Iraq veteran faces another fight for life here at home

Injured Iraq veteran and Trinity High grad faces battles abroad and at home
Courier Journal
Written by
Chris Kenning
May 25, 2013

He’d joined the Army alongside his best friend at age 18, the ink on his 2005 Trinity High diploma barely dry.

Within two years, Brandon Welch was fighting in Iraq at the peak of insurgent violence — enduring firefights, helping blow open doors in midnight raids on homes full of screaming women, putting dead U.S. soldiers into body bags and watching children caught in the crossfire as Sunni and Shiite militants slaughtered each other.

About 10 months into his deployment, he suffered a traumatic brain injury when a roadside bomb exploded as he was rushing wounded Iraqi soldiers to a helicopter.

The injury ended his deployment, and at 22, Welch left the Army and returned to Louisville, only to face another battle — one that on this Memorial Day weekend reflects the continuing toll that America’s post-9/11 military campaigns have taken on veterans.

The brain injury damaged his balance and short-term memory. Post-traumatic stress stopped him from working, and often he would wake up screaming. He felt anxious and haunted.

Then in 2011, the best friend he’d enlisted with, a fellow Iraq war veteran who was also struggling, killed himself with a rifle. Even as he grieved, Welch decided to seek more intensive help from a veterans hospital — and today he says he’s doing better, though still faces ongoing struggles.
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