Mar. 25, 2007
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Paramedic put life on line
Marine reservist describes getting wounded on patrol in Iraq

By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

As a Clark County firefighter, James T. Carpenter had a decade of paramedic experience under his belt before he decided to rejoin the Marines and volunteer for infantry duty in Iraq to help that country's budding army get its feet on the ground.

But it wasn't until a couple of weeks ago, on a sunny afternoon while walking on patrol through the streets of Fallujah, that the knowledge gained from his civilian job helped him assess what needed to be done to save his own life.

It was 3:30 p.m. March 11 when shots rang out as the patrol of 12 Iraqi soldiers and four Marines turned a corner amid buildings and courtyards.

"Carp," as the 43-year-old reservist platoon sergeant is known in his unit, was the last Marine in the string and the third from the rear.

"When I made my left-hand turn, I heard a shot behind me. When I turned back around the corner, I saw two Iraqis lying on the ground," he said Thursday, sitting at the dining room table of his Henderson home.

The Iraqi soldiers have a habit of shooting everywhere when under attack in hopes of scaring off snipers who hide on rooftops and in the trunks of parked cars.

"They take the taillight out and that's where they snipe at you, from there," he said about the attackers.

"My guys yell at me, 'Carp, get up here,' ... but I told them, 'We've got contact here,'" he said.

He had seen shots above the "jundis," as Marines refer to their Iraqi comrades, or low-level soldiers. One of them was wounded.

"As soon as I turned the corner to go down and get him is when I got hit in the gut," Carpenter said.

The bullet from what probably was an AK-47 fired from a rooftop ripped through his lower left abdomen. Fragments lodged in the flesh of his hip about an inch or so below his body armor.

"I did not go down," he said. "As soon as I got hit, my partner was behind me. I go, 'Hey, I got hit. I'm hit. I'm hit.' And he goes, 'Well, lay down.'

"I said, 'I'm not layin' down. We're in a kill zone.' So we ran back about 20 yards and then I went behind a car."

A few seconds later, Carpenter was safely behind the wall of a courtyard after his partner had opened a gate.

His partner checked the wound and started dressing it.

"There wasn't a lot of blood loss at the time. There was some. I don't remember even how much," Carpenter recalled.

"Being a paramedic for 10 years, I kind of did my own little assessment on me. I think I'm still alert. I've got pulses. I'm bleeding a little bit. I didn't know if it was my gut or not, but I figured it's low enough that there's nothing vital down there. I figured I'd be OK. I figured I might be missing something, but I didn't think I was going to die."

The wounded jundi was all right, too. "He just got shot in the butt and he was talking," Carpenter said.

A QRF, or quick reaction force, responded to help.

"By the time they got there, there were tanks all around. So they came up and got the jundi out safe and got me out safe. No one else got injured," he said.

With the effort to get everyone to safety "there's a lot going through your head. You don't say, 'OK. I miss my family.' It's not Hollywood. It's not that way," Carpenter said, his eyes peering toward the sliding glass door and the Las Vegas skyline off in the distance.

"I wasn't too worried. I felt damn lucky. I felt blessed. Let's put it that way.

"I know God's watching over me. I might not have gone to church in 10 years, but I'm still pretty religious."

Through surgery he was listed in serious condition. He wanted to wait until he was more alert to call his wife of 12 years, Tonya, but word of the sniper attack spread quickly through the corps.

"I thought the worst when I got the phone call," said Tonya Carpenter, who is the Review-Journal's online director of content.

She said the Marine who called her "thought he was making the follow-up call."

"He said, 'There's no news on your husband.' I was like, 'What's the old news?'"

Tonya Carpenter experienced "incredible relief" when her husband finally called her. "I still didn't believe him to what extent his injuries were. He always says he's fine."

James Carpenter was nearing the end of his seven-month tour as a staff sergeant with a Marine unit out of Saginaw, Mich., when the sniper attack occurred.

Despite the much-publicized scandal about treatment of wounded military personnel at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he said his care by doctors, nurses and flight medics from Baghdad to Germany to Air Force bases in the United States was first-rate.

"You're treated like a king, and you almost forget that you're wounded," he said.

Carpenter's brother, Jon, is a first sergeant and a Las Vegas police officer who has served in the Middle East. James' son, 20-year-old Todd James Carpenter, is a lance corporal, serving locally with the Marine Forces Reserve's Fox Company.

Born and raised in Las Vegas, James Carpenter is a Gulf War veteran who didn't see combat while he was a heavy equipment operator in Saudi Arabia for four months in 1990 and 1991. He decided to become a Marine reservist in 2003, inspired in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Now, in light of momentum building in the anti-war movement and with the House voting to cease combat operations in Iraq before September 2008, Carpenter said he has mixed feelings about how long American troops should be in Iraq.

"I don't think we should be over there forever. It's more about getting the Iraqis to step up," he said Friday.

Setting a time frame for troop withdrawal might play into the hands of the militants who would sit back and prepare to take over the country after U.S. troops leave.

It could defeat the purpose of going over there in the first place, he said. "As soon as Americans pull out, whatever factions want to take over will jump right in."

Carpenter said Thursday he feels there is strong support for the troops.

"No one likes to hear the bad stuff. ... Bush is this and Bush is that. And not every decision is probably the correct decision," he said.

"Monday morning quarterbacking is always easier to do than make the tough call to begin with."

Asked if he'd volunteer again to go back to Iraq, Carpenter said since he's in the Marine Corps "you never know what's going to happen."

But, he added with a chuckle, "I'm not going to volunteer to go back this time. ... If I do it again I know I'll get shot -- at home."

Ellie