JEROME — When Ryan D. Bambling graduated from Conemaugh Township Area High School last year, he was looking for some assistance with college funding.
So he joined the Army Reserve.
Now the 19-year-old faces an uncertain future after enemy mortar fire in Iraq seriously injured his right arm.
Spc. Bambling has undergone five operations since the Oct. 8 attack. He faces at least two more surgeries and will not know for months whether he will be able to move his wrist again.
He is a member of the 876th Engineering Battalion, based at 554 Airport Road in Richland Township.
Shrapnel from the insurgents’ mortar ripped through Bambling’s arm while he was standing guard at a combat outpost on the edge of Ramadi. The shell exploded right behind Bambling’s front-gate guard tower.
“We heard the mortars being shot,” Bambling said at his Railroad Avenue home. “I yelled down to the guy below to get down. I got down, but the shrapnel came through the ladder opening. There was blood everywhere.”
His arm shattered and bleeding, Bambling climbed down from the guard tower and made his way to the base’s medic station.
His commanding officer called Bambling’s fiancee, Beth Bryant.
“They knew his arm was in really bad shape,” Bryant said at their home. “They told me there was something wrong with his leg.”
Bambling said his leg was not injured. But there was so much blood from the arm injury, medics thought his leg must be hurt.
Medics stopped the bleeding and sent Bambling by medical helicopter to the nearest large base – and to his first operation.
“It was like something you’d see in ‘MASH’,” Bambling said, recalling the operating-room tent.
Another operation in Germany was followed by three more at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington before Bambling arrived back in Jerome on Oct. 28.
“If everything goes perfect, there will be two more operations at Walter Reed,” Bambling said.
His humerus bone was broken in eight pieces.
The muscles and nerves were damaged so severely that Bambling may lose some function in his right hand permanently.
“They said it will never be 100 percent,” Bambling said.
Surgically placed supports connecting his arm bones to an external fixation device will be removed in six to eight weeks, he said.
In the meantime, Bambling said he has trouble sleeping more than a few hours a night. Pain and general discomfort from the fixation device keep him awake.
Doctors said he will not be sent back to action, but Bambling remains on active duty. He expects to report for work at the Airport Road facility by the end of the year.
A true soldier, Bambling said his thoughts remain with others in his squad.
“I was disappointed,” Bambling said. “I hated to leave my guys. The last thing I told them when they put me on the helicopter was, ‘If there is any way I can go back over, I will be back.’ ”
He does not miss the living conditions on the front lines, though.
“It’s a terrible place over there,” Bambling said. “It’s a constant battle every day.”
Bambling’s engineers were attached to a combat unit, using their construction training for demolition and search missions. Johnstown’s engineers are credited with uncovering some of the largest weapons caches seized in the war.
It is tough duty.
“The food was terrible, there was no running water and it was dirty,” Bambling said.
“We made the best of it by sticking together. We were all a big family, that’s the way I look at it.”
Bambling is among nearly 200 Pennsylvania National Guard members who have earned a Purple Heart in the Iraq war, spokesman Cory Angell said from Guard headquarters in Harrisburg.
Since April 2003, 7,250 American soldiers have been wounded severely enough they did not return to duty within 72 hours.
Randy Griffith can be reached at 532-5057 or rgriffith@tribdem.com.
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