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Injured Marine's parents fight to get other son home from Iraq
November 17, 2004
Associated Press
BETHESDA, Md. -- The parents of two Marines from Connecticut are fighting to get their youngest son out of Iraq after his brother was seriously injured in the assault on Fallujah.
Brian Johnston, 24, lost his right arm and most of his right leg in an explosion on Nov. 9, the second day of the effort to take Fallujah from insurgents. His younger brother, Kevin, 20, remains in Fallujah with a different Marine unit, his parents said.
Bruce Johnston, of East Hartford, Conn., and his ex-wife, Vera Heron of Utah, have asked the military to allow Kevin to visit his brother at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, or to assign him to non-combat duty. Heron said the process has been frustrating.
"We're just going around in circles," she said.
Heron and her ex-husband are in Bethesda, where Brian Johnston is in a semiconscious state.
"I cannot afford to give up two sons," Bruce Johnston said Tuesday from the Naval Medical Center, in an interview with The Hartford Courant.
Officials with the Marines would not discuss the explosion that injured Brian Johnston.
Heron said she was told her son was sitting on top of an overcrowded amphibious assault vehicle when he was struck by a blast from a rocket-propelled grenade. She said another Marine sitting alongside her son suffered only a hand injury.
Heron has asked U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., and other politicians for help in getting the Marines to send Kevin Johnston home. A spokesman said Larson's office has been in contact with the Marines since Friday on behalf of the family but could not say whether Kevin Johnston would be reassigned or granted emergency leave.
Military members may request a transfer out of a hostile area if a relative is killed in that area. Heron said the Marines should take Kevin Johnston out of Fallujah because of how serious his brother's injuries are.
"But I think (the Marines) are looking at it from the aspect that (Brian's) still alive," she said.
Earlier this year, the parents of an Army National Guard soldier who was killed in a Baghdad ambush requested that their two other daughters, also stationed in Iraq as members of the Wisconsin National Guard, be given non-combat jobs. The two women eventually took non-combat jobs outside of Iraq.
Brian Johnston, a corporal in the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Division who had been in Iraq for about a month, was treated in Iraq, then moved to a military hospital in Germany. He arrived in Maryland on Friday and has been in a medically induced coma much of the time, Heron said. She said her son recognized her when he was taken off a respirator briefly.
"He doesn't know he's in a hospital. He doesn't know what's happened yet," she said. "He's very upset, very agitated, calling out the names of guys in his unit."
Heron said that her son's entire right arm is gone and that his right leg was amputated above the knee.
Kevin Johnston, a corporal with the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, has been in Iraq since mid-August. His parents had trouble contacting him, but he finally got a message and called his father Saturday.
"I told him his brother had lost his arm and his leg," Bruce Johnston said. "And Kevin said, 'I will make them pay.' Those were his words. He was angry. Kevin has a (machine) gun and he probably blew away a lot of Iraqis that day."
Brian Johnston graduated from East Hartford High School in 1999 and enlisted in the Marines in December 2001, shortly after Kevin, who was still a high school senior at the time, also enlisted.
They are third-generation Marines. Bruce Johnston said that he served in Vietnam and that his father served during World War II.
Brian Johnson is expected to remain in the hospital for about two months before being fitted for prosthetics, according to his father, who said he is worried about the trauma Brian will suffer when he learns about the loss of his limbs.
"But he's a fighter, he's tough," Bruce Johnston said. "He's going to come out of this all right."
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I feel terrible for the family, but from what I know of the Corps, forcing the other son to leave his post would be a bad thing.