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Purple heart, bronze star go to Fort Lewis soldier

Apr-26-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

After Staff Sgt. Chess Johnson was wounded in Iraq, he was flown to Germany and then to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He spent about a month recovering from a gunshot wound to the head before being shipped home to Fort Lewis.

His departure was probably a relief to Walter Reed nurses. He admits he was not a model patient.

Despite devastating injuries – a bullet tore through the right side of his face, destroying his eye and his cheekbone – Johnson was a handful. He removed those little sticky monitors, and one time he took out a catheter because he insisted on standing up and going to the bathroom. He’d sneak himself up and into the shower.

“I was lying in my bed one day and I was like, ‘How’m I going to get better, Doc?’” Johnson recalled in an interview this week. “He said, ‘You need to start acting normal, you need to start getting back into your daily routines.’

“‘All right, when can I do this?’”

“‘Two months.’”

The doctor might as well have said two light-years.

“No. I’m not going to lay here on my back for two months,” Johnson remembered thinking. “So I got in trouble.”

His wife, Amanda, says her 26-year-old husband has a stubborn streak.

He dug in his heels about one other thing: his Purple Heart, the medal that dates back to George Washington, given to service members wounded in combat.

A commander from Fort Lewis went to see him at Walter Reed and told him the president himself was going to pin it on.

Johnson, a native of Dove Creek, Colo., said no – not out of disrespect, but because he didn’t want it until he could get back to Iraq and receive it with his men. [...]


Comments For "Purple heart, bronze star go to Fort Lewis soldier":

Dear Sgt Johnson,
I am so proud of you and your tinacity! As a mother to a Stryker Soldier, I feel as if each and every soldier serving are my son/daughter. I have the motherly desire to do something to help you, yet you are every mothers' dream of a self-sufficient young man. May the Good Lord give you the strength to achieve your dream. God bless you, and give you the strength you need! Thank you for all you have done for our Great Nation. Never give up. I don't know you, yet I love you.
Sincerely,
Linda
Joe's Stryker Mom

Posted by: Linda, Stryker Momj [TypeKey Profile Page] | April 26, 2007 9:15 PM

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