Soldiers detail attacks, debilitating effects

[unhappycamper]

Soldiers detail attacks, debilitating effects
By Michael Gilbert - The News Tribune
Posted : Sunday Nov 4, 2007 17:14:40 EST

TACOMA, Wash. — Sgt. Brian Kerrigan and Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Du were hit Aug. 23 a few miles out of Balad, Iraq, as they and the rest of their Stryker brigade were making it back to Baghdad.

They’d spent the previous two months in Baqubah, clearing al-Qaida in Iraq fighters from the city, which they had proclaimed the capital of their new Islamic republic.

They were just weeks from completing their 15-month tour, and had managed to avoid serious injury over hundreds of patrols from Mosul to Baghdad.

Kerrigan, 29, was near the end of his second combat tour. He went to Iraq the first time in 2003 as a new recruit with the 82nd Airborne Division. He had a good job at Federal Express in Seattle but left it to enlist after Sept. 11.

After his first deployment he transferred to Fort Lewis and wound up as the gunner on the brigade command sergeant major’s Stryker.

“I just felt like somebody had run over me in a train, you know?” he said later of that bomb near Balad. “The headaches were the main part, but I just felt fatigued, exhausted, even though I didn’t have a reason to be exhausted. People would talk to me and they’d notice and say I’d just stare and be in a daze.”


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/11/ap_hiddenwounds_071104/