Wounded reservist reflects on Kirkuk attack, recovers at Walter Reed

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Paul Flipse
  • 920th Rescue Wing Public Affairs
IT WASN'T UNTIL SHE TASTED BLOOD in her mouth that she realized she'd been bombed.

Moments earlier, Senior Airman Diane Lopes, an Air Force Reserve security forces specialist with the 920th Rescue Wing here, had been walking quietly through the evening darkness at Kirkuk Air Base, Iraq. It was Sept. 21, and she'd been at the base only a short time--barely a month into a six-month deployment--and was on her way to the dining hall after finishing her shift.

Then it happened.

An 80 mm rocket tore through the darkness, hurtled over the perimeter fence and slammed into the earth just 25 feet from Airman Lopes.

"I can picture it like it was yesterday," she said. "I remember, I started to turn, then I heard the blast on my right side--it was the loudest thing I've ever heard. All I saw were sparks and a flash.

"The flash went through me--I thought I was on fire," she said.

The 'flash' she saw was a blast wave, a wall of high pressure that radiates outward at high speed from a powerful explosion. In Airman Lopes' case, the wave that passed through her contained a hail of razor-sharp shrapnel. Yet for the first few moments, she didn't know she was hurt.

Not until she tasted the blood.

"I didn't feel the shrapnel go in, I didn't feel anything cut me," she said. I didn't feel anything until I came to on the ground and spit the blood out of my mouth--and kept spitting it out because it kept bleeding.

"Within a second, it hit me--'I've just been bombed.'"

Though Airman Lopes initially felt no pain, her wounds were substantial. The massive explosion and resulting shrapnel snapped the tibia and fibula of her left leg, slashed through 80 percent of the tendons in her right wrist, collapsed one of her lungs, burned the backs of her legs, perforated her right eardrum and peppered her body with shrapnel.

When the numbness began to fade and the first shock of pain took hold of her, so did a cold, deep fear that she may not make it home alive. At that moment, Airmen Lopes said, she felt something within her push back--defiantly--against the fear. As she described how her instincts took over, her clear, firm voice began to tremble and crack under the weight of her emotion.

"I said, 'Hell no, I'm not dying here today. No way,'" she said.

And so, resolved not to die, Airman Lopes fought to sway the odds of survival in her favor.

Knowing she was hidden by the darkness and low clouds of smoke from the blast, she screamed for help until someone found her. When base medical personnel arrived, she latched onto the stretcher and drug herself on before the medics could take hold of her.

"I remember them saying, 'get ready to lift,' and I said, 'no, I got it,' and I pulled myself on the litter because I wanted to get out of there," she said.

Next, she focused on lowering her heart rate by slowing down her breathing. By slowing her heart rate, she reasoned, she would lose less blood from her numerous wounds. Once inside the medical center, she began chanting her blood type to one of the technicians, saying "I'm O positive, I'm O positive" again and again to ensure she would get the right stuff. In all, the act of helping herself survive was an exercise in utility.

"I wasn't going to sit there and die," she said.

Airman Lopes had done everything in her ability to keep herself alive. But she'd lost a lot of blood and needed surgery, which could only happen at the other end of a 100-mile helicopter ride to Balad Air Base. While the smoke from the explosion dissipated in the evening air, the medical team at Kirkuk Air Base worked frantically to stabilize Airman Lopes...



AUTUMN BEGINS TO DESCEND on Washington D.C., the city's abundance of trees become resplendent in jackets of fall color. Red oaks, American elms, sugar maples and honey locusts spend the days shedding their gaudy leaves into the brisk October wind, and the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center are covered daily by a fresh blanket of vivid reds, fiery oranges and bright yellows.

On the southeast edge of the medical center's expansive lot sits a gabled, redbrick building with a facade resembling a Greek temple. Named after a former Walter Reed commander, the Mologne House was intended to provide short-term lodging for servicemembers and families visiting Walter Reed, and serve as a first-class hotel for active and retired military travelers.

Now, it's home to 300 battle-wounded troops convalescing and rehabilitating a myriad of injuries--amputations, post traumatic stress, severe head trauma, third-degree burns ... the list goes on.

And in room 257, an Airman with a cast on her broken left leg, stitches on the reattached tendons in her right wrist, bandages covering a constellation of shrapnel wounds, breathing with her re-expanded lung says five little words.

"I'm lucky to be alive," said Airman Lopes five weeks after the rocket attack.

Originally from Connecticut, the 37-year-old now calls Tampa home. Her easy smile and genial nature belie an underlying toughness--once a corrections officer, she had just completed training to become a Tampa police officer before leaving for Kirkuk. She joined the 920th two years ago and wants to stay in spite of her experience at Kirkuk. The attack, she said, won't chase her away.

"It's not going to keep me from doing this," she said of her job as a reservist.

After surviving the initial blast and being airlifted to Balad for the first of two surgeries, she stopped briefly at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, before coming to Walter Reed, where her doctors have given her a sunny forecast.

"They said I should make a full recovery," she said. "But I have a lot of physical therapy ahead of me."

Ten weeks to be exact, during which time she'll spend countless grueling hours straining to teach the damaged parts of her body to work again.

"It's painful," said Airman Lopes. "But I have to do it if I want to get better. I know it's only temporary, so I just deal with it."

Most days, her mind wanders back to that night at Kirkuk, and she still can't speak for long about it without shedding tears. Understanding, she said, is her key to handling the stress.

"I know I'm going to have good days and bad days," she said. "I knew I was going to have nightmares. I knew I was going to get depressed. If you know what you're going to go through, it's easier to deal with."

One way she deals with things is through a rather blunt sense of humor, which she displays on personalized T-shirts. One proclaims, "I went to Iraq and all I got was blown up," while another asks wryly, "got shrapnel?"

She's also comforted by her many visitors--family, friends, fellow wounded and hospital staff, a handful of generals ("all really funny, down-to-earth people"), a celebrity (Gary Sinise, aka Lieutenant Dan from Forest Gump) and countless others.

"Everywhere I've been, people have been coming to see me ... people I don't even know. It's so nice to have so many people care," she said.

Through her actions and instincts, Airman Lopes is a survivor. She's also a realist, clearly evident in her reaction after Air Force Reserve Commander Lt. Gen. John Bradley stopped by to pin a Purple Heart Medal to her shirt, making her just the fifth woman in Air Force Reserve history to earn one.

"I'm just happy I was present for that ceremony," she said.