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Area soldier in surgery after shrapnel strike

Apr- 2-2006 » Filed Under: 172nd SBCT

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By Paul Wood, The News-Gazette

A central Illinois soldier is in a hospital in Germany after a bomb went off near his head in Iraq on Tuesday.

Spc. Brock Siltman is undergoing surgery to remove shrapnel near his spine, an operation complicated by the wound's proximity to his jugular vein, said Joann Logsdon of Champaign, his great-aunt.

Stockman, 20, is a 2003 graduate of Carrollton High School, where he lettered in three sports. He signed up for the Army on his 17th birthday, said his mother, Julie Siltman.

"When the other kids wanted to play cowboys and Indians, he always wanted to play Army," she said.

Siltman is a member of the 172nd Stryker Brigade of Alaska, where his wife naRetta lives on a base.

They have no children, his mother said.

He was in a Stryker armored vehicle near Mosul on Tuesday when the tank swerved to avoid a spot where insurgents had been seen burying an improvised explosive device, Logsdon said. He was in the gun turret when a bomb hanging in a tree went off near his neck.

As far as she has been told, no one else was seriously injured.

A spokeswoman for the Army, Maj. Crystal Wilson, said Tuesday that no information would be released to the press on the incident out of concerns for privacy. There has been no government release on the incident.


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