By Bob Ray Sanders
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
President Bush speaks with Marine Cpl. Zachary Briseno after awarding him a Purple Heart on Dec. 19. Briseno was joined by his mother, Mariana Rice, brothers and girlfriend.

It took me more than two weeks to get up the nerve to call a young Marine corporal at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

I had promised his uncle I would get in touch with the Fort Worth native, but for some reason, although I've written about many personal tragedies in my long journalism career, I wasn't sure how even to begin a conservation with Cpl. Zachary Briseno.

I wanted to tell his story, yet it was painful for me to even think about, much less talk to him about, the incident that changed his life forever.

But when I called last week, this man I'd never laid eyes on quickly put me at ease with a surprisingly positive and almost joyous attitude. For a moment, I thought I had dialed the wrong number.

In our first 30-minute conversation, I found myself laughing at times. At other times I felt the chill bumps on my arms and could feel the water in my eyes, not from sadness but from the humble spirit of this proud and grateful Marine.

I admired him even more after learning the next day that he had failed to mention the one thing that the average person would have brought up at the very beginning of our conversation. But then, Briseno is anything but average.

He proudly told me that he had been "born and raised in Fort Worth" and had attended Castleberry and North Side High schools. He graduated from Castleberry in 2004, a year later than he should have. The graduation delay was partly because of transcript discrepancies, but he admits he had "senioritis" and paid a lot more attention to sports than studies.

Within a week of graduation, he fulfilled a dream he'd had since the age of 9 by joining the Marine Corps and was sent to boot camp in San Diego. From there, it was on to Okinawa for four months before being sent to Iraq.

Briseno, 22, would spend seven months working as an ambulance driver in Fallujah, where he said he saw "terrible" things.

"Most 20-year-olds shouldn't have to see that stuff," he said. "I saw a lot of people in ways you didn't want to see them. It made me think that you don't take things for granted -- anything can happen."

His son, Elijah, was born a month after he arrived, and seeing the child for the first time when he got back in the states in North Carolina "was the highlight of my life."

Because the boy had seen pictures of his father and had heard his voice over the phone, Briseno said, his son recognized him immediately. "That first hug was the best thing I ever felt," he said.

He was home about a year and a half before going back to Iraq last September. The day before he left, however, he buried his father, who had died a week earlier.

What his family doesn't know -- at least until they read this -- is that Briseno wasn't ordered to Iraq. He volunteered both times. (He gave me permission to break that news.)

On Nov. 29, while headed from Camp Fallujah to the area where his 11-man team stayed, his three-vehicle convoy was hit by an explosive device.

"A big bang went off," he said. "And I just happened to be right on top of it when it went off."

As the vehicle commander, Briseno was sitting on the passenger side, which took the brunt of the explosion. Everything went black, and because he couldn't see anything, he yelled to check on his comrades.

"My guys said they were all right," he recalled, noting that his adrenalin was running so high that he didn't realize he had been hurt. He ordered the convoy to proceed "home."

The floorboard of the vehicle had been blown out, and his legs were stuck in the wreckage.

It was when his fellow Marines tried to pull him out that he began to feel the pain. After being freed, he was placed on the ground to be stabilized and then quickly sent to Camp Fallujah's surgical unit.

He remembers the helicopter ride and joking with the surgeons about having worked in the same hospital but never expecting to be a patient there.

His buddies would later tell him that the only thing that saved his life is that he was sitting "on the battery" (located under his seat) when the explosion occurred.

Although his life was saved, doctors had to amputate both legs beneath the knees.

He was sent on a whirlwind tour of hospitals -- from Fallujah to Balad, then to Baghdad, a stop in Germany, on to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland (where he had most of his surgeries) and then on Dec. 22 to Brooke in San Antonio, where he has been working hard in a rehabilitation program.

He says he would do it over "in a heartbeat." But he wouldn't want his son to go to war.

"I did it so he wouldn't have to do it," he said.

Briseno's mother, Mariana Rice, said she had a bad feeling when her son headed back for his second deployment, but her fears had eased somewhat after hearing that the violence had fallen off greatly late last year. About a week later, she said, she got the call that something had happened.

"He's a lot stronger than I knew he was," she said. "I always knew he was special.

"He's alive," she said, "and he's going to walk again. He's just going to put on a new set of shoes."

And, oh, that thing that Briseno didn't tell me in our first conservation?

Well, it seems he met the president while at Bethesda.

Sarah Yoest Pederson, who edits our Opinions page, decided to check the Internet for a picture of Briseno. She found one on the White House Web site, where he was receiving a Purple Heart from George W. Bush.

Briseno shrugged it off when I asked him about it the next day but noted that the president was really "down to earth."

"You could tell he really cared about the Marines and soldiers who had been here," he said.

Briseno said he also had received a couple of letters from Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief, a man he's never met but whom he looks forward to meeting when he returns home.

Maybe that's a day real soon.
bobray@star-telegram.com
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/463807.html

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