Mineral, Ill.
For years, Liz Kelm gave her son nice winter gloves for Christmas. But two years ago, he told her, "No gloves." Retired Sgt. Dustin Hill was joking. He lost both hands in Iraq in 2004 when a bomb inside a car exploded next to his Humvee.
He also lost his right eye and ear and suffered horrific burns over much of his body. His right ankle was broken, held together now by wires and screws, as is his left knee cap. Nerve damage prevents him from picking up his left foot properly.
A titanium rod reinforces his left femur and terrible scars mark his face and back.
"I'm forgetting something," he says as he lists his injuries.
But as his yuletide tease wim his mother attests, the blast Sept. 21, 2004, left intact Hill's zest for life, his ability to find joy in every day and conviction that complaining is a waste of time.
When she mentions his "no gloves" remark, Kelm smiles and says, "Yeah, he's the same Dusty."
No suicide bomber in Iraq could change him.
"Shit happens," Hill says wim a shrug. "You've got to deal wim it and go on."
Hill, 25, a small-town boy from the western Illinois prairie, joined the National Guard in 2002 because he thought, "That looks like fun."
He lives now in Mineral, a dead-quiet hamlet of 200 within earshot of Interstate 80. His demands of life are simple and few.
If he can sit in his boat with a fishing pole, why worry? If he can have a few laughs with friends, he's fine.
While recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, a psychiatrist once counseled him to share his "true" feelings.
"He did everything he could to convince me I was depressed," Hill says. "I said, 'How me hell am I depressed?'"
Depressed? Fat chance. Hill's got too much to do. Today, there's a 1978 Trans Am in his garage that needs rebuilt. And mat boat in the backyard. He also recently bought 40 acres of land for fishing, hunting and, perhaps, building.
Plus, he just became a father. When Hill told retired Maj. Mike Kessel last fall of his impending fatherhood, Kessel recalls, "I was fighting to not be crying on the phone."
In 2004, Kessel commanded the Illinois Army Guard's Battery F, 1st Battalion, 202nd Air Defense Artillery from Galva, Ill., a town of about 2,200 people.
He remembers well the day Hill was wounded. Few people believed the outgoing soldier with the perpetual smile would survive.
"It's amazing," Kessel says. "His fight. His spirit."
Hill didn't have to be there. He was a mechanic and his job was in the motor pool. But when the unit was ordered to Iraq, he begged to be released from motor-pool duty and put on patrols.
Otherwise, he says now, "All I'm going to see is the inside of a maintenance shop."
Reluctandy, the motor-pool chief gave in. Hill became a gunner, poking through the top of a Humvee.
On the day he was wounded, his unit was patrolling the dangerous road to the Baghdad airport known as Route Irish.
"I still don't have any recollection of that day except what the guys have told me," Hill says.
The patrol stopped to investigate an abandoned car. Normally, all other traffic is stopped when the patrol stops. But on this day, the order was to allow traffic to continue moving.
"My initial response was, 'No,'" remembers Sgt. 1st Class Mike Bumphrey.
But orders are orders.
"Literally, it was the second or third car that pulled in and detonated," Bumphrey says.
In a flash, madness. Flames erupted. Hill flipped out of the Humvee. Rounds inside it ignited. At the same time, snipers on nearby rooftops opened fire. Five soldiers were wounded.
"There was smoke, fire, grease," Bumphrey remembers. "It was chaos."
Hill landed in a blazing puddle of fuel. "It burns! It burns," he screamed.
Under sniper fire, his comrades pulled Hill from the flames and doused him with a fire extinguisher. Bumphrey says the final flames were extinguished when another soldier, Staff Sgt. Daniel Quimby, lay on top of Hill to smother them, injuring himself in the process.
Hill's fragile condition was obvious. The flames had burned through his skin and into his muscle.
'Any part we would touch would come off," says Bumphrey, who knelt at Hill's side. "I'll be honest with you, I thought he was dead."
Hill asked if his eyes were OK Bumphrey knew Hill's right eye was gone, but rather than upset him, he said both eyes looked fine.
Hill told Staff Sgt. David Jensen, the squad leader, to tell his parents he loved them.
"I told him he's going to be able to tell them himself," Jensen says.
Luckily, an Iraqi ambulance rolled up. Soldiers directed it to the scene, but debris flattened its tires. Another Iraqi ambulance happened along seconds later.
"Providential," Kessel says.
The soldiers loaded Hill into the second ambulance. When the driver started toward an Iraqi hospital, Sgt. Aaron Jones pointed a sidearm at him and directed him to the combat support hospital in the Green Zone.
As the ambulance approached the heavily fortified gate of the Green Zone, the soldiers inside began shouting at the guards to let them pass.
"Nobody fired at or stopped that ambulance," Kessel says.
Any delay, he says, and Hill would have died. The appearance of the second ambulance. Jones' quick-thinking. The Green Zone gate guards' acquiescence. Each one was critica to Hill's survival.
"He was spared for a reason," Kessel says.
A team of doctors and nurses was quickly on its way from the states specificaUy to escort Hill back to America. On the way home, the plane had to land in northern Iraq so doctors could perform a life-saving tracheotomy.
Kelm, a nurse in Illinois, caught up with her son at the intensive care unit in San Antonio.
"He wasn't recognizable. He really wasn't," she says. "When I first saw him, the only way I recognized him was his chest and his feet. That's the only way I knew it was my kid. He was so swollen."
Hill spent two months in a coma. The family was called to his bedside once because doctors were sure he was near death. "They never said he was going to make it. They never did," Kelm says.
Fluid would fill Hill's lungs. His kidneys would shut down. He'd go into cardiac arrest.
No one was optimistic.
But they underestimated Hill's will to live. They couldn't know that the soldier inside the battered body wanted to go fishing again.
He wanted to drive his car fast on the arrow-straight blacktop roads of Illinois. He wanted to see that blue sky stretch forever above the green landscape.
When the battle to save his life was won, the horrifyingly painful therapy began. Kelm says the many skin grafts were like rubbing sandpaper on sunburn. It was during therapy that Hill's positive attitude became evident.
During a visit, Kessel watched a therapist forcefully stretch one of Hill's burned arms. "The skin is literally popping open," he says. "You can imagine the pain."
But Hill looked up at Kessel, smiled and said, "Hey, sir, I want you to know, I'd do it again."
Hill talks about having his arms stretched every night "to the point where I couldn't stand it."
"I don't know how those therapists do it," he says suddenly. "I don't think I could do it-intentionally inflicting pain on people."
Hill withstood the pain. In fact, he became a symbol. Therapists told him that other patients watched Hill. When he got up to do therapy, they did the same.
He says there is an easy explanation.
"I didn't like San Antonio. I wanted to get the hell out of there," Hill says. "I wanted to get home and go fishing again."
Hill returned to Illinois more than a year after he was wounded, receiving a hero's welcome. The local media interviewed him. A TV station did a three-part series. Strangers greeted him on the street and paid for his meals in restaurants.
He began dating Sarah Harvey, who he knew from his high school days in nearby Annawan. They had a daughter together last month and will soon wed.
To get their house in Mineral in shape, Hill adapted a paint roller to his prosthetic arms. He's begun work on his Trans Am with the help of a friend, but says he could do everything that needs to be done on his own if necessary.
Asked what his limitations are, he says, "None. It just takes me longer."
Hill has also soothed two troubled souls. The NCO who let him out of motor-pool duty felt tremendous guilt until Hill assured him he would have gone to the top of the chain of command to get his wish.
And Bumphrey fretted about lying to Hill about his eye until Hill told him, "That's what we're trained to do-calm people down-isn't it?"
The first time most members of his outfit saw Hill after he was wounded was late in 2005 at the battalion's ball in nearby Davenport, Iowa.
"He walked in and it was so powerful," says Maj. Greg Reinhardt, the battalion's executive officer in Iraq. "He's such a positive person."
Bumphrey says, "He come walking in. Had his Class As on. And his Stetson. As proud as can be. A smile on his face. The whole room stopped. Everybody's mouths dropped."
"He got a standing ovation," Jensen says. "Everybody just kept on clapping. He was the center of attention that night, as he deserved."
Early last year, an HBO producer invited Hill to be part of a documentary. Called Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, it featured wounded veterans interviewed by James Gandolfini, the actor best known for portraying Tony Soprano.
Hill flew to New York, but he knew something was up when a producer told him they wanted him to express his "deep dark secrets."
"I don't have any," he told him.
During the interview, Hill answered each question in his typical upbeat manner: No regrets. No bitterness. Would do it again.
As Hill and Gandolfini said their goodbyes after the taping, the actor said he hoped Hill wasn't lying to him. Hill says he used clear language to tell Gandolfini what he thought of the interview, none of which was used in the documentary.
For the most part, Hill's life now is normal. People still greet him and honk as they drive past his house in Mineral.
But he mostly is left now to the task of being a father. His disability benefits amount to more money than he ever made while working, he says, so that's not a problem.
Even without a job, Hill will keep busy. He spent his off days in Iraq working in the motor pool he begged to leave. "I've never been one to sit on a couch," he says.
Despite everything, however, Hill is not entirely unique. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonsoated the ability of seriously wounded soldiers to pick themselves up and get on with their lives, like the runners who compete in distance races on artificial legs.
Kelm met a woman at the hospital in San Antonio who, literally, had no face. Yet her attitude was optimistic and forward-looking.
"She was my hero," Kelm says.
If not unique, then people like Hill are, at least, rare.
It's one thing to bear the scars with dignity and courage. It's altogether something else to completely dismiss them, to minimize the impact of life-changing wounds as if they just don't matter.
To joke about them with your mother.
For the soldiers who served with Hill in Iraq, their affection for him before the injuries has grown into awe. Just talking about him moistens the eyes of these combat veterans.
"Dusty, definitely," Reinhardt says, "he's my hero."
© 2008 National Guard Association of the United States Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Source: National Guard
