Copyright © 2004 The Quad-City Times | www.QCTimes.com

Iraq wound puts civilian in line for freedom medal

By Ed Tibbetts

One evening in November, Kevin Rohm was sitting at his desk in Camp Dogwood, a military base 25 miles southwest of Baghdad, preparing for a briefing when the camp came under mortar attack.

The Silvis, Ill., man, an Army veteran who had served in a war zone before, quickly put on a flak jacket and helmet and prepared to move toward a bunker. But before he could head out, a mortar round struck the building housing his tent and sent shards of metal flying, some of them piercing Rohm ?s abdomen and left arm.

Rohm, who fell to the ground, did not know he had been wounded at first. There were too many other things happening, he said.

"I was paying more attention to watching the tent rip and move and watching the streams of heat from the shrapnel as it came down through," he said. It was only moments later that he realized he had been wounded. "I started to stand up and when I did, the blood started gushing out," he said. "The guts poked themselves out of the holes and I looked down and realized I had been hit."

That was when he screamed for help.

Rohm recounted the mortar attack Monday at a news conference on Arsenal Island, where officials say he has been nominated to receive the Defense of Freedom medal, a citation created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The medal is awarded to civilian employees of the Defense Department.

When it is approved "which Arsenal officials fully expect" Rohm will be the first person on the island to receive the honor. Army officials say it is the civilian equivalent of the Purple Heart.

About 50 people stationed on Arsenal Island are deployed overseas to support the war effort. And Arsenal officials say the day-to-day urban warfare there is a constant reminder that their friends and colleagues are in danger.

"The battle space we ask our civilians to deploy and employ themselves into is the same battle space our soldiers are asked to serve (in)," said Maj. Gen. Wade McManus Jr., who nominated Rohm for the citation in February. "It is a difficult and demanding environment, but it's where we have a chance to serve."

Rohm, who was one of two men wounded in the mortar attack on his building, is a supply management specialist with the Field Support Command. He had been overseas for only about a month when the attack occurred. He spent a week in hospitals, first in Iraq and then in Germany, and had about four feet of his small intestine removed during surgery. He returned to Arsenal Island in January.

On Monday, Rohm, 48, said he has fully recovered, physically. At the same time, he acknowledged some lingering after-effects. Not long ago, he was burning some debris in his yard when an aerosol can exploded.

"It went bang. I went down. So I'm affected," he said.

Rohm, who also served overseas during the first Persian Gulf War, said he still has six pieces of shrapnel in his arm. But Rohm said he will go back overseas and has been told he probably will do so as early as October.

"It's important to get the job done,"he added.

Rohm's wife, Dolores, who works on Arsenal Island for the Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, also was present at Monday's news conference. She supports her husband's decision to go back to Iraq.

"He's helping a tremendous number of people, " she said.