MILITARY Salem woman serving in Iraq among 44 soldiers hurt in blast

SALEM -- A city woman was one of 44 U.S. soldiers wounded Tuesday in an explosion at a dining facility at a U.S. base in Mosul, Iraq.
Spec. 4 Matte DeJane, 20, of the U.S. Army suffered shrapnel wounds and broken toes in the apparent suicide bombing at Camp Marez that left 22 people dead, including 14 U.S. military personnel. Sixty-nine people were wounded.
DeJane, daughter of Twing and Charlene DeJane and niece of Salem mayor Larry DeJane, has been in Iraq since March with a company attached to the Army's 835th Corps Support Battalion. It's based at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
Contact
Charlene DeJane said she spoke to Matte DeJane by phone Wednesday shortly after she came out of surgery in Iraq.
"We don't know a lot right now, just that she'll stay in Iraq through Christmas," she said. She said her daughter will then be transferred to Germany and return home to Salem sometime after Jan. 1. "It was just good to talk to her."
Charlene DeJane said she was contacted by the American Red Cross and by a soldier in her daughter's unit about the attack early Wednesday. An officer from Schofield Barracks contacted her on Thursday.
Details were sketchy, but Charlene DeJane said that Matte was driving a vehicle outside the mess tent where the explosion was detonated, and both she and a passenger were injured.
"We've had so many phone calls today," she said. "We think we'll hear from [the Army] again tomorrow."
Matte DeJane is a 2002 graduate of Salem High School.
She is the second solider from Salem to be wounded in Iraq since the war began in April 2003. Private First Class Randall Clunen, 20, suffered serious injuries including broken bones and shrapnel wounds last fall. He was serving with the 101st Airborne Division.