'Here are your heroes ... '
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Andrew Shimabuku • The Honolulu Advertiser
More than 90 Hawai'i-based soldiers have been injured in combat since deployments began early this year, a number that increased even as Schofield authorities worked to pin it down.
Pfc. David J. Holmes was congratulated by Lt. Gen. James. L. Campbell upon receiving his Purple Heart at a ceremony at Schofield yesterday. Two other Hawai'i-based soldiers also received the medal.
Some will be permanently disabled. Some will return to war. Yesterday, three of them received Purple Hearts at a ceremony at Schofield.
Pfc. David J. Holmes, 21; Spc. Anthony W. Sullivan, 24; and Sgt. Andrew J. Fix, 24, stood or sat at attention as Lt. Gen. James L. Campbell, commander of the U.S. Army, Pacific, pinned medals on their chests at Sills Field.
"I've often said that what this country needs more than ever is heroes," the general told the soldiers, spouses and veterans who watched the ceremony. "Look no further. Here are your heroes."
All three men looked uncomfortable at the compliment, but appeared to be recuperating well from their injuries. Holmes, a 25th Transportation Co. soldier who was wounded by shrapnel in both legs after a bomb exploded under his Humvee on April 20, was still in a wheelchair, but said he hoped to be afoot soon.
Sullivan, an infantryman with Schofield's "Wolfhounds," was injured in the face by a bullet during a gunfight April 7 near Kirkuk.
Fix, also a Wolfhound, was providing security for a city council meeting on April 7 in a town south of Kirkuk when the crowd turned ugly. He was shot in the left foot.
All three men were shy about talking to the media gathered for the event, and answered politely but briefly when other soldiers shook their hands and thanked them for their sacrifices.
"I guess it is one of those awards you really don't want to get," 1st Sgt. Curt Arnold said as he bent over Holmes' wheelchair.
"But I'll take it," Holmes said, "while they're handing them out."
Andrew Shimabuku • The Honolulu Advertiser
Sullivan said he had stayed in regular e-mail contact with his buddies back in Iraq.
From left, Spc. Anthony W. Sullivan, Pfc. David J. Holmes and Sgt. Andrew J. Fix, who received Purple Hearts yesterday at a ceremony at Schofield, appear to be recuperating well from their injuries in Iraq.
Fix said he hoped to return to Iraq soon, but didn't particularly want a second Purple Heart, an award that requires a combat injury.
"I didn't try to get this one," Fix said.
Col. Dave McKenna, commander of the U.S. Army Hawai'i, said about one-third of Schofield's combat-injured may return to the wars.
The future of the other two-thirds, he said, "is in the hands of their doctors."
McKenna, whose daughter and son followed him in to military service, is in charge of Hawai'i's homefront while the main force is deployed.
He greets the injured soldiers as they return. He'd just greeted five more, arriving on a plane at Hickam Air Force Base, in the midnight hour before the ceremony.
The number of Hawai'i's combat injured will exceed 100 soon, he said, and seven Schofield soldiers have died in action. Until recent months, Schofield was a place where war seemed distant.
"I guess we have lost our innocence," McKenna said.
McKenna's innocence as a father has gone as well. He lost it a year ago, when the telephone rang at 6 a.m. and a voice told him his son, an Army Ranger, had been injured in Iraq.
Andrew Shimabuku • The Honolulu Advertiser
"The doctors said he may never walk again," McKenna said. "But he is."
Spc. Anthony W. Sullivan, right, an infantryman with Schofield's "Wolfhounds," was injured in the face by a bullet during a gunfight April 7 near Kirkuk, Iraq. Yesterday at Schofield, he received a Purple Heart.
Jack McKenna, 23, is now a student at the University of Washington. And his father knows that the times when Purple Heart recipients were aging veterans of long-past wars are gone.
"It's amazing," he said. "This group of young people and their selfless determination. Not like anything our generation has ever known."
They are patriots, he said, but their chief motivation lies in duty to each other.
The few soldiers at Schofield and elsewhere who have not yet gone to war know it is a question of when, and not if, they will be deployed, McKenna said. And many — including the injured whose wounds do not involve permanent disability — will have more than one opportunity.
Most of them welcome it, he said.
"It's a common thread," he said. "They all wish they were back with their units."
He said he'd heard it again in the midnight darkness at Hickam, when he greeted the last group of incoming injured.
"The first words I heard out of their mouths," McKenna said, were: "Sir, I want to go back. I want to be back with my guys.' "
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
