Stryker Brigade News

"The woman on the phone said, 'I have an injury report,' and I said, this is a joke," recalled Danielle. She had heard about bogus calls to service families from people purporting to be from the Red Cross and asking for Social Security numbers.

"I'm from the Department of the Army," the voice said flatly. "Your husband was seriously injured. He received a right leg compound fracture, left arm open wound and left leg amputation below the knee."

Amazingly, Danielle didn't cry. She had to hold it together for the children. "I knew he was alive. That's all that mattered," she said.

A little over an hour later, a second call came, and this time the voice informed her that Brian's condition had been changed from seriously injured to very seriously injured. "That's when I dropped to my knees and started shaking," Danielle said.

The third call was from the rear detachment commander, and it was then she heard that Brian's right leg couldn't be saved. The tall, handsome, dark-haired man she had fallen in love with and married 13 years ago had lost both legs.

As a platoon leader with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Brian, 33, had been in Iraq for about a year, and his unit's tour had been extended for three months. The couple liked to think of the war as a bump in the road in their lives and in his 15-year-long Army career, including proud years as an elite, airborne Ranger. But that bump had just blown up all their plans.

No one gave her any details, but Danielle would find out later that, as Brian walked on patrol in the dusty courtyard of a house in Amiriyah, a Baghdad neighborhood, he had stepped on a wire, triggering a homemade explosive device that tore through his legs and arm. "I remember being thrown up in the air and landing," he recounted. "At first, I thought I was just blown back by the blast, but then I looked down and noticed that my left leg was gone and my right leg was kind of mangled. Three guys put me in the Stryker (armored vehicle). After that I got put on the helicopter, and I don't remember much after that."

Brian was treated first at the 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. His medivac flight to Landstuhl Hospital in Germany was delayed by sandstorms, and by the time he reached that large and busy military medical center, his condition had deteriorated badly.

He had open wounds on both thighs and a gaping wound on his left arm. There was a blood clot in his right lung and a piece of metal was lodged in his left lung, part of an instrument medics used to cut into his sternum to place a line. He was put on a ventilator and taken to surgery, the first of about 20 he would undergo in the next few months. Doctors subsequently would find the blast had perforated both eardrums, and he had lost most of his hearing. There were five different infections coursing through his body, and he had suffered mild traumatic brain injury, TBI, from the blast. Then there was the crushing pain. Brian had always been very healthy and physically active, and that would help him battle the severe injuries.

Back in Fort Lewis, Danielle tried to think calmly and clearly. She remembered what she had told her husband the last time he was there. "You can come home in two, three, four, five pieces. That's fine. I'll help put you back together again. Just come home." Now, she'd do that. She'd fly to Germany to be with Brian, and her mother would move in to care for the children.

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