Maine man shot by sniper in Iraq Soldier en route to D.C. hospital

DETROIT – According to the calendar hanging in his mother’s kitchen, Bradley Buckland, 22, should have been home on the Buttons Road in Detroit Saturday. He should have been enjoying the company of his young wife, his parents and siblings. He should have been riding in his 1970 Corvette, the car that his father spent the last year lovingly restoring for him.

Instead, the young U.S. Army infantryman recently was ordered to extend his tour of duty in Iraq, and on Saturday, two weeks after he originally was scheduled to return home, Buckland was shot by a sniper.

Early today he was to be flown in stable but critical condition from Germany to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where his father, Greg, mother, Pam, and wife, Jennifer, 19, were to be waiting for him.

On Monday, Pam Buckland was busy packing belongings for the trip. Jennifer Buckland was curled up on the sofa. Greg Buckland was taking a nap. “Nobody slept last night,” Pam said, the weariness and worry evident on her face.

Outside the home, a bright yellow ribbon flapped from a tree by the driveway, but inside, the mood was somber. Pam sat on the living room floor with the family dog in her lap, absently smoothing the pile of the carpet as she talked.

“Greg knew the minute the phone rang,” she said. The call came at 8:45 a.m. Sunday and when the sound of the phone broke the usual Sunday morning quiet, her husband said, “I don’t like the sound of that,” Pam recalled.

Jennifer Buckland said she had talked to her husband by telephone Saturday night, but something kept nagging at her and she had lain awake all night. “Somehow I knew, I guess,” she said.

Pam Buckland said the sniper’s bullet “smashed through Bradley’s hip, went through his large intestine, small intestine and bowels, and then exited through his stomach.” She said he underwent six hours of emergency surgery in Baghdad and then was airlifted to Germany where he was stabilized. Medical officials are keeping her son in a drug-induced coma, she said.

Bradley Buckland graduated from Maine Central Institute in 2003. He played the electric bass guitar and saxophone in the band.

“The military had been his dream since he was a boy,” his mother said. “But he had asthma and the Army refused him. He spent an entire summer running to build up his lung capacity, and they eventually took him.”

Back in Detroit on leave last Christmas, Buckland married Jennifer, who he had met when both worked at Shop ‘n Save in Newport.

“He was ready to come home,” Pam Buckland said. “He didn’t talk about [his experiences] much with me, mostly with his dad. But he had seen so much.”

Buckland said that her son’s year of overseas duty was up on Oct. 1 but that he received notification a month ago that all tours had been extended by 90 days. His return date was then shifted to Nov. 22. Bradley Buckland’s home base is Fort Hood at Killeen, Texas.

The Army paid for three family members to fly to Walter Reed where Buckland said her son will undergo at least one more surgery. “And then they will try to get him up and eat and walk,” she said.

“The first thing he is going to ask for is pizza,” she said, flashing what was likely her only smile of the day.

Buckland said that what her family needed most right now were prayers for her son’s recovery.