May 10, 2004

By Gidget Fuentes
Times staff writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq — The incoming mortar round exploded, shaking the earth and jolting the Marines near a downed military helicopter they secured in a hot zone in Iraq’s dreaded Sunni Triangle. Slivers of metal and dirt sped through the air, pressing eardrums and cutting into men some 20 feet away who were seated in a high-back Humvee.
Several metal pieces struck Lance Cpl. Brent Goldstone, ripping into both arms and the left side of his head just under the edge of his Kevlar helmet. His ears were ringing. He saw blood on his uniform. And it was April 13, his 19th birthday.

The mortar blast, fired by insurgents in what was a coordinated ambush 10 miles east of Fallujah, mortally wounded one Marine and injured three, including Goldstone.

Goldstone soon would find himself among a group of 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment leathernecks whose combat injuries put them down but not out. They licked their wounds and went back to the fight, tributes to their loyalty to each other and Navy medical care, they said.

Goldstone was evacuated to Bravo Surgical Company at Camp Fallujah, where doctors cleaned and treated his wounds — leaving bits of metal embedded in his skin — then sent him to recover at his battalion’s forward base, Camp Mercury. His wounds rated him a Purple Heart, but not an early one-way ticket back to the States. Two weeks later, he rejoined 1/5 at Fallujah’s southeastern edge.

Goldstone, of Glenview, Ill., said he was glad to be back with “Red Cloud,” the battalion’s quick-reaction force. “I’ll be going out with them,” he said one morning in late April as he settled back to Red Cloud’s routine.

All told, about 72 of 1/5’s Marines were wounded in action — three of them twice — in April, as Marines sought to secure Fallujah. Ten of the battalion’s Marines were killed. But of the wounded, at least 50 of 1/5’s returned to the front lines. Officials say the rate of return is similar to other Marine units in Iraq.

Navy doctors and corpsmen credit Kevlar helmets and vests with reducing serious torso injuries that often are fatal or severe enough to warrant evacuation and long recovery. And more of the wounded are healing enough to jump back into the fight.

Surgical companies located near front-line units treat many wounds quickly, while two combat surgical hospitals in Baghdad and Balad treat more serious cases.

“No one is being sent to the front lines who shouldn’t be there,” said Brig. Gen. Richard S. Kramlich, who commands the Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 1st Force Service Support Group, which provides the medical teams for I Marine Expeditionary Force.

But many are able to return, which Kramlich said “is a great morale booster for the units.”

Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, who commands 1/5, said it’s a joy to see his Marines return. “They came back and continued to fight,” he said.

Kramlich said some recovering Marines don’t want to be in the rear.

“There is a sense that they didn’t finish the job,” he said.

One Marine, wounded in the right foot from a roadside bomb during an April 6 ambush, delayed his evacuation from Balad to Germany long enough to sufficiently heal in country. He’s now back at his unit, working his intelligence job with Combat Service Support Group, mostly from a desk at Camp Taqaddum.

“I didn’t want to leave my Marines, first of all,” said Staff Sgt. Michael Houtz, 29, an Ohio native. “Mine is such a minor injury. It could have been much worse.”