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Update: Injured Stryker Soldier

Nov- 9-2009 » Filed Under: 5/2 SBCT

The News Tribune has a long article and photo album featuring Lt. Dan Berschinski, who was seriously injured in Afghanistan is now recovering at Walter Reed. He is a member of the 5/2 SBCT.

WASHINGTON – No one knows how long the bomb lay under the packed earth of southern Afghanistan. How many times had the soldiers stepped over it? Each member of Lt. Dan Berschinski’s platoon had, at least twice. The Fort Lewis officer figures he walked by the area two times with no problems.

But the bomb lay there, inches below the dirt path. It was likely made of plastic and triggered by a pressure switch.

Bombs like this one kill and maim indiscriminately. It didn’t target Berschinski on Aug. 19 because he was an officer or because he was leading a Stryker platoon on foot into a Taliban-controlled area. Nor did other enemy explosives pick out his comrades from the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. Of the 26 men from the brigade reported killed to date, all but one died in bomb blasts, and many others have been wounded by bombs.

Berschinski, like the others, just happened to be in the wrong place. And it rendered him a disabled war veteran just a month into his first deployment.


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