni’s last trip to Iraq, they weren’t sure he’d survive the medical evacuation flight home.

Shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade had ripped into his abdomen. He lost his spleen and sections of his colon and intestines.

He spent long stretches in the hospital to fight infection. Doctors broke four of his toes and fused the bones together to counter the nerve damage that was causing them to curl up like a claw.

And now he’s getting ready to go back to the war zone.

He wants to do it. Ever since he was a little kid, he’s dreamed of being an Army officer, a battalion commander.

“I have a hard time accepting that our enemies could stop me from achieving that,” the 27-year-old Tacoma native said in an interview at his home at Fort Lewis. “As long as my family is supporting me, I’m going to keep trying.”

Armeni is one of more than 250 soldiers from the Army’s first Stryker brigade – the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis – to be wounded during the brigade’s year in Iraq in 2003-04. The 4,000-soldier force is due to return for another year in June or July.

Few were hurt as badly as Armeni.

Michael Gilbert has written about Armeni before.


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