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thedrifter
11-18-06, 04:16 PM
Beyond Survival

Publish Date: 11/18/06

By Alison Walker-Baird
News-Post Staff

FREDERICK -- Two local Marines injured in Ramadi three weeks apart found themselves recuperating this month just rooms from one another in the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center's medical surgical unit.

Lance Cpl. Christopher Bickel of Frederick and Lance Cpl. Christopher Charette of Leesburg, Va., who is serving in a Frederick-based reserve unit, are among the more than 21,000 U.S. troops wounded in action in Iraq since 2003.

Cpl. Charette may have been excited to deploy in early October, but a series of gunshots sent him home just two weeks after he put his boots on the ground.

During security patrol on the Euphrates River on Oct. 23, Cpl. Charette's boat was ambushed. The Marines were fired at three times during the patrol, and Cpl. Charette was hit the second time, while the boat was headed back to dock.

Cpl. Charette, 21, was shot in the left hand and in the neck, the bullet piercing his collarbone and exiting through his left shoulder.

The unit, Dam Support Unit 3, began its seven-month deployment Oct. 11. DSU-3 is part of Regimental Combat Team-7 in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and was previously designated Bravo Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.

Most of the unit's members are patrolling and securing Iraqi waterways throughout Haditha and the Euphrates River Valley. Several are conducting security operations in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad in the Al Anbar province.

Immediately after Cpl. Charette was shot, the Marines fired back, he said, striking several of the shooters. Cpl. Charette believes the Marines were targeted because they were a new unit to the area. They haven't been ambushed since, he said.

"I think our bite was a little worse than they wanted," he said.

Cpl. Charette said when he was shot he didn't feel any pain initially, cracking jokes to keep himself conscious.

His short stint in Iraq evoked teases from the DSU-3 Marines, Cpl. Charette said, who chided that he tries to get out of everything and found his own way to get home quickly.

In truth, Cpl. Charette had tried to deploy with another unit during the past few years and was excited to find out DSU-3 would be deploying.

Cpl. Charette began boot camp as a Marine reservist in 2003, after contracting with the Marine Corps in 2002 during his senior year of high school.

"There were things happening in the world, and I couldn't just stand by and watch," he said. "I wanted to do something."

He hopes to deploy again, though his injuries may make serving in the infantry impossible.

Doctors have said Cpl. Charette can expect a full recovery -- he's expected to leave the hospital before Thanksgiving -- but he'll be working hard in the months ahead.

The nerves in his left shoulder weren't severed, Cpl. Charette said, but he can't move his left arm and will have to continue physical therapy to regenerate feeling and movement.

Doctors amputated Cpl. Charette's damaged left thumb. Because he is left-handed, learning to use his right hand is similar to the process children use, he said.

Using the right hand he'll now have to depend on, Cpl. Charette circles the food he wants on a menu and draws in coloring books. He'll have to adapt to driving his car's stick-shift.

The road to recovery was initially rocky. Cpl. Charette was expected to fly from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where he was being treated after leaving Iraq, to the Bethesda hospital Oct. 27.

A lung contusion from the impact of the bullet on his collarbone delayed his arrival to the United States until the following week.

Once at the naval hospital, Cpl. Charette was in surgery every few days to wash out his wounds. His parents, Diane and David Charette, have visited him at the Bethesda hospital daily. Diane said she has been touched by the support and prayers from the deployed Marines and their families.

Several Marines from the unit who have remained at the Pfc. Flair U.S. Army Reserve Center at Fort Detrick stopped by Nov. 10, just before Veterans Day, to visit.

Getting back on his feet

A few rooms away from Cpl. Charette, Cpl. Bickel is recovering from wounds that also forced him to return soon after deploying.

Cpl. Bickel found himself back in Maryland a month after arriving in Iraq in September, having made it through a previous deployment unharmed.

The 25-year-old walked for the first time Wednesday since an explosion tore apart his leg Oct. 3.

Cpl. Bickel had just left his base, Hurricane Point, in Ramadi, when enemy forces shot a homemade rocket through a wall, piercing the truck he was riding in.

He had been sitting on left side of the truck, in the back. A fire ignited inside the truck, and Cpl. Bickel helped put it out with his hands.

The Marines, from the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., were lucky -- ammunition inside the truck didn't explode.

One of the Marines in the truck checked to see if everyone was still alive, asking, "Is everybody up?" One by one, they said yes.

"I'm up, but I don't think I'm OK," Cpl. Bickel remembers saying.

The explosion had blown the skin off his right leg, exposing his muscles and breaking his femur. A hospital corpsman ran over to give Cpl. Bickel a shot of morphine.

"I realized how bad I was hurt," he said. "I knew we had to get the hell out of there."

Cpl. Bickel arrived at the Bethesda naval hospital Oct. 11, after treatment in a hospital in Iraq and at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Doctors at the naval hospital removed a 3 1/2-inch section of his damaged femur this week and implanted a fixation screw into his bone. After five days of healing, Cpl. Bickel will begin the slow process of turning the fixation screw, which forces the bone to regenerate the missing tissue.

This week Cpl. Bickel was able to walk for the first time since his injury more than a month ago, using a walker to reach the hallway outside his room and return.

"When I got back I was sweating bullets," he said. "It was exhausting."

Doctors have told him he may be able to go home in two weeks. Cpl. Bickel's parents, Robin and Keith Bickel, have tried to make his hospital stay as comfortable and home-like as possible, bringing food and other treats daily.

Visits from celebrities have also helped pass the time. Cpl. Bickel rattled off a list of famous names who have stopped by to offer their thanks and support, including Gary Sinise, Dennis Miller and Stevie Nicks, who gave Cpl. Bickel a preloaded iPod.

U.S. Marine Gen. Michael Hagee, now the former U.S. Marine Corps commandant, awarded Cpl. Bickel the Purple Heart. Gen. Hagee retired as commandant, the nation's top Marine, in a ceremony Monday.

Ellie