Fort Carson – Army Staff Sgt. Clint Smith returned from Iraq this spring, but he still swerves his vehicle to avoid small bags of trash in the roadway.
Merging traffic makes his heart leap with fear of suicide bombers; and, at night, reflectors on the side of a bridge remind him of tracer fire.
Smith has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. On Tuesday, he received the Purple Heart for a multitude of injuries suffered when a car bomb exploded and an insurgent tried to run over him with his car.
“I didn’t even hear it because it blew out both my eardrums right away,” said Smith, 26, of Tacoma, Wash.
The flag-filled ceremony honored 21 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry, who were injured in combat.
A total of 3,700 people with the 2nd Brigade who had been stationed in South Korea are being relocated to Fort Carson following deployment in Iraq. While the majority aren’t expected until July and August, Tuesday’s ceremony honored the handful of soldiers whose injuries have forced them from the battlefield.
The Nov. 11 explosion hurled Smith 27 feet and knocked him out. When he regained consciousness, he stood up and a white car was barreling down on him.
The car smacked Smith in the thighs at an estimated 35 to 40 mph. His head and shoulders pierced the windshield as his feet and waist flipped over the top of the car. Smith’s gear flew off. He landed on the ground and briefly lost consciousness again.
“I could see him, vaguely,” Smith said of coming to and noticing that the driver had exited the car. “It was pretty much of a foot race between him and me to see who could get to my weapon first.
“I got to my weapon first.”
The attack near Ramadi left Smith with a traumatic brain injury, a torn rotator cuff, a lacerated face and hearing loss, an impairment eventually restored by surgery. He returned to active duty for five months until doctors discovered he had also broken his neck and back. He then returned stateside.
None of that hell ever made him cry until he started physical rehabilitation at Fort Carson.
Running a quarter-mile around a track at the mountain post brings tears, he said, and a pain that drops the tall, muscled soldier to his knees.
The war has taken a heavy toll on the 2nd Brigade. Sixty-eight soldiers have died, and dozens more have been injured. Lt. Wesley Fine from Waimanalo, Hawaii, one of the soldiers honored Tuesday, lost his left eye when a mortar round exploded.
“It’s good and bad,” Fine said, speaking of the Purple Heart. “It’s a symbol that you sacrificed for your country and that you were one of the unfortunate ones to get hurt. … I guess it’s priceless.”
Smith’s injuries are too severe for him to return to active duty. His doctors, he said, are reluctant to do back or neck surgery because the risks are too high.
“If I receive the surgery, they have to move so many nerves around, it’s very possible that I could become paralyzed. So, I’ve been given – two or three doctors have told me – that I have about 10 to 15 years to walk on my own before I need help or assistance of some sort,” Smith said.
In the coming days, he said, he’ll frame his Purple Heart and hang it on the wall next to a picture of his squad.
He soon will be medically discharged from the Army after serving 6 1/2 years. Like his father, he had planned to make the Army a career, but “somebody in Iraq had other plans,” he said.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
