In My Own Words

Sgt. James E. Wright, Green Belt Instructor, Marine Martial Arts Center of Excellence

I was an assistant team leader with Team 1, 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion. It was April 7, 2004, and we were on a movement in Al Anbar province, going through a neighborhood that we knew was unfriendly toward Americans. They always had a lot of IED (improvised explosive device) attacks and ambushes in that neighborhood.

We knew we were going to get ambushed; we could tell by the people and their actions. But we had to go. We had a mission to accomplish. There were about 12 Humvees, and ours was in the lead. We were ambushed by 40 to 60 insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, AK-47s and mortars.

Our Humvee was in the kill zone, and we were taking a lot of fire. A rocket-propelled grenade hit the weapon I was holding, an M-249 SAW, and just blew my hands off and blew my leg open. My femur was fractured and sticking out. My artery was hit, too, and bleeding like crazy. One of the Marines was able put the tourniquets on.

I was irritated that I couldn’t pull the trigger. I was thinking, “Damn, I can’t shoot back; what can I do?” What I could do was talk to my Marines and issue orders and supervise. I was still in a leadership position even though I didn’t have my hands. And that probably kept me from going into shock and from sitting there thinking about my hands.

There were five of us in the Humvee and three of us were wounded to the point we were ineffectual as far as being able to pull the trigger. The gunner took a lot of shrapnel in the legs and was laid out on the roof. My team leader sitting in front of me had a big hole blown out of his triceps and [had] shattered his elbow, and he was putting a tourniquet on his right arm. His gun got blown out of his hands, too. So he was firing the driver’s weapon left-handed. The other two guys, the driver and the guy sitting behind him, had shrapnel, but it wasn’t disabling.

We fought our way out of that kill zone and stopped a couple hundred meters up the road. We regrouped and did a little more first aid on me, set out security and got with our signal plan to make comm with our unit. But we were in a bad position. We could see the enemy moving up the road to try to finish us off. We were being separated from the convoy, and it wasn’t good.

So we turned around and linked back up and got some good cover and got a corpsman up. It was probably 45 minutes from the time I got hit to the time the helicopter came. The ambush was still going on that whole time. The helicopter took me to the field hospital, and I asked the doctor to give me something for the pain. He did. And I don’t remember anything until I woke up in Bethesda [Naval Hospital] about 11 days later.

I only spent a month at Bethesda. Since I was an amputee, they sent me to Walter Reed [Army Medical Center], and I was there about a year. I was not an inpatient the whole time. I was at Malone House doing recovery. But pretty soon I wanted to get out of that environment. You just get comfortable; you get stagnant. There’s nothing going on.

You’ve got to find some way to channel your energy, and you can only go out to eat with your buddies so many times before it gets old. Each day, you go to your appointment for an hour or two and then you’re done. You sit around the rest of the day. Once you’ve maximized the benefits of rehab and occupational therapy and physical therapy, you should move on.

You’d be surprised. There are not a lot of people walking around Walter Reed all bummed out because they’re missing an arm or a leg. They’re young. They have good attitudes and strong minds, and they don’t see this as the end of their lives. It’s just kind of a speed bump. And they get a lot of support in whatever area they need, so it’s hard to be negative.

The opportunity to work here came up, and I jumped on it. It’s probably the best thing I’ve done yet as far as rehab — getting back into a normal routine and getting a sense of normalcy in my life.

If you’d have asked me before if I would want to be alive had I lost my hands, I would have said no. But now that I’m in those shoes, it’s not so bad. I get frustrated a bit, but I still feel like the same person. The worst part is not missing my hands. The worst part is not being able to do my job that I was doing and be with my buddies as they go back to Iraq and stuff like that.

I remember always wanting to be a Marine. My father is in the Air Force — active duty. And when I was a little kid, I used to go to PT with him. He’d run, and I’d ride my bike. And I guess I saw some Marines running to cadence one day. He says since that day, I wanted to be a Marine.

That’s the hardest thing that I’m dealing with now — just letting the Marine Corps go. I’m not doing what I joined the Marine Corps to do. So I’m figuring out my next step. I want to find a job that I will enjoy.

I have an opportunity now through the VA, the vocational rehab program, and all the benefits that are offered out there. I can take advantage of it while I’m young — go to school and start another career. But a future occupation, that’s open.

I like history and government, and I’d like to continue working for the government, maybe. I’m looking for something that would be active and have an impact on what’s going on overseas, though I don’t think I have the tact to be a politician. I’m in no rush, I have plenty of time.

If people want to help out injured Marines, there is a good organization called the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund. If a Marine gets injured, family members leave their work to take care of the Marine. The bills start piling up, and things get real tight. The Semper Fi Fund is a good organization that helps out, no questions asked.

Editor’s Note: Information about the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund is available via e-mail at info@semperfifund.org or by telephone at (703) 640-0181.