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What It Feels Like...

(page 2 of 17)

… To Survive an IED Attack

Daniel Brockgreitens, 24
More than two and a half years, 10 new teeth and
one Purple Heart later, this Springfieldian tells
the story of the day his mouth was blown apart
in an IED attack Iraq.
BY DANIEL BROCKGREITENS,
AS TOLD TO KATIE POLLOCK

 

It happened in Tikrit in January 2005. I had been in Iraq 11 months and two weeks. I was just 10 days away from flying home. Iraq was a little scary at first because I wasn’t accustomed to everything around me yet. After a while, it’s just like living in a bad neighborhood. You learn when you can go outside, who to avoid, stuff like that.

I was a sergeant in the Army at the time, and I was training the Iraqi National Guard. We were on a mission that morning to pick up our breakfast and other stuff that we needed. I was the medic, so I was training their medics on how to do basic lifesaving. One of the Iraqis had recently gotten hurt, and he had shrapnel in his scalp and his skull. I was pulling guard duty that day, so I wasn’t supposed to go on the mission, but since we had that guy who was hurt, I volunteered and pulled somebody else out of the truck. We were about to switch with another unit, so we were doing what they call a “right-seat left-seat” where you drive for a little while and show the new guys where to go. Then they switch over and they drive, and you just sit in the passenger seat and say, “Yeah, that’s a rock. Don’t drive over it, or it could blow up.”

“The Words Didn’t Come Out. Just Blood.”

We got there all right. No issues. We were only there about 20 minutes. We were on our way back, and they wanted to show the new people a different way to get there, and they took a back way, which we used to call the “Evil Mosque Road” because we just didn’t like how tight it was. It was just like a scary road that you could easily be ambushed on. I was gunning in the back of the truck. I was just there for security in case something happened.

We came around one of the turns, and we turned off of Evil Mosque Road. There was a big flower pot on the side of the road, and inside of it was an improvised exploding device. And as we went by it, they blew it up. It hit me on the right side and basically knocked out my 10 teeth. At first I didn’t even know what happened. I tried to say, “Hey, what just happened?” but my lip was cut. It was basically hanging off, so the words didn’t come out. Just blood. And I was like wow, this isn’t good. So I started banging on the top of the truck just to tell them, “Hey, I’m hurt.”

They told me that I was still on the gun looking around. They had to tell me to get out of the truck because I was still scanning, looking for who blew it up. I don’t remember that. I was probably in shock a little bit because I’d basically just spit teeth into my own hands. I never lost consciousness because I remember everything after I was on the ground. I remember I jumped out of the truck myself, and they were mad at me for that. They were like, “Dude, your face is blown up. Don’t be jumping out of the back of Humvees.” But I’m in the Army. We’re supposed to do macho stuff.

“Do We Know This Guy?”

They told me to get on the ground, so they could treat me, but I kept asking them, “Is somebody else hurt?” I was the only medic on the truck, and I heard somebody screaming, so I thought he must be hurt. And they told me, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just this other guy.” And I said, “What do you mean ‘don’t worry about it’?” They said, “His thumb’s bleeding.” So I thought, “Okay. I’ll just lie here then.” There were only the two of us that got hurt.

They took me back to the medical station, and a lot of the medics who were there were in the same unit. So I knew a lot of the guys, but none of them could recognize me. I was waving to them, and they were like, “Do we know this guy?” because I had blood everywhere. And finally one of the guys walked by, and he grabbed my ID card, and he was like, “Holy crap! This is Dan Brockgreitens.”

They kept asking me how much morphine I was on, but I wasn’t on any. We were only five minutes from the aid station at the time it happened, so they weren’t going to just shoot me up because there was nobody who was medically qualified to do it. It hurt like crazy, but as a medic, I understand that there are two ways to handle it. You can either freak out, or you can stay calm. So I decided I was gonna stay calm, even though it hurt so bad. I was sitting there with 10 teeth missing out of my face and half my face hanging off.