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| Injured but intact, upbeat |
Newberg native is wounded when booby trap explodes in Iraq |
By Gunnar Olson, Newberg Graphic
Reporter
E-mail Gunnar at golson@eaglenewspapers.com
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Kevin Roshak knew he was in trouble. It was April 14,
midway through a month already marred by multiple U.S. fatalities in Operation Iraqi
Freedom. Tensions were high.
The Newberg native had minutes earlier ascended the stairs to a rooftop in
Husaba, a town near Iraq’s border with Syria populated by more than 120,000 people.
The radio man for his platoon, Roshak, 25, joined his commander in preparing the building
for use as a patrol station for the next four hours.
Roshak could still move his legs, but the explosion about 15 feet away had
knocked him on his side. He didn’t dare touch his neck or shoulder for fear of
further injuring himself.
“Turned out it missed everything critical by millimeters,” he said.
He returned to his platoon after one week in the hospital.
Last week Roshak returned stateside with a scar and a Purple Heart for a
monthlong leave, most of which he plans to spend at home in Newberg. Roshak, with angular
facial features and deep red hair, spoke of his experiences from the patio of his
parents’ Ninth Street home Thursday morning.
Born and raised in Newberg, second youngest of four children, he graduated
from Newberg High in 1997 and has nearly finished an engineering degree at Oregon State
University.
The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City added
to his motivation for enlisting, although he had wanted to since high school. The improved
odds of going to war had no effect on his decision. When he walked into the recruiting
office to join the military in January 2002, the recruiter thought he wanted to join the
reserves.
“Nah,” he said. “I wanted to be full-time. They didn’t
have to talk me into anything.” He wanted to be in what he saw as the most
challenging branch of the military, the Marines.
In January 2003 he went to Kuwait. “We didn’t actually think we’d go
in,” he said. “We were thinking it was a show of force.”
He was with the initial wave to cross into Iraq and march to Baghdad and was
there for two weeks. “It was pretty peaceful at the time,” he said. From there
he went to Karbala for four “pretty quiet” months. After five months back in the
United States, he returned to Iraq in February.
He remembers quite well the day he was wounded. It was about noon when the
explosive went off. He figured it was a remote-detonated 80 millimeter mortar that had
been buried under a pile of wood. A splinter about an inch wide and eight inches long
speared him behind the left ear.
“It knocked me straight over on my side,” he said. “Right when
it happened I knew I was in trouble.”
No one died in the explosion, although comrades were wounded. He called for
his friends. They took him down to the second floor. “The smell was unbelievable, of
the gunpowder, the explosion, the mortar,” he said. “I could still smell it on
my clothes.”
He recalled hearing the sound of returned fire. Roshak was glad for it. Many
times after a bomb is set off by remote, the perpetrator has hidden on another rooftop and
retaliation is impossible.
The surgeon who operated on him is a Navy reserve who in civilian life
practices plastic surgery in Los Angeles. Roshak didn’t get plastic surgery, but if
he hadn’t said how he got the scar it would have been easy to mistake it for a
birthmark or rash.
“I thought for sure I lost my ear. I said, ‘Hey, doc, is my ear
there?’ He said, ’Yeah. Looks good.’”
Roshak wanted to return to his platoon. “It would have driven me crazy to be
back at home not knowing what was happening to the guys back there,” he said.
He reports for duty Nov. 1 in Twentynine Palms, Calif. Roshak doesn’t
know where he’ll go for his next seven-month tour; he’s heard Afghanistan and
probably not Iraq. That should be his final tour, his four-year commitment ending in
January 2006.
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From Oct.
9,
2004, Newberg Graphic
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