Pieces Of Brian
He says he never, ever wonders who was responsible for digging that hole in that field on the outskirts of Fallujah and packing it with scraps of metal and explosives and rocks and anything else that could destroy vehicles and shred skin.
October 30, 2005
By JIM FARRELL, Photographs By BRADLEY E. CLIFT
He says he never, ever wonders who was responsible for digging that hole in that field on the outskirts of Fallujah and packing it with scraps of metal and explosives and rocks and anything else that could destroy vehicles and shred skin.
He says he never, ever wonders who detonated the bomb that erupted with a boom and a flash and sprayed the shrapnel that tore through the night.
"Don't even think about it," Brian Johnston says. "What difference would it make?"
He's right, of course, as he is about so many other things. He knows that the who and the how and even the why are not relevant.
Just the what.
Brian's right arm is gone, except for a stub of about 3 inches. The skin that is left has been folded and patched so that remnants of two tattoos remain like a perverse puzzle, hints of a once-bold tribal pattern interspersed with parts of the letters USMC.
His right leg is also gone, at mid-thigh. The stump is circled by a U-shaped scar, a 40-stitch souvenir from more than 50 surgeries and two skin grafts performed months after the amputation to clean up stubborn problems with recurring bone formation and infections. He is 24 years old.
Since Nov. 8, 2004, when that bomb went off and Brian felt not pain but rather his arm and leg simply go dead, his focus has been on those two limbs.
Never a word of regret about joining the Marines or any second-guessing of politicians who decided to wage a war that started promisingly but has become mired in bloodshed.
Anger and frustration, sure, but no prolonged depression, not even two months later when 28 Marines from his beloved Charlie Company, including five close friends, died in a helicopter crash during a sandstorm in Iraq.
And only occasional expressions of exasperation despite facing so many obstacles during rehab - like an emergency tracheotomy - that one of his therapists dubbed him "the setback king."
Hardly a word about how his wounds have brought his divorced parents back into each other's lives, a rancorous reunion if ever there was one.
Oh, Brian whines a lot, about stupid military commanders and bad hospital food and his electronic arm, which cost $75,000 to make but is practically useless because it's too f-ing heavy (although he would use his favorite obscenity in its full, most vulgar form there).
But such churlishness is part of the surprising bad-boy charm that has led many of the middle-aged parents Brian has met lately to hope to match him up with their daughters.
As for any wholesale bitterness, any lament of "Why me?"
Nope.
He prefers not to dwell on the past or, for that matter, to speculate about the future but instead to live in the moment, which leads to another moment, the moments stringing out in an unending series of moments that Brian has filled mostly by watching TV (hardly ever the news), or DVDs or playing some handheld game, solitaire being a favorite choice.
Fact is, other than a trip out west in February for the funerals of his friends Matt Smith and Joey Spence, and a junket in June to Chicago for some R&R and an appearance at a fundraiser, Brian's life has been marked mostly by tedium, which, apparently, is how he has preferred it during his interminable wait to get better.
And so there's no way he is going to spend any of his time or energy asking questions that don't have answers and wouldn't change anything even if they did.
But others do.
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