Combat wounded Iraq veteran dies before new home is ready

Sgt. hurt in Iraq dies before new home finished
By Lynnette Hintze -
The Daily Inter Lake via AP
Posted : Friday Apr 6, 2012 11:24:33 EDT

KALISPELL, Mont. — An injured soldier who struggled daily to overcome the physical challenges left by an explosion in Iraq died early Sunday morning in his sleep, just two weeks before a home being built for him and his family was due to be finished.

Sgt. Kevin White, 29, leaves behind his wife, Juliane, and a 15-month-old son, Liam, who now will move into their new home without him.

White, a paratrooper in Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, was the most severely injured of the soldiers involved in an April 2007 ambush of their convoy in Iraq.

He was in his second tour when a piece of a rocket warhead went through his shoulder and into his lung. He also sustained a brain injury. He was released from duty with a medical retirement, and the extent of his injuries made it impossible to work.

With medical bills mounting and his wife pregnant at the time, White’s in-laws, Ann and O.T. Green, decided to build them a house next door to their home near Lakeside. The Greens took out a second mortgage on their own home, emptied Ann’s retirement account and started building in 2010.

In a January interview with the Daily Inter Lake, White detailed his injuries, explaining how a hematoma in his head had calcified and turned to bone, “so I have a random bone in my brain that’s pressing on my optic nerve.”

White also told how he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Despite the severity of his injuries, the federal government declared him as having a low-ranking disability — so low that he didn’t receive enough in disability payments to live on.

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