Posted on 04/19/2008 5:44:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The house blended into its quiet eastside neighborhood, marked only by a blue star in the window and a small, square sign reading "Welcome Home Tim." Somewhere a vacuum cleaner's rumbling voice broke the sunny afternoon hush.
The setting hardly could be more different from the patch of Iraqi desert where Army Specialist Timothy Sazueta stood two weeks ago when an improvised explosive device exploded next to him.
"It didn't hit me, initially, that I'd been blown up," said Sazueta, 22, of Lancaster. "I was still standing. You don't go flying" like in the movies.
His teammates yelled at Sazueta to get down and started working on his wounds. The blast had raked his face and right arm, carving a chunk from the side of his biceps.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group exchanged fire with unseen attackers.
"I remember hearing gunfire," Sazueta said. "I was awake the whole time."
Sazueta graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 2003 and immediately enlisted for a six-year stint. He was assigned to Bravo Battery of the 2-12 Field Artillery Battalion, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based out of Fort Lewis, Wash.
The unit already was deployed in Iraq when he got the assignment.
"There's not a lot of artillery in Iraq," Sazueta said. "We're all basically infantrymen."
He was 11 months into his second Iraq deployment on April 2 when his team started a "big mission," pushing out into new territory, he said.
Helicopters dropped them off at 4 a.m. and they dug in to wait for daylight. They had no vehicles, so they moved out on foot when morning broke.
An Iraqi interpreter for the group stepped on the trigger of a buried bomb and it exploded. The Iraqi died at the scene; Sazueta and his platoon leader caught shrapnel.
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
God bless our brave soldiers! Lancaster is about 200 miles south of me. It is pronounced “Lan-caster,” not “Lau-cunster” like it is back east.
You are correct. It almost sounds like “Landcaster”.
This guy is my age.
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