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FRIENDLY FIRE STATUS DENIES PURPLE HEART TO
WOUNDED SOLDIER -- Gunfire in Iraq shattered
his
leg and left him with a limp and some shrapnel,
but no Purple Heart.
Story here...
http://shns.abc15.com/
shns/story.cfm?pk=PURPLEHEART-
01-05-07&cat=WW
Story below:
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Friendly fire status denies Purple Heart to wounded soldier
By MICHAEL DOYLE
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Gunfire in Iraq shattered Army Spc. Chris Carlson's leg and
left him with a limp and some shrapnel, but no Purple Heart.
The Army rebuilt Carlson's leg with titanium, but nearly four months
after he was shot while guarding a convoy north of Baghdad, it still
hasn't awarded the 25-year-old Modesto, Calif., resident the medal
that's given to soldiers who are wounded in combat.
"I thought, 'That freakin' sucks,' " Carlson said in a telephone
interview. "I was shot in Iraq, and it was definitely not training."
As of July 31, the Army had awarded 13,944 Purple Hearts to soldiers
wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan. Carlson, however, was hit by friendly
fire, and whether that renders him eligible for the Purple Heart can be
a tricky question, a judgment call.
The rules require Purple Heart recipients to be wounded in combat or the
equivalent. Noncombat injuries don't count. Since 1993, victims of
friendly fire have been eligible if they were wounded "while directly
engaged in armed conflict."
Shooting a toe while cleaning a gun won't suffice; neither will breaking
a leg while rolling a Humvee.
Carlson's left kneecap was turned to powder by a .50-caliber machine gun
fired by an alarmed young paratrooper sometime around midnight on Sept.
7. Now recuperating at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in
Georgia, Carlson thinks he deserves the Purple Heart. So does his
father-in-law, who's been hip-deep in the controversy ever since he
heard about what happened.
"I was outraged," said Will Gault, a business consultant in Modesto.
"The individual who did the shooting thought that he was shooting at the
enemy."
Gault has taken his son-in-law's case to Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif.,
who he hopes can lean on the Pentagon. Carlson, whose sense of humor
remains intact, might not have taken it that far. He does, however, feel
his own outrage, starting with the guy who shot him, a private first
class from the 82nd Airborne Division.
"The only punishment he got was retraining," Carlson said. "I think he
should go to freakin' jail."
Carlson's superiors couldn't be reached for comment, and he hasn't been
told that he won't get a Purple Heart.
Carlson's Army buddies fear that he'll be shut out because it's already
been several months since he was shot, but the Purple Heart is exempt
from the Army regulation requiring that medals be awarded within three
years of an incident, and getting it can take time. Two Nevada National
Guard military policemen who were wounded in June 2003 didn't receive
their Purple Hearts until March 2005.
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Larry Scott
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