Living with the wounds of Fort Hood

Living with the wounds of Fort Hood

By DANIEL P. FINNEY • dafinney@dmreg.com • January 31, 2010


The pink surgery scar runs halfway down Staff Sgt. Joy Clark's left arm like a zipper.

Dime-sized dots mar each side of the limb - permanent reminders of a bullet that ripped through her arm during another soldier's Nov. 5 shooting rampage that left 13 dead and 30 wounded at Fort Hood near Killeen, Texas.

Those scars are as obvious as the grimace on the Des Moines native's 27-year-old face as she grips a weight during physical therapy.

Unseen is the ache inside her. Clark survived the attack, but her injuries forced her to stay home while her unit deployed to Afghanistan.

"I know it's not my fault," Clark said in her first extended interview since the tragedy, "but there is this sense of an unfinished mission."



On Nov. 5, Clark waited in line for a routine medical checkup inside a Fort Hood office building.

The exam was her third stop in a necessary but tedious preparation for deployment to Afghanistan scheduled for after Thanksgiving.

The mission was to be Clark's first overseas mission since joining the military in 2001.

Instead, Clark found herself on the front line of what Vice President Joe Biden later would call the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

At 1:34 p.m., military investigators allege Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan entered the building and opened fire on his fellow soldiers.

The soldier closest to Clark, a man she did not know, was hit. He slumped forward. Clark, a field medic, wrapped her left arm around him and tried to help.

A bullet pierced her left arm. She recoiled and the wounded man she held fell to the ground. He died.

Clark looked at her arm. A bullet had passed through it and there wasn't much blood. She felt no pain. With her good arm, she reached out for another wounded comrade.

"We were unarmed," Clark said. "There were no weapons in the building. There was no way we could defend ourselves."
go here for more and video
Living with the wounds of Fort Hood