Wounded Oregon soldier adjusts after mine attack

‘Send me back,’ says Purple Heart winner Matthew Braddock

By Ben Jacklet

The Portland Tribune, Apr 26, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Matthew Braddock was driving a Humvee near Kirkuk, Iraq, when an anti-tank mine destroyed his vehicle and pulverized the bones in his feet.

“I remember smoke and stuff flying at me and my truck commander yelling, ‘Is everybody all right?’ ” he said. “My gunner yelled down that he was all right. And I yelled that I was all right because I thought I was.

“Then I took two steps and hit the ground.”

Quick action by his fellow Oregon National Guard soldiers saved Braddock’s life, but the best surgeons in the Army couldn’t save his left leg below the knee. Right before his amputation, he drew a dotted line on his ankle and wrote, “Cut Here.”

Braddock, a 24-year-old cavalry scout who was honored with the Purple Heart on Sunday in Forest Grove, is a casualty of a war where roadside bombs can turn a soldier’s world upside down in an instant. Roughly two-thirds of the injuries to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq come from explosions. The Iraq War’s 6 percent amputee rate is about double that of previous wars.

But Braddock is more likely to crack a joke than to complain, even after the routine surgery that cost him his left foot and the radical, 10-hour procedure that saved his right one. His mother, Rhetta Drennan, who works at the city of Portland’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement, said, “The first thing he said when I saw him was, ‘I gotta get back to Iraq. They just need to put casts on me and send me back.’ ”

Drennan said her son’s recovery has been remarkable, given the extent of his injuries and the intensity of the surgery he went through at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

“He’s made incredible progress,” she said. “He’s stunned the doctor. It’s been less than three months since his surgery and already he can get up and get around on crutches.”

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