The soldiers were in a 10-vehicle convoy in Zabul province at about 7 a.m. when some 10 insurgents attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. The Schofield soldiers were able to turn them back with small-arms fire.

O'Sullivan is a Humvee driver with the 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry, and operates a missile system mounted on top of the vehicle, his father said.

The grenades flipped the Humvee on its side, said David O'Sullivan, who was briefed by Army officers. Officials with the 25th Infantry Division (Light) confirmed that the five wounded men were from Schofield Barracks.

Three had "nicks and scrapes, nothing of any real seriousness," David O'Sullivan said. The Army said they were able to return to duty.

A fourth soldier may have broken a leg. O'Sullivan said his son's eye injury was the most worrisome because it was bleeding a lot. The men were being treated at the hospital at Kandahar Air Field and would be flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. The elder O'Sullivan said his son would not be moved until doctors could stop internal bleeding in his torso.

Daniel T. O'Sullivan called his parents early yesterday.

"He was coherent," his father said. "And he actually joked a little bit with my wife that he will be home, and we will be going out to dinner pretty soon."

He could arrive as early as tomorrow.

The O'Sullivan family moved to Hawai'i almost a year ago from New Jersey. Daniel O'Sullivan was a culinary school graduate on his way to a career as a chef when terrorists attacked on Sept. 11. He joined the Army instead.

Sending her son off to war was difficult, said his mother, Teresa O'Sullivan. "You just go about your daily thing, but at the back of your mind you don't know," she said. "You really don't know what's going on."

Now her son is coming home.

"That's the good news," she said. "He might be injured and everything, but at least he is coming home."