Pittsfield soldier’s parents await news Lack of firsthand reports ‘nerve-wracking’

OAKLAND – From their home, Carol and Delmont Wyman anxiously await news, any news, of their son, Army Spc. Craig Ardry, one of four members of a Maine Army National Guard battalion injured in an ambush in Iraq.

“It’s very nerve-wracking that we can’t see him. We can’t talk to him to get firsthand information,” Carol Wyman said in an interview Wednesday after learning that her son was among the injured.

Ardry, 30, was reported in stable condition, awaiting transportation to Germany and ultimately stateside, where he will be further treated for injuries to one of his legs, broken ribs and an arm, and an apparent concussion he suffered while serving in Mosul in northern Iraq.

The city had seemed a quieter place, if there is such a thing in Iraq these days, and Wyman said that provided a little bit of comfort, if any parent can have comfort with a loved one in a war zone.

Like any mother, Carol Wyman had worried when her son was deployed in Iraq in March. She told him to be safe and to watch his back.

Ardry had spent four years in the Army in the early 1990s and returned to the military through the Army National Guard out of a sense of duty, his mother said. When he feels something needs to be done, he does it. He follows his plans and accomplishes what he sets out to do, she said.

He balanced this sense of duty with school and graduated with a degree in geological sciences from the University of Southern Maine in 2000. His sweetheart while at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield would one day become his future wife. He and Nanette graduated in 1991 and have one child and a second on the way.

Before being activated, Ardry had been working in telecommunications, installing phone systems for businesses, his mother said.

The past two days have been difficult, fraught with uncertainties for the Wymans, who after hearing about the attack and that none of the injuries were life-threatening learned later that one soldier had died.

“I think we’re all holding our own,” Carol Wyman said. “Some hours are worse than others.”