Injured Cortland soldier recuperates from blast

The soldier said he is eager go back to where his paratrooper brothers are.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

CORTLAND — Getting a blast of metal, gravel and other debris from a homemade bomb on a building roof in Iraq won’t stop David Mickey from continuing with his military career.

If his foot and arm are better within a few months, he might even return to his Army parachute infantry regiment in time to return to Iraq before its tour of duty ends in December.

“I want to go back, but I have some doubts about whether I’ll get back in time,” he said from his home on Wae Trail in Cortland, where he is spending 30 days recuperating from surgeries on his heel and arm before heading to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on June 5 for another surgery on his arm.

Mickey, 26, was injured March 16 when seven members of his squad went on foot patrol in the city of Jurf as Sukhr, about 40 miles southwest of Baghdad. They were setting up surveillance on the roof of a one-story building.

A makeshift bomb went off 3 feet from Pvt. Mickey, killing his squad commander and injuring Mickey and two other soldiers.

The worst injuries were to Mickey’s right heel, left arm and left ear. He’s taking physical therapy to help him walk properly. He hopes the surgery will take away the pain and numbness he feels in his arm because of a nerve that moved too close to the surface in the blast.

The blast also filled up a large part of his backside with debris, pieces of which occasionally migrate close enough to the surface of his skin to fall out. Sometimes he can’t even identify the pieces, he noted, because the roof contained so much unidentifiable garbage.

The explosion was close enough to Mickey to give him a permanent 40-percent hearing loss in one ear and a ringing in that ear that lasted three weeks.

Right after the explosion, Mickey thought he’d be back in action within a couple weeks.

“I just naturally assumed I’d be OK,” Mickey said. During the weeks that passed at various hospitals in Iraq, Germany and in the United States, he learned that some of the injuries wouldn’t pass as quickly as that.

Though the wounds have mostly healed on the outside, he has found it frustrating to be unable to bend his elbow or walk normally. He walks with a cane.

“Mentally and physically it’s very bad, but it could have been worse,” he said, noting that the shrapnel that hit his heel apparently hit a wall before coming back at him.

Getting into the military

Mickey joined the military two years ago, he said, after spending his first couple years after high school earning a degree from ITT Technical School and starting to work. He soon realized that what he really wanted to do was be a soldier. But to do that, he knew he needed to lose some weight.

But by 2005, after getting in shape, he was ready. “I don’t regret a minute of it,” Mickey said.

His job in the Army is paratrooper, Mickey said, which means his unit parachutes out of airplanes for deployment anywhere in the world on 24 hours notice. “We’re always on alert,” he said. His unit has been in Iraq since the fall of 2006.

Mickey considers his injury to be just a “bump in the road.”

Some friends are surprised when he tells them he’s eager to get back to his unit.

“I want to get back with my brothers,” he said. “I don’t want to go back to that country, but I want to go back to my brothers.”

St. Robert’s Church in Cortland and the Knights of Columbus Council 11646 honored Mickey with its Veteran of the Year award Sunday.