By Shelley Grieshop
sgrieshop@dailystandard.com MARIA STEIN -- Unconscious one minute, then giving first aid to an injured comrade moments later.
Greg Meier, a 1996 Marion Local Schools graduate, sits beside his young son in their Maria Stein home, recalling the May 2004 event in Iraq as if it were yesterday. The sound of the bomb exploding beneath his truck vividly returns whenever fireworks are lit or a loud car roars down St. Johns Road.
On Tuesday, a Purple Heart medal will be pinned to his uniform during a presentation at the Statehouse in Columbus. Dozens of local family and friends will be watching with pride.
"We were hauling fuel," begins the former U.S. Army Reservist, describing the 2-mile convoy mission he was a part of that day. "Those trucks are a daily target."
Meier, 28, a former member of a transportation battalion, was driving the first fuel truck to cross the enemy mine, neatly concealed beneath the smooth asphalt. Hours earlier, a few damaged and abandoned vehicles along that particular stretch south of Mozul had made everyone nervous. Marines were called in to check out the site and soon gave the OK to proceed.
"First a Suburban and then a Humvee went through. Now, I'm up," says Meier, detailing his every move. "Then this Marine up ahead steers me off to the left, and I'm thinking, 'What are you doing?' But I did as I was told."
He drove up to a dirt berm and "eased down into the brake at about 2 mph," he says. Then the weight of the truck hit the buried bomb and everything began to flow in slow motion, he adds.
"It was like freeze-frame," Meier says. "The sound was deafening."
Meiers believes his head struck the ceiling of the truck several times and the steering wheel, too, as the impact threw the commercial vehicle 15 to 20 feet off course. The Marine on the ground to his right was tossed 50 feet away upon impact but escaped with only minor injuries. A piece of shrapnel pierced the hip of the Suburban driver -- the only person at the scene visibly injured.
"I came to and knew our truck had been blown out. I didn't know if I had gotten hit or not," Meier says.
He came out "guns a' blazin'," as he calls it, grabbing the pole outside his cab door and swinging himself around. He felt his arms and legs go numb, perhaps from nerve damage that still plagues him today.
A Combat Lifesafer, he saw the injured Suburban driver -- an Army man like he -- and yelled for someone to get his medic bag.
"The guy was coherent and here am I shaking uncontrollably from the adrenalin rush. I've got this IV needle in my hand and I'm getting ready to stick him. I'll never forget the look on his face," Meier says, flashing a boyish smile.
He smartly handed the syringe to another and "now I'm a patient," he says.
Although others injured that day received their Purple Heart medals before leaving Iraq, he did not. His unofficially arrived without warning by regular mail, left callously in his mailbox. He and his wife, Jennifer, admit they were angry at the initial lack of respect by the military but are trying to put their emotions behind them now.
Besides nerve damage, he's permanently lost about 50 percent of his hearing. An employee of Dannon Company of Minster, he realizes how lucky he was to return to his wife (who he married the day before he left for Iraq) and 3-year-old son, Kollynn.
"I know I had somebody on my shoulder," he says, adding his guardian angel kept him safe from several close calls while on missions. "Mortars seemed to follow me."
Later this week he'll sit back and admire his newest military medal, then find a glass case to place it in. He hopes his memories are the closest he'll ever be to war again.
"I'm not interested in going back," he adds. |
