PART I:
BY VIK JOLLY
The Orange County Register
Decked in swim trunks, Brandon Erickson straightens a pair of goggles over
his eyes.
He kneels at the Allred Olympic Pool at Chapman University, stretches his
left hand - his only hand - to scoop up water, a tepid 80 degrees, and lets
it slide over his short-cropped blonde hair, his face.
Erickson slips into the water, feet first, and does a couple of warm up laps.
Before going again - this time with more effort -- he looks over his shoulder
at a timer in the distance.
Deep breath. Glide. A strong kick propels him towards the other side of the
pool, 25 yards away.
Erickson's recent midday workout is a part of the first-year Chapman law
student's strict self-enforced triathlon training regimen. On his first and
only tour of duty in 2003 in Iraq - after being called up from the North
Dakota Army National Guard - the Bismarck-born Erickson's right arm was blown
off by a roadside bomb.
"I couldn't even look at my arm for three weeks" after the amputation, he
recalls. "Every time they took the bandage off, I'd cry."
He grew tired of people who just stared without bothering to ask what
happened. He yearned to not be known as Brandon, the guy who lost a limb, but
just as Brandon.
Getting beyond those feelings took two busy, sometimes tough years -- more
than half a dozen surgeries, speaking about his experience before other
veterans, encouragement from his wife. He swapped his tears for a deep sense
of gratitude for those who have helped him recover, and a resolve to get back
in shape. The 27-year-old was ready to reclaim his old self, to tear it back,
if he had to, from the long shadow of war.
And if his work in the pool and on the track and on the road can motivate
other wounded veterans to reclaim a slice of their old selves, he's ready for
that too.
"I just want to be there for the guys who have a hard time, just inspire
somebody," Erickson says.
"I don't know if I can (but) I want to turn around and give back too."
In 2006, he began to push himself to do what many able-bodied people have a
difficult time sticking with: following a strict regimen of running, biking
and swimming, all with the intent to excel in triathlons.
A year later he entered some small races. Crossing finish lines was an
incredible high. The momentum kept building.
"The confidence of finishing a race (makes you) feel so much better. I don't
do it to make up for anything. I just do it."
Run on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays; swim on Tuesdays, strength workouts on
Fridays; and bike and run again on the weekend. (Toss in a kickboxing class
with wife Dana on Wednesday.)
Then came bigger, more well known-events, including last year when at the
Olympic distance USA Triathlon's physically challenged national championship
he took to the Hudson for a .9 mile-swim, then biked 24.2-miles down the
Westside Highway and ran 6.2 miles through a Central Park course in 2:47:23,
finishing first in his category.
Erickson dreams of becoming a prosecutor and hopes to assist veterans with
their legal troubles. As a volunteer for Operation Rebound, part of the San
Diego-based challenged Athletes Foundation, Erickson has spoken and worked at
clinics with other wounded veterans before racing events. He hopes to lead by
example.
He says his goal is "getting more guys to race against me. I am getting more
military guys to race ... just to get guys to be competitive in other aspects
of life and not focus on the aspect of their injury. I just want be there for
the guys who have a hard time."
Perhaps, a wounded veteran out there might say, 'hey if he can do it I can do
it,' says Erickson.
The only child of parents who divorced when he was 14, Erickson opted to join
the North Dakota Army National Guard right after high school in 1999 at the
age of 17.
He wasn't ready for college yet. "I just wanted to do something interesting."
After training and a year with the Guard that included a short stint in
Italy, he started studying political science at the University of North
Dakota.
All the while, the clouds of war were gathering and he knew he could be
called to serve at any time. So, when the call came a night in December 2002
when he was cashiering at a wine shop, within six days he shipped out with
his 957 Engineer Company.
In March, he ended up in Kuwait, as the U.S. "shock and awe" air campaign
unfolded in Baghdad. His group was attached to the Army's 4th Infantry
Division, tasked with route, transportation and river boat security.
When Erickson's massive convoy rolled through a Southern Iraqi village, the
war seemed to be over. Iraqis poured into the streets, cheering and giving
thumbs up and peace signs.
In return, the then-specialist tossed tootsie rolls and M&Ms out of his
truck. He posed for pictures with Iraqis.
"We figured the war is over," he recalls thinking. "We figured we would be
there for a while reconstructing. ...We were totally relaxed."
Then-President George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier under a banner
declaring "Mission Accomplished."
Erickson had no idea that he would soon lose his arm and be part of an ambush
resulting in the first combat death among North Dakota's Army National Guard
soldiers since the Korean War.
NEXT: He loses a lot in Iraq. But he gains something too.
*********************************************************************
PART II:
By VIK JOLLY
The Orange County Register
In the summer of 2003, Brandon Erickson was one of 280 North Dakota Army
National guardsmen based at Camp Anaconda, in Balad, about 50 miles north of
Baghdad.
His world was hot, literally and figuratively. As the Iraqi desert sweltered,
the potential for violent death rose. Firefights, shelling and other deadly
forms of engagement with the enemy were increasingly common. Like others in
his unit, Erickson was adjusting quickly to combat mode.
So, when he took off in a five-truck convoy on July 22, on a two-hour run to
a rifle base in Ramadi, some 60 miles west of the capital, Erickson knew the
dangerous routine. Still, that day, he says, something felt different. As he
rolled past lush farms, Erickson - in the passenger seat of one of the middle
vehicles, his right arm and machine gun dangling out the window - he was
wary.
Then the convoy slowed and Erickson's truck rolled over a roadside bomb.
Erickson's next memory is simple: He woke up with his helmet in his lap and a
picture of himself and his future wife, Dana, staring at him from beneath the
helmet's webbing. He noted that the photo - taken at Waikiki Beach the
previous Christmas - was speckled with blood. And the man driving Erickson's
truck, Spc. Jon Fettig, was dead.
And shots were being fired.
First Sgt. Kevin Remington bailed out of his vehicle to protect Erickson and
return enemy fire, a pair of actions that later would earn Remington a Silver
Star.
Soon, Erickson was transported about a mile up the road. A medic there
cinched a tourniquet around Erickson's right arm. Still, blood kept gushing.
The medic tied a second tourniquet and tightened hard.
Then Erickson blacked out.
Other memories are just as stark and jumpy. In Ramadi, a morphine shot and
Erickson yelling out his blood type, O positive. Then, intermittent bouts of
blackness and the sounds of helicopter blades. And, finally, evacuation to a
camp with a hospital suitable for surgery.
Doctors touched his fingers and asked whether he felt anything.
He didn't.
When he woke, his right arm was heavily bandaged. Erickson was devastated and
scared. The pain was unbearable.
He telephoned Dana and his mother, Ruth. He wept.
"I told Dana, 'Don't leave me. I only have one arm now,'" Erickson says. "She
was just happy that I was alive."
Soon he was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where six more
surgeries followed to weed out infection and clean up his wound. Forty-five
days later, Erickson was fitted with a prosthetic arm.
Erickson retired from the military in December 2003 and, a month later,
returned to the University of North Dakota. In 2005, he married Dana, now a
psychologist in Los Angeles, whom he had met in a college registration line
before he'd gone to Iraq.
When he worried about being seen in public, as a one-armed man, Dana made him
comfortable by exhorting "Who cares? Let's go." He also kept up with his
therapy and, painstakingly, trained himself to write with his left hand.
He learned to laugh at himself.
At a triathlon last year, in Oceanside, Erickson absentmindedly left his
light carbon fiber arm, a special prosthetic limb built just for biking, on
the fender of his Jeep Wrangler. It fell off somewhere in Carlsbad, on a busy
highway.
Someone picked it up and turned it in to the cops, whom Erickson called after
looking everywhere, including trash bins. The officers drove the limb over to
his hotel and, the next day, he was able to enter the half Ironman triathlon.
After leaving Walter Reed, Erickson and Silver Star winner Remington paired
up to talk to other wounded veterans at colleges and universities and
military programs. Retelling his war story helped Erickson heal.
"It really helped me understand what happened," says Erickson. "(Speaking)
did help me come to terms with it."
He doesn't like to focus on the war much now, saying "it feels like a
different life, sometimes."
He immersed himself in academia. After graduation, he and Dana moved to
Fresno, where Erickson got his master's in public administration, while Dana
worked on her doctorate. Her job, and his pursuit of a law degree at Chapman,
brought them to Orange.
"I always wanted three aspects to my life: to be educationally, spiritually
and physically fit," he says.
Erickson wants in the fall to enter the world championship in Australia in
hopes of improving on his fastest Olympic distance time of 2:23. An even
loftier goal is to get to the 2012 London Paralympics, when the triathlon
will be a demonstration sport.
For someone missing an arm, swimming is the toughest part of a triathlon.
At the Chapman pool, Erickson goes some 800 yards. "I love the training. It's
such an escape during the day."
Freshman Laurel Henderson, a member of the college swim team, is in the
lifeguard chair, a blanket wrapped around her body, watching Erickson. She
marvels at his effort.
"I wouldn't know how to move," says Henderson, 18. "The first day in swim,
they tell you 'Forget about your kick, it's all about your arm'."
Erickson knows it too.
He doesn't want to look at the loss of his arm as a setback. He just trains
harder.
He says he does it for those who saved his life, for those who wrote letters
of support, the guy at Walter Reed who randomly delivered milkshakes to
wounded veterans, the charities that sent him on free trips to places like
Breckenridge, Colo., and rafting at the Grand Canyon.
After a recent swim, Erickson dresses. He grabs the end of a T-shirt between
his teeth and uses his left hand to slip the shirt over his head. He then
puts on his pants and straps on his belt. He puts on his prosthetic limb and,
quickly, buttons his shirt and heads out of the locker room, ready for the
rest of his afternoon classes.
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