Schaumburg Marine recovering; Two fingers lost, leg still injured after Iraq attack
David Leddy might have thought it a routine assignment if he’d found anything routine in his mere two weeks in Iraq.
http://www.dailyherald.com/news/cookstory.asp?id=239339&cc=c&tc=&t=
By Eric Peterson
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The 19-year-old Marine from Schaumburg was on foot patrol Sept. 29 when he passed by some graffiti on a wall.
The sergeant who was with Leddy asked him to take a photograph of it.
As the Schaumburg High School graduate did, a homemade bomb buried in the ground 10 feet away suddenly exploded. The young man’s rifle was broken in half, two fingers barely dangling from his left hand. A shark-bite-like gouge was left in his upper left calf.
Suddenly a firefight broke out between the Marines and those responsible for the remote-controlled explosive, delaying Leddy’s immediate removal from the scene.
From a hospital room in Betheseda, Md., his mother, Debbie Leddy, recounts the rest of what her wounded son told her of the incident.
“He thought, ‘If my rifle looks like this, I wonder what my body looks like,’æ” she said.
Though it might have been only a few minutes’ delay before his transport from the scene, the young Marine said it felt like hours. He doesn’t remember losing consciousness, but by the time he was aware of anything, he already had a tourniquet on his leg.
After being stabilized at an Air Force base nearby, Leddy was flown to Balad, Iraq, for further treatment.
Within a day and a half after being wounded, he found himself at an Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. And two days later he was in Betheseda, on his father George’s 50th birthday.
Though he’d seemed to be doing well for someone who’d lost two fingers on the hand he favored, the touchiest part of his recovery was this past weekend as he struggled with an infection threatening both his leg and his life.
But Debbie Leddy believes the prayers and support her son received on his 20th birthday Sunday were what helped his condition stabilize.
Still, he’s been in surgery every other day for the past two weeks, mostly for shrapnel removal from his right leg. The work is expected to continue for some time.
He’s also had tissue moved from one part of his left calf to another to help fill in the gap left by the bomb. Likewise, skin from his lost middle finger was used to replace damaged patches elsewhere on his hand.
“He’s just been in a lot of pain,” Debbie Leddy said. “He says he’s just trying to heal and wanting to connect with family and friends. He doesn’t know what his future is because his trigger finger is gone, and that’s what he did.”
David Leddy has lived in Schaumburg nearly his entire life. He attended St. Hubert’s School in Hoffman Estates before Schaumburg High School. At St. Hubert’s, he met two other friends that are also currently deployed in Iraq, Justin Sher and Gary Nastasowski.
The three forged an interest in the Marines and a dedication to serving their country that came from somewhere within, David Leddy’s parents said.
“I think he just thought of it as a band of brothers,” Debbie Leddy said. “He wanted to be part of that elite group and help America.”
“He’s always really, really liked history and liked the valor of the soldier,” George Leddy said. “He’s a very realistic kid. He once told me, ‘Dad, there’s never not going to be a war.’
“I don’t think it’s totally hit him how much of a hero he is. He came within inches of paying the ultimate price.”
For two years, Debbie Leddy has belonged to the Yellow Ribbon Group in Palatine along with the mothers of David’s other friends who enlisted at 18 and were deployed to Iraq this Sept. 11.
Kathy Sher of Hoffman Estates, the mother of David’s friend Justin Sher, said everyone in the group was shocked by the news of David’s injury.
“All of us were just getting used to the fact that they were leaving, and it happened so fast,” she said.
In her e-mail exchanges with her own son, she could tell how shaken he was by the news. He’s been struggling to adjust to the chaotic situation still prevalent in Iraq and — most difficult of all for him — that he can’t trust anyone over there.
Debbie Leddy said David warned her in advance that he felt something was going to happen to him as he’d been fired on every time he’d gone out during his first two weeks in Iraq.
She’s very happy with the care and support he’s receiving in Betheseda. Being a nurse herself at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, she knows how hard the staff there are working.
Her son’s room has already been visited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the family got a photo taken with him.
As for the future, the only immediate goal is to get out of the hospital. Though David has been promised prosthetic fingers for his wounded left hand, she imagines he’s probably going to have to learn to use his right.
She also wonders if he might need to use one of the very canes her Yellow Ribbon Group was collecting and sending for wounded soldiers.