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Interior Communications Electrician 2nd Class Henrique Soares,
assigned to Pre-Commissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), has a
career that is full of stories; this particular one starts in 2006.
At the time Soares, then a hospital corpsman, was a search
and rescue corpsman attached to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron
Three One stationed at Branch Health Clinic China Lake, California.
He was the only corpsman to be assigned as an individual augementee
with the 3rd Marines, 14th Battalion Police Transition Team (PTT).
Soares, along with 19 Marines, made up the PTT. That April,
they were sent to Hit, Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The team used an old school building as their base of
operations. Each day the team woke up at 5:30 a.m., loaded their
vehicles, patrolled the immediate area, and visited four to five
police stations to train Iraqi police officers. Some days their
mission would not end until 10 p.m., occasionally stretching into
the next day.
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August 15, 2016 - Interior Communications Electrician 2nd Class
Henrique Soares, assigned to Pre-Commissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford
(CVN 78), is presented a letter of appreciation from the commanding
officer by Chief Warrant Officer Ernest Brinson. Soares received the
letter for his work during Ford's change of command ceremony in
April 2016. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman
Apprentice Gitte Schirrmacher)
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December 6 started as uneventfully as every other day of
his eight-month tour.
“We went to the first police
station, everything seemed normal,” said Soares. “We went to
the second police station; we did some training and
recruiting. We screened recruits to make sure they were not
terrorists and that they were physically able to go to the
Iraqi police academy.”
During this time the team
received intelligence of suspected terrorist activity near
the hospital in Hit, which is the only hospital in the area
for Iraqi nationals.
Soares' team was a part of a
quick reaction force and would typically provide close-in
direct support to different units two times a week. Being
called for firefight support, aiding other U.S. military
troops in direct combat with enemy forces, was not uncommon.
“We got there and nobody was around,” said Soares. “We
did our standard clearing procedures then we got ambushed
from four different positions by more than 40 personnel.
There were only 20 of us and five to ten Iraqi police
officers. We didn't have good odds.”
Soares, the rest
of the PTT, and the Iraqi police were pinned down, receiving
fire from multiple angles. Their only cover was behind four
Humvees, which made maneuvering out of their position
difficult.
“I got a call through the radio that
there was a man down,” said Soares. “I saw the guy who was
down; he was in the middle of the firing line. He seemed
conscious and awake, but he didn't want to crawl to us
because he seemed scared.”
The downed man was an
Iraqi police lieutenant. He had been shot through his upper
thigh. Disregarding enemy fire, Soares ran to the
lieutenant. Dodging gunfire, he slid, head first, to the
lieutenant.
“He had a single bullet wound to the butt
area,” said Soares. “There was no life endangerment. I
figured I would drag him back to the Humvees to finish
patching him up.”
Soares grabbed the lieutenant by
the shoulder straps of his flack jacket and began to drag
him back to the relative safety of the Humvees, exposing
them both to enemy fire. Soares himself became a target. He
felt his left arm go weak, but he continued pulling the
lieutenant to safety using the strength of his right arm
alone.
“While I was pulling him, I felt my
collarbone was out of place; it was burning. I thought I
might have broken it when I slid next to the lieutenant. But
we were still getting fire so I just kept on dragging him
back until I got us behind the vehicle. My thought was to
get him to safety. I was too focused to worry about myself,”
said Soares.
With one last heave, Soares got the
lieutenant behind the wheel of the Humvee. He finished
bandaging the lieutenant and tried to help the Marines put
the lieutenant in the Humvee.
“That's when my gunny
yelled at me to stay down,” said Soares. “He told me I'd
been hit. When I realized I was hit everything went quiet.
Everything moved in slow motion.”
Soares slid down
the wheel of the Humvee onto the desert floor. He had been
hit with a single round from an AK-47 while dragging the
lieutenant to safety. The bullet pierced the back of his
neck, cracked his C-7 vertebrae, shattered his left
clavicle, passed through his shoulder, shattered his rotator
cuff and exited through his upper left shoulder.
Soares now had to turn his corpsman skills onto himself.
“I couldn't move my left arm,” said Soares. “I was
looking for entrance and exit wounds, but I couldn't feel
much.”
Marine Cpl. Richard West, an infantrymen of
Soares' PTT, also began checking Soares.
“My buddy
asked me to move my legs and I did,” said Soares. “Then he
told me I wasn't. I was in shock. I was in denial.”
Soares' body went numb with the exception of his right arm.
“I rubbed my hand over my collarbone and my hand
caught on something,” said Soares. “I saw blood on my hand.
I found my collarbone was popped through the skin. I had to
talk West through what to do.”
The gunfight did not
stop while Soares lead West though the bandaging of his
wounds. He was forced to lay there waiting for backup to
arrive.
“All I heard was gunfire and screaming,”
said Soares. “My team was trying to figure out how we were
going to fight back. I heard another language, the Iraqi
police talking to themselves, but I couldn't focus on what
anyone was saying. It was as if someone put a video on slow
motion and everything was blurry, slowed down and drawn
out.”
More than 30 minutes passed while Soares lay
helpless. Somehow he remained calm.
Backup finally
arrived. A junior Army medic immediately began looking over
Soares.
“I felt he was freaking out due to the extent
of my injuries,” said Soares. “I was worried he might do
something wrong or not use good judgment. I had to keep
myself up to talk him through the injury. I became
comfortable only when I got to the hospital where there were
doctors.”
The field hospital, similar to a battle
dressing station on board Ford, was where doctors stabilized
Soares. While at this hospital, the members of Soares' PTT
came to visit.
“I had mixed emotions,” said Soares.
“I was mad my team was about to be without a corpsman,
because I was their only corpsman. I didn't want to leave
them. I felt like the mission was incomplete.”
Soares'
team assured him they would be fine. They wanted him to take
care of himself. The team then saw him off as he was
transferred to a bigger hospital in the city of Balad.
The doctors in Balad initially thought Soares would be
paralyzed. Further examination of his x-rays revealed Soares
had spinal shock. With this diagnosis, Soares would
eventually regain full feeling in all of his limbs.
Soon after his first surgery, Soares began to improve.
“I could see everybody running around in a controlled
chaos,” said Soares. “I started to check myself again,
everything below my chest was numb. I saw stitches over my
clavicle. It felt the rough, like the feeling train tracks.
I thought to myself, I'm going to have an ugly scar. Then
the smell of iron hit me. I smelled blood and I felt the
hemovacs underneath my skin.”
A hemovac is a drain
placed underneath the skin that removes blood clots and
fluid buildup post surgery.
With his immediate
surgeries complete, Soares began his trip home.
He
had to stop in Germany at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center,
the closest, major military hospital for military personnel
coming from Iraq. Here he had one more surgery. He was then
flown to Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, before
arriving at Naval Medical Center San Diego.
It took
10 days to get home, where his girlfriend, mother, and
sister were anxiously waiting for his return.
After
another week, Soares was released from the hospital, but his
visits to the doctor were far from over.
Physical
therapy lasted six months, but Soares only took 30 days of
convalescent leave.
“After convalescent leave I was
put up for medical discharge,” said Soares. “I fought that
process heavily. I got in contact with Lieutenant Bird, who
was the physician assistant at China Lake. We made a deal
that if I pass the PRT then he will help me stay in the
Navy.”
Soares had three months to prepare for the
March 2007 physical readiness test.
“I struggled with
the pushups, but I fought to stay in,” said Soares. “I
replayed the ‘Eye of the Tiger' in my head as my personal
theme song. I struggled, but I felt invincible when I
passed.”
Unfortunately, the feeling of invincibility
faded. That same month Soares got word that a good friend
from his PTT team, Marine Cpl. Trevor Roberts, had died.
“I was emotional because I wanted to be with my guys,”
said Soares. “I kept to myself most of the time. I tried not
to hang out with a lot of people because they didn't know
what I was going through. I didn't feel understood at work
or at home. My girlfriend didn't understand where my mood
swings and temper would come from.”
His girlfriend
soon suggested that he see someone to talk about what he had
gone through. Soares agreed to go to group therapy.
“I did group therapy with other wounded vets,” said Soares.
“That worked out for me better, because I got to talk to a
bunch of guys who knew exactly what I was going through who
had the same type of feelings and emotions. It brought a lot
of things back into perspective.”
Soares did group
therapy for eight months, joined the Purple Heart Riders
motorcycle club, and even married his girlfriend. Things
were looking up. Then the other shoe came crashing down.
In December 2008, Soares was processed out the Navy due
to high year tenure.
“I didn't want to leave the Navy
with an incomplete mission,” said Soares. “I wanted to go
back and do a full deployment.”
Soares worked to
become a Sailor again. In September 2009, Soares swore the
oath yet again, joining the Navy Reserves. In 2013, Soares
volunteered for deployment to Afghanistan as a member of the
Fleet Surgical Team. He was able to complete the full
deployment. He then got the call to come back to active
duty, June 2014, as an interior communications electrician.
Soares has no intentions of getting out of the Navy
before his 20 years.
“My goal is to make chief,” said
Soares. “I also think about cross-rating to corpsman just
shy of every day. I would love that opportunity again. The
Navy will just have to kick me out again.”
Through
the years, Soares has earned all types of decorations and
accolades, from numerous bluejackets of the year to a Naval
Commendation Medal with a Valor Device, but he says nothing
holds the same distinction as his Purple Heart that he
received for his injuries sustained in Iraq.
By U.S. Navy Seaman Apprentice Connor Loessin
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2016
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