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Injured soldier returns to Aliquippa

Apr- 4-2008 » Filed Under: 2/25 SBCT

Injured 2/25 SBCT soldier is on the mend. There's video if you follow the link.

By Michael Pound, Beaver County Times

ALIQUIPPA — Even with twin plastic boots protecting his shattered ankles and purple scars weaving along his right thigh, P.J. Gennaro looks about as relaxed as one could expect of a soldier home on a monthlong leave.

This isn’t just a visit for the 26-year-old Aliquippa native, though. The scars, the boots and the wheelchair tell a different story. Gennaro, a corporal in the Army’s 25th Infantry Division, was nearly killed when his Stryker — an 11-ton wheeled armored vehicle used by infantry units on patrol — ran over a 500-pound bomb that had been planted in the middle of a road in northern Iraq on Feb. 8.

That day was like most others, as Gennaro’s squad teetered between three-day rotations on day and night patrols. The Stryker was about to head back to base at the end of an afternoon — and Gennaro was set to relax and check for e-mail from his family here or his fiancee in Hawaii — when they were asked to check a road that hadn’t been checked in a while.

“The road looked like it was supposed to,” said Gennaro, who explained that he normally would have been looking for freshly turned soil in the road or sticks or wire along the roadside to mark detonation points. “I didn’t see anything; I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t wake up until I heard one of my buddies screaming.”

Since that day, Gennaro has endured six surgeries on his legs and ankles, and has been told by doctors that he might not be able to run again.

“When I woke up after the explosion, the vehicle was sitting on top of me, on my head and chest,” he said of the blast that killed four of his friends and wounded six others. “My helmet and my body armor basically saved my life.”

Gennaro returned home this week, to spend time seeing family and friends before returning to a military hospital in Texas, where he faces months of physical therapy before he might be able to return to his unit.

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