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September 8, 2004
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
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By Seth Robson,
Stars and Stripes European Edition
 |
| Marine Lance Cpl. Steven Klimtzak of the
4th Civil Affairs Group became the first servicemember of Strike
Force — the 2nd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team
— to receive a Purple Heart in Iraq. A bomb hit his Humvee,
shown in the background. (Seth Robson / S&S) |
WESTERN IRAQ
— It was almost midnight last Tuesday when Lance Cpl. Steven Klimtzak,
a Marine
from the 4th Civil Affairs Group, found the Humvee, its dark-green
hulk rising out of the darkness like the wreck of the Titanic.
Since he got out of the hospital a few days before, the Marine,
attached to the 2nd
Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, has had trouble
sleeping. When he closes his eyes, he hears explosions, echoes of
the bomb that destroyed the Humvee on Sept. 3 and made him the first
in the brigade to receive a Purple Heart.
“There it is,” he said, shining a flashlight through the gloom
to reveal the mangled steel frame of a Humvee resting among dozens
of other military vehicles.
Swirling dust made the parking lot resemble a graveyard from a
B-grade horror film, but even in the dark, it was easy to see that
the Humvee suffered greatly in the explosion.
Its nose was a mangled mass of twisted metal; a shredded tire hung
from one of the front wheels; the left-side mirror was gone and
the metal bar that once held it ripped in half; the roof had caved
in and the driver’s door, which was blown off by the blast, lay
bent in the back of the vehicle.
Klimtzak hunkered down and shone his flashlight on the underside
of the Humvee to reveal a blackened mass of metal, shredded like
Swiss cheese and leaking fluids onto the sand.
Inside, the dashboard was a tangle of broken instruments. The accelerator
pedal had a hole in it where Sgt. Luke Cassidy’s big toe once rested.
Cassidy, also from 4th Civil Affairs Group, was medically evacuated
and also will be awarded a Purple Heart, Klimtzak said.
Klimtzak, a 19-year-old from Cheektowaga, N.Y., searched the driver’s
compartment in case his friend’s toe was still there, but found
only pieces of the shrapnel that ripped through the vehicle.
“I’ve got eight of these still in my shoulder,” he said, holding
up a piece of jagged silver metal from the floor.
Klimtzak pulled down his T-shirt to reveal a hole where a piece
of shrapnel entered his back, and another hole where it exited his
shoulder.
Being near the Humvee for the first time since the attack made
the young Marine uneasy, and he lit a cigarette to calm his nerves.
Klimtzak has hazy memories of the Sept. 2 explosion. There are
a few details he can recall: A few days after he arrived in Iraq,
he was manning a machine gun on the back of the Humvee on his first
trip outside the wire. It was a civil affairs mission to inspect
a soccer field and a school, he said.
Shortly before the attack, the vehicle passed under a tree and
an overhanging branch struck Klimtzak. Then he saw a man with a
shovel running away from the road. As Klimtzak started to turn his
gun to face the threat, the bomb detonated, he said.
The blast sent a swarm of shrapnel into the young Marine’s shoulder,
dislocating it, knocking him out and damaging his hearing in one
ear.
“I was told the driver kept going for 20 meters and then we crashed
into a ditch. I ended up in the cab with the driver,” Klimtzak said.
“The next thing I remember is somebody yelling, ‘Get out of the
way, casualties coming in.’ I remember the doc putting my shoulder
back in place, which really hurt, and the nurse calming me down.
Then they put me out because of the pain.
“I remember getting into a helicopter and waking up a day later
at [a military hospital], not knowing where I was. I was scared
and I didn’t know what happened. I kept worrying about Sergeant
Cassidy.”
When Klimtzak called his parents, Thomas and Belinda, to tell them
he was all right, they cried.
Now, standing by the wrecked Humvee, Klimtzak’s shoulder still
hurts. But it’s healing fast, he said. His hearing is coming back,
too. It might take longer for the psychological scars to heal.
“It is hard to sleep at night,” he said. “I hear explosions. I
wake up crying or sweating. The other day a sergeant broke a light
bulb in a garbage can and I almost jumped out of my boots.”
Other times he feels angry with the people who attacked him.
“I don’t understand why people are doing this to us. We are here
to help them and there are people out there that don’t want our
help and they are trying to hurt us,” he said.
For now, he is taking stress management classes and maintaining
vehicles on post, but he is determined to continue his mission in
Iraq.
“The best Marine is a hundred percent Marine,” he said. “They want
me 100 percent before I go back out, but eventually I will go back
out.”
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