PDA

View Full Version : 'I'm not going to stop'



thedrifter
11-27-05, 07:20 AM
'I'm not going to stop'
Iraq vet won't let injuries bring him down
Chris Roberts
El Paso Times
Sunday, November 27, 2005

Lance Cpl. Francisco Paz, serving as top gunner in a Humvee on patrol in Iraq, saw a suspicious box with wires and a window drape covering it on the left side of the road just outside Fallujah, Iraq, and alerted the driver.

Seconds later, the vehicle commander tugged on his pants leg indicating there was another bomb on the right side of the road.

Just as Paz located the two 155 millimeter shells on the right side of the road, they exploded, demolishing the Humvee and severely wounding Paz and the vehicle commander. The driver was uninjured because the improvised explosive device on his side of the road was a dummy meant to draw attention.

The driver dragged Paz and the commander out of the vehicle and off to the side of the road. However, it took what seemed forever to the injured soldiers for help to arrive as Marines waited for the ammunition in the burning Humvee to stop exploding.

"It took them a while to get up to us due to the fact that the rounds were cooking," Paz said, adding that the vehicle was heavily armed with grenades and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

Paz, 21, born and raised in El Paso, lost his right eye, had a nerve severed in his left arm, which still hasn't healed, and had two fingers on his right hand severed, left hanging by pieces of skin. He was also bleeding profusely from two wounds on his neck, but no major artery was hit. He also sustained numerous other shrapnel wounds in his upper body. The vehicle commander took shrapnel in the leg.

After the fireworks stopped, Paz was evacuated by Humvee to the main surgical unit in Fallujah.

"Once I got to the hospital, I stopped fighting (to remain conscious) and I just passed out," Paz said.

When he awakened, he was at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. He had been unconscious for a week.

"They said I was doing good in my recovery," Paz said. He was released Nov. 2, 2004, after three weeks at the medical center. He had a few surgeries on his left arm, but doctors say he has only a 5 percent chance of regaining feeling. The shattered fingers on his right hand were reattached, but the middle joints had to be fused.

Makings of a Marine

Paz, who graduated from Coronado High School, is a soft- spoken man who doesn't waste words.

He talks about his experience in Iraq like it was a day at the office and wears his wounds as a badge of honor. People might see a flash of red and gold when they see his glass eye, but the inquisitive looks don't bother him.

Where most glass eyes have an iris matched to the color of the other eye, Paz's has an eagle, globe and anchor -- the Marine Corps insignia.

Paz said his family has strong ties to the Army, but he chose the Marines in December 2002 because "I wanted to go for the best." He said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks also figured into his decision, adding, "I just wanted to go out there and fight the war."

He learned hand-to-hand combat and was trained in the use of weapons. His specialty was the grenade launcher, which he said "is mainly used to attack bunkers."

Two weeks after graduating from the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton, Calif., he was deployed to Iraq, a member of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.

In June 2003, Paz arrived in Diwanyeh, which is in southern Iraq near Najaf. "Our unit had already gone through the push, so our mission was just keeping the peace," he said. "It was good, we had control of the whole city there. ... Once in a while we'd get attacked by mortar rounds."

He said the city's inhabitants were generally supportive for the five months he was stationed there.

On his second tour, which began in September 2004, he went to Fallujah as the Marines were preparing to sweep the town, considered a hotbed of insurgent activity.

"It was real bad, we were just getting there and we were getting attacked already," he said, explaining that his convoy received small-arms fire from insurgents as it arrived. "We returned fire, but as soon as we started engaging, they just took off. You had to stay on your toes all the time."

Then in October, right before the big push, Paz found himself manning the .50 caliber machine gun on top of a Humvee in a five-vehicle convoy. The improvised explosive device was detonated by wire on a road just outside Fallujah.

"So what I thought was an IED, it wasn't. It was on the other side," Paz said. "By the time we saw the real one, it exploded on us."

Paz said soldiers tracked the insurgent who detonated the bomb more than 300 yards from the site. "They captured him the next day," he said.

Getting on with life

Paz doesn't take his retirement from the Marines lightly. He talked to his commanding officers about returning to active duty, but they told him it wouldn't be combat, which was what he wanted.

Although he has been granted a 100 percent disability by Veterans Affairs, he doesn't see himself as a casualty or as permanently disabled.

"I'm hurt, but I'm not going to stop myself because of the injury," Paz said, adding that he plans to study criminal justice at Park University on Fort Bliss. He wants to work as a probation officer, he said, and he plans to stay in El Paso with his wife and family.

Explaining the injuries to his two sons, who are 4 and 5, wasn't easy, however.

"My oldest son wants to be a Marine and get the bad guy, get the guy who hurt dad," Paz said, quietly adding, "I don't want him to see what I've seen."

Chris Roberts may be reached at chrisr@elpasotimes.com; 546-6136.

Ellie