Thursday, October 25, 2007

A Visit with Army Sgt. Brandon Adam

Love Notes

by Marianne Love

for The River Journal

October, 2007

Until recently, I had not seen nor talked to Brandon Adam since the days when his fifth-period junior English class provided a heart-warming and wonderful last chapter to my teaching career at Sandpoint High School. With 20-plus lively boys and four patient girls, we laughed every single day as I did my best to teach them some English.

On National Teacher Day May 8, 2007, five years later, I saw Army Sgt. Brandon Adam’s picture on the front page above the fold in the Spokesman-Review. During his second tour to Iraq on the morning of May 5 in Baghdad, Brandon lost both legs above the knee in a roadside bombing.

Since then, I’ve received updates about his recovery in San Antonio, thanks to my friend Connie Book Lloyd who posts information and photos about his progress on her blog (http://www.livelovelaughhope.blogspot.com/). This month I’ve had the opportunity to visit with Brandon during several phone conversations. In this special edition of “Love Notes,” and through Brandon’s words, I’m sharing the highlights.

Brandon is the son of Doug and Karen Adam of Post Falls. Before joining the Army, he was a happy kid, a highly competitive dirt biker and soccer junkie. In fact, he’s proud to have played on a state champion soccer team. This friendly, blond-haired, blue-eyed young man likes people to do their job. If they don’t, he gets on their case. That trait doesn’t always make people happy, he told me.

Rapper Kanye West’s “Stronger” plays on Brandon’s cell phone answering machine. What doesn’t kill me just makes me stronger, one lyric states.

“That’s what I listen to when I work out,” he says. “It helps me work through the physical pain and break the mental barriers.” Brandon faces both obstacles every single day as he learns to walk with prostheses, which will gradually lengthen until he reaches his normal height of 6 feet tall. Right now, he’s 5 feet, 6 inches. He’s walking up to 30 minutes a stretch, lifting weights and hoping to be running on indoor and outdoor tracks by the New Year. He’s learning wheelchair racing. He’s played some hockey, and recently surfed for four days at Pismo Beach, Calif. Brandon has especially enjoyed driving his new black Ford 150 four-door truck, complete with sun roof, hand controls and a stick substituting for pedals. His best high school buddy Ty Thomas came for a visit.

Lots of options, including wheel-chair competitions, skiing, earning a college degree and possibly a career in film editing await Brandon once he decides he needs no more physical therapy at Sam Houston Army Base near San Antonio. He figures that may be March, at the latest. In the meantime, he’s getting ready for the next phase of his life after serving and sacrificing for his country.

Sgt. Brandon Adam, recalling the May 5 attack in Baghdad: It was night. I was the gunner on the route clearance vehicle. I was up in the turret and halfway hanging out of the vehicle and had my 240B machine gun and my 12-gauge shotgun for warning shots. We have non-lethal rounds in the shotgun and shoot their direction for buffer zones. I had my night vision goggles. A blast went off and hit the right side of my vehicle. It punctured a hole through the vehicle. A copper slug, called an Explosive Formed Projectile, hit me and then blew apart inside the truck. It goes straight through something, then goes from concave to convex and forms into a slug probably twice as big as a man’s fist. It hit the driver (he suffered a laceration but was fine). The blast force bent the framing and hit my squad leader in the back really hard, breaking some vertebrae. The other soldier in the truck was fine.

Life-saving measures: I’ve pieced this together from what people have told me. I remember about 30 seconds after I got hit. I slumped over, fell and was all disoriented. It was dark. I couldn’t see. There was smoke everywhere. I was more worried about my buddy who was sitting where the hole was. I thought he had died. I tried to get up and couldn’t . . . suddenly it felt like a million hot needles in my legs. I yelled out twice that I thought my legs were on fire. They found me, dragged me out and immediately my best buddy John put a tourniquet on my left leg. The right leg was too mangled for a tourniquet. They have these things like a patch that coagulate the blood. They couldn’t really control the bleeding on my right side.

Next, Brandon was taken to an aid station for preliminary surgery and prepped for a larger hospital on the other side of Baghdad. Hospital medics stopped his bleeding, ran blood through his body and administered pain medication. He was then choppered to the Baghdad Airport and transferred to an air hospital bound for Germany where his mother met him. She later accompanied him to the recently opened Center for the Intrepid in San Antonio, a state-of-the-art rehab center for amputees and burn victims. Arriving there May 8, he underwent major surgery to clean up the wounds. He also received more medication to keep him comfortable from the swelling and to fend off infection.

Brandon’s first memories since the attack: I woke up. My father was next to me and my older sister Trisha. I looked down. My legs were all wrapped up. I don’t remember my first thought. I guess I was always flirting with the nurses. I think the clearest memory during ICU was when my Sgt. Major Kilpatrick pinned my purple heart on my chest. . . . Brandon stops briefly to control his emotions. . . I remember my squad leader was hurt with me, and in the same hospital, and they pinned him and me.

Brandon left the hospital in early June after having his stitches removed. He moved to his own room at Fort Sam Houston Army Base. He was fitted for sockets on each leg. He’s been walking for increasing amounts of time—as much as pain from damaged nerve endings allows. Each prosthesis will eventually have knees added.

Brandon: They’re holding off on the right leg because it’s so short. It’s going to be a real challenge with the weight on the knee, so they’re taking it gradually. I’ll get my right knee probably before Christmas and will start running after the New Year. They won’t tell me to stop therapy until I say, ‘I think this is it.’ My goal is to go run a couple of miles without stopping.

In spite of his characteristic intensity, Brandon occasionally takes a day off from therapy, as he did on Tuesday, Oct. 16: It’s one of those days when I woke up in a good amount of pain. I didn’t feel like going to therapy, so I took a day for myself. I used the shower head to massage my leg. That helps with the pain. My buddy Nick came, and we went to Best Buy and got the movie Transformer. I suggest you rent it; it’s pretty cool.

Brandon Adam decided to join the Army on Sept. 11, 2001, during his junior year of high school. He still feels passionately about that decision: I was actually taking my driving test in Mr. Givens’ class. We were listening to the radio, and it (news of the New York and Washington, D.C attacks) came on. I was so overwhelmed with anger, frustration, sadness, and I just wanted to do my part. On that very day I made my decision . . . it might sound kinda cliche, but it’s a true thing for me. I wanted to go in the military, and nothing else mattered. I just knew.

I feel the same way as I did when I joined, that there is a need to help. If we left Iraq now, it would upset a lot of soldiers because people would have died in vain. That’s the biggest thing. People always pick out the negative in everything. The reporters are always so pessimistic and anti-Bush. He was a man who made a decision that a lot of people wouldn’t want to make. And, now that it’s not going as well as expected, they have to crucify the man.

The future for Sgt. Brandon Adam remains uncertain. He’ll receive disability and forced retirement compensation for the rest of his life. He can attend college on the GI Bill. He worries about finding a wife. He’s anxious to start his own family. For now, he’s very aware and humbled by the outpouring of generosity and caring he’s received from friends, family and strangers since the May.

Brandon: I can’t believe the reaction. I’m just one soldier. At first, I thought, ‘why am I any different from anyone else?’ I’m trying to filter through all this. I don’t feel like anyone should owe me anything. I was just doing my job. I just want to say thanks to everyone who helped support me and my family through this time in our lives.

This writer to her former student, Brandon: I’m sure that I speak for the entire community in expressing deep appreciation for your service and sacrifice. I’m also honored and grateful to share your story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hats off to Brandon.

Living in the environs of Ft. Lewis, we get to see and talk with many veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars. Brandon's attitude typifies what we hear. For sure, it's not 100%, but the vast majority of the veterans that we encounter believe strongly in what they're doing.

As a Vietnam veteran, I'm in awe of these people. Our contemporaries felt abused if we had to return to Vietnam with stateside rotation of 18 months. In some cases, these kids are sent back to combat tours with as little as six months.

Awesome people. Listening to the sniveling and whining coming from our press and politicians, one has to wonder if we're worthy of such fine people as the Brandons with whom we're gifted.

MJB

Anonymous said...

Thank You for a continued job well done!
Dad