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This article was in our local paper today -
http://www.thewhig.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=141267&catname=Local+News&classif=News+%2D+Local
Shot in the line of duty
By Ian Elliot
Local News - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 @ 07:00
A young man who was born and grew up in Kingston was shot by insurgents while serving in Iraq last weekend.
Nicholas Engels, who was born at Kingston General Hospital in 1986 but moved to North Carolina with his family when he was 12, was badly wounded in an ambush in Fallujah while trying to help a fellow soldier.
Engels, 19, is a U.S. Navy corpsman the Navy provides medics to the United States Marine Corps and Engels was attached to a Marine unit and was patrolling with them when they came under intense fire at about 7:30 a.m. local time.
Fallujah is a hotbed of insurgency where attacks on U.S. forces are common and a Marine was shot during the attack.
Engels was shot while trying to drag the wounded man out of the middle of the road to where he could be more safely treated.
“We were really getting hit from the rear, and I was trying to move him out of the middle of the street when I got hit,” recalled Engels yesterday from Bethesda, Md.
, where he was airlifted after first being treated in Baghdad and then Germany.
“It was a perfect 90-degree perpendicular shot. I was wearing body armour but it doesn’t protect you against that.”
The bullet tore through his right arm, entered his chest, travelled around the inside of his chest wall and then went completely through his left arm as it exited.
He was left dazed but conscious in the street as another Marine with basic combat medical training tended to his wounds.
“I was coherent the whole time,” recalled Engels.
“I was able to talk him through putting on the tourniquet and how to deal with the chest wound.”
Reinforcements arrived within 10 minutes and evacuated the wounded soldiers on stretchers, a wild ride that Engels can’t help but chuckle about as he thinks back to it.
“There we were, racing through the streets of Fallujah at 60 miles per hour in an armoured Humvee with the back door open because we couldn’t close it because of the stretchers,” he said.
He was stabilized in Fallujah, moved to Baghdad and evacuated to the military hospital in Germany.
Doctors there sent him back to the U.S., meaning his Iraq tour is over. He is sore and has nerve damage in one of his arms. Doctors don’t yet know the severity of that damage, but his wounds aren’t life-threatening.
He has been in touch with other members of his unit since and declines to say what happened to the Marine he nearly lost his life trying to save.
“I’d rather not talk about him, if you don’t mind, sir,” he said softly.
His mother, Christine Elliott, said yesterday that she is just happy that her son is alive and back home.
“It was just a terrible phone call to receive,” she said of the initial notification that he had been shot.
Engels attended Polson Park and Centennial public schools in the city and left to move to Rockingham, N.C., when his mother, a nurse, got a job there.
He still has childhood friends here in Kingston, as well as family and fond memories of the city.
He never took out American citizenship but was eligible to join the military as a permanent resident of the United States.
His brother had also joined the military and Engels said his reasons for enlisting were not patriotic so much as pragmatic.
“It was a combination of things, but basically to get a house and to get money for college,” he explained, then added with a laugh, “and to get out of the house.”
He enlisted in 2005 and did basic training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., before beginning his Iraq tour in September.
http://www.thewhig.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=141267&catname=Local+News&classif=News+%2D+Local
Shot in the line of duty
By Ian Elliot
Local News - Tuesday, January 17, 2006 @ 07:00
A young man who was born and grew up in Kingston was shot by insurgents while serving in Iraq last weekend.
Nicholas Engels, who was born at Kingston General Hospital in 1986 but moved to North Carolina with his family when he was 12, was badly wounded in an ambush in Fallujah while trying to help a fellow soldier.
Engels, 19, is a U.S. Navy corpsman the Navy provides medics to the United States Marine Corps and Engels was attached to a Marine unit and was patrolling with them when they came under intense fire at about 7:30 a.m. local time.
Fallujah is a hotbed of insurgency where attacks on U.S. forces are common and a Marine was shot during the attack.
Engels was shot while trying to drag the wounded man out of the middle of the road to where he could be more safely treated.
“We were really getting hit from the rear, and I was trying to move him out of the middle of the street when I got hit,” recalled Engels yesterday from Bethesda, Md.
, where he was airlifted after first being treated in Baghdad and then Germany.
“It was a perfect 90-degree perpendicular shot. I was wearing body armour but it doesn’t protect you against that.”
The bullet tore through his right arm, entered his chest, travelled around the inside of his chest wall and then went completely through his left arm as it exited.
He was left dazed but conscious in the street as another Marine with basic combat medical training tended to his wounds.
“I was coherent the whole time,” recalled Engels.
“I was able to talk him through putting on the tourniquet and how to deal with the chest wound.”
Reinforcements arrived within 10 minutes and evacuated the wounded soldiers on stretchers, a wild ride that Engels can’t help but chuckle about as he thinks back to it.
“There we were, racing through the streets of Fallujah at 60 miles per hour in an armoured Humvee with the back door open because we couldn’t close it because of the stretchers,” he said.
He was stabilized in Fallujah, moved to Baghdad and evacuated to the military hospital in Germany.
Doctors there sent him back to the U.S., meaning his Iraq tour is over. He is sore and has nerve damage in one of his arms. Doctors don’t yet know the severity of that damage, but his wounds aren’t life-threatening.
He has been in touch with other members of his unit since and declines to say what happened to the Marine he nearly lost his life trying to save.
“I’d rather not talk about him, if you don’t mind, sir,” he said softly.
His mother, Christine Elliott, said yesterday that she is just happy that her son is alive and back home.
“It was just a terrible phone call to receive,” she said of the initial notification that he had been shot.
Engels attended Polson Park and Centennial public schools in the city and left to move to Rockingham, N.C., when his mother, a nurse, got a job there.
He still has childhood friends here in Kingston, as well as family and fond memories of the city.
He never took out American citizenship but was eligible to join the military as a permanent resident of the United States.
His brother had also joined the military and Engels said his reasons for enlisting were not patriotic so much as pragmatic.
“It was a combination of things, but basically to get a house and to get money for college,” he explained, then added with a laugh, “and to get out of the house.”
He enlisted in 2005 and did basic training at Camp Lejeune, N.C., before beginning his Iraq tour in September.
