Pittsfield soldier recovering at home

PITTSFIELD – Spc. Fred Allen sat in an easy chair at his mother’s Route 2 home Friday morning, relaxing before a roaring fire.

To his left was a beautifully adorned Christmas tree, the first tree his mother, Brenda Allen, has put up since her son went into the military two days after his high school graduation in 1998.

To his right stood his wife, Annie, her belly swollen with the couple’s second child, due in March. His first daughter, Anastasia, 21/2, flitted around with a cleaning cloth, making believe she was dusting the house.

In front of Fred stretched his two shattered legs, propped up on a child’s Betty Boop director’s chair.

The right leg is broken and pinned; the left was blown apart and is slowly healing. He can’t bend the right leg because of the metal rod holding his femur together.

Extensive nerve and muscle damage in his right leg prompts alternating numbness or excruciating pain.

Allen, a U.S. Army paratrooper, was hit in the legs by a rocket grenade on Halloween as he stood in the darkness on a rooftop in Baghdad, Iraq. Six weeks and eight surgeries later, Allen arrived at Bangor International Airport late Tuesday, to the loving arms of his family and a hero’s welcome by nearly 100 others, some of them complete strangers.

Reflecting on that homecoming, Allen said he was shocked by the outpouring of support. “I don’t feel like I did anything heroic. And I don’t look at my experience in Iraq with regret,” he said.

“I remember September 11th and I just think of the people that died,” Allen said. “I didn’t go to Iraq for nothing. There are terrorists out there that want to kill Americans. I feel fortunate that I was able to do my job.”

Allen’s job began last August when he arrived in Iraq just a few months after having served a half-year in Afghanistan. His mission was simple, he explained: “Find the bad guys.”

Through tips from civilians and military informants, Allen’s platoon, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, would identify possible enemy hideouts and munitions stores. “We would confiscate the items and arrest the extremists, take them back to our firebase and interrogate them,” he said.

When he first arrived, while awaiting vehicles and tanks, Allen participated in some air assaults from Black Hawk helicopters.

“At first, things were slow and quiet,” he said. “But then as time progressed, as soon as Ramadan [the Muslim holy month] came on, all hell broke loose.” During this period “the extremists got more extreme, while those people that were more religious became quite subdued.”

“It was really easy then to tell one from the other,” he recalled.

On the night Allen was wounded, he and his platoon were on a Baghdad rooftop when an AK-47 started firing below. “That was the decoy which allowed the bad guys to run up on a roof opposite us,” he said.

“I heard two booms and I saw a big yellow ball coming at me. I closed my eyes and prayed and then when I opened my eyes, I was looking at the sky. I hadn’t realized I had fallen,” he said.

Allen stopped his story to take a drink of water. His wife began rubbing his back and stroking the top of his head.

“I felt the blood pouring out and I tried to move my right leg. The top moved but the bottom wouldn’t. I couldn’t feel my left leg and I though it was off. I thought I was going to die and I just kept thinking of my wife and daughter.”

Packed on a litter and taken on a tank back to a medical station, Allen said, it frightened him to learn he was considered “priority.” He said, “I knew that wasn’t good.”

He remembers little of the treatment in Iraq and the subsequent flight to a German hospital. When he woke up in Germany, the doctors could not assure him that he was going to live or keep his legs. “I was scared, but they kept saying they would do everything they could,” he said.

Eight surgeries were performed over the next few weeks to stabilize his shattered leg and fight infections in both legs. Physical therapy was started and will continue for the next six months to a year, Allen said.

Although Allen expressed sorrow for the plight of Iraqi women, he said he generally did not like Iraqis. “They seem to have no value system,” he said. “Everybody is out for themselves and therefore it is anarchy.

“They have the Iraqi police, but that has just been established. The Iraqis are not a very aggressive people, and therefore they aren’t really taking to policing well. We are working very hard over there to restore order, but it is so hard.”

He said Iraq must establish an efficient police system before it can move ahead. “It is going to take us years and years to clean up over there,” he said. “You don’t know who the bad guys are – everybody lies and they kill for money. There’s a bounty on Americans.”

Allen said many of the homes are lovely, often sporting marble installations, but outside a front door may run a ditch full of raw sewage. “Sometimes the smell is so overwhelming,” he said.

Allen said one thing about his future is certain: “I am not going to be able to jump out of planes anymore,” he said. “I have one year left in active duty, and that will likely be taken up with rehabilitation. I’m just going to concentrate on doing what I can to get better.”

When he is discharged, he plans to return to Maine and attend college. But for now, he said, he is content to sit by the fire, heal and get reacquainted with his family. “It’s really going to be a good Christmas,” he said.