2006 VFW Magazine - Veterans of Foreign Wars

youngvetsinfocus
Inspiring Others: Triple Amputees
Four veterans from the Iraq War are making the most of what many Americans would consider a severe setback.
by Janie Blankenship
Army Sgt. Joey Bozik met the love
of his life via e-mail while he was
living in North Carolina and she
was attending college at Texas A&M
University. He left for war and she continued
her studies. Along the way the
two planned to marry and build a life
together.
Oct. 27, 2004, could have changed the
direction Bozik’s life was headed. While
he was serving with the Army’s 118th
Military Police Company, Bozik’s Humvee
struck a roadside bomb in Iraq. He
doesn’t remember anything until he
woke up in Walter Reed Army Medical
Center in Washington, D.C., surrounded
by family.
He asked to be alone with his fiancée,
Jayme Peters, and told her there would
be no hard feelings if she wanted to
walk away. Just weeks later, Bozik
wheeled himself to the hospital chapel
where he and Peters were married.
Losing both legs and his right arm,
Bozik is one of four triple amputees
from the Iraq War, according to a Walter
Reed spokesman.
“Even knowing I would lose three
limbs, I would sign up again,” Bozik, 26,
told Time.“After Sept. 11, 2001, I remember
thinking, ‘My God, they [terrorists]
could put something in the water and kill
a million people.’ That’s a fear I never
want my family to have to feel again.”
‘Get Me Home to Nikki’
On Sept. 11, 2004, Senior Airman Brian
Kolfage, Jr., was headed to the morale
center at Balad, Iraq, for a soda when a
mortar hit the base camp. He recalls
lying on a pile of rocks and looking
around to see bloody body parts everywhere.
His tent mate, Senior Airman
Valentin Cortez, tried to shield him
from the carnage.
“He looked at me,” Cortez told Air
Jayme and Joey Bozik, a triple amputee,
were married in December 2004 in the
chapel at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Force Times, “and in a calm and collected
voice, he said, ‘Man, I already know.
Just get me home to Nikki.’”
Nikki turned out to be Kolfage’s girlfriend
from Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
When he awoke at Walter Reed, missing
both legs and his right hand, she was at
his side. Not long after that, the two
were married in a private ceremony.
Assigned to the 17th Security Forces
Squadron at Goodfellow Air Force
Base, Kolfage, 23, would have lost his
left hand had it not been for his watch,
which stopped the shrapnel.
“This is really not that bad,” an
upbeat Kolfage told Scripps Howard
News Service. “You just have to learn to
do everything all over again.
Soldier Becomes U.S. Citizen
On June 10, 2003, Army Spc. Hilario Bermanis
was manning a weapons turn-in
PATRIC SCHNEIDER / BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION EAGLE
point in Baghdad when he came under
attack from rocket-propelled grenades.
In a split second, a fellow soldier was
killed and Bermanis lost both legs and
his left hand.
A native of Pohnpei, Federated States
of Micronesia, Bermanis was serving
with the 82nd Airborne Division. On
Sept. 17, 2003, Bermanis took the oath
of U.S. citizenship from his hospital bed
in Walter Reed.
He is now back home in Pohnpei
with his parents and younger brother.
‘Whatever It Takes’
The most recent triple amputee is 24-
year-old Army Spc. Bryan Anderson of
Rolling Meadows, Ill. His vehicle hit a
roadside bomb in Baghdad on Oct. 23,
2005, during his second tour in Iraq.
“I was conscious the whole time,” he
told the Chicago Tribune. “If one of my
friends hadn’t applied a tourniquet as
well as he did, I wouldn’t have made it.
He lost both legs and his left arm to
shrapnel. His right hand was mangled,
and he suffered abdominal injuries and
a collapsed lung.
Serving with the 411th Military
Police Company, Anderson lost four of
his Army friends in Iraq and seven were
wounded.
“The only reason we are there is to
help little kids, but it is hard to stay motivated
when you see friends in your unit
getting hurt,” he told the Rolling
Meadows Review. “That is what keeps us
all good over there—friends and helping
people—but it is like fighting ghosts.”
He plans to return to his job at
American Airlines.
“I see how the guys [in rehab] walk
and I want to do whatever it takes,” he
said. “Sometimes you don’t feel like
doing things, but I’m going to make
myself.”
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