Injured soldier feels more alive than ever

Injured soldier feels more alive than ever
By Caryn Rousseau
Associated Press Writer

LAWTON -- For once in his life, an Arkansan who lost his legs in a grenade attack on the streets of Baghdad says he knows where he's going.

Spc. Kevin Pannell was maimed when his three-soldier security team decided to check down an alley on June 13, 2004. They were met by two hand grenades.

But the high-spirited 26-year-old Arkansan from Glenwood in Pike County says he's been living large ever since.

''I'm happier than I have ever been in my entire life,'' he said Wednesday in his room at Fort Sill. ''Now I know where I'm going. Before I was week to week, check to check. This is all I had to give up to get that.''

Maj. Gen Don Morrow, left, and Spc. Kevin Pannell welcome home about 250 soldiers from the 39th Brigade Combat Team of the Arkansas National Guard to return from Iraq during a homecoming ceremony Tuesday at Fort Sill. Pannell, a member of the 39th Brigade Combat Team, lost both his leggs while serving in Iraq.
And even though he will live the rest of his life without legs, he isn't bitter.

''What's the point to get bitter,'' he said. ''I still would have gone down that alley. I wouldn't have changed anything about that day because if I changed anything maybe it would have been somebody else getting hit.

''There's nobody to be bitter at. To the dude that hit me with a grenade, he had just as good a reason to be there in his thinking as I did,'' Pannell said. ''I'm not happy with him but I don't resent him for it.''

The motivation to recover so quickly and walk with prosthesis -- Pannell lost his right leg below the knee and his left leg above the knee -- came from a promise he made to the rest of his Charlie Company comrades for their return to the United States. The Arkansas 39th Infantry Brigade began its return home this week after a year in Iraq. Their first stop Fort Sill before going home to Arkansas.

''I made a promise to those guys, as soon as I woke up, that I'd be standing on flatline as soon as they got in,'' Pannell said.

And he was there Tuesday, standing right at the bottom of the stairs and at the head of the line before Maj. Gen. Don Morrow, head of the Arkansas National Guard, as his buddies came off the plane.

Pannell was wearing his prosthesis and a pair of white K-Swiss gym shoes. He says he was wanting to go back to Iraq, but not anymore.

''I'd go back in a heart beat because my guys are still there, but they got off the plane, so hell no I'm not going back,'' Pannell said. His wife of six years, Amanda Pannell, 24, said she saw the stress lift from her husband when the plane load of his fellow soldiers landed.

''It's been hard on him being here, know they're over there,'' she said. For now, Pannell is officially still a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. But he came to Fort Sill this week to greet his unit.

With his disability, he has found freedom and a new lease on life, he said. Now he does things he'd never tried before. He kayaks and snowboards and completed his first wheelchair marathon in Miami a few weeks ago. He plans three more this year -- Los Angeles, Boston and New York. His arms are huge.

''Everything I do is super intense,'' he said. ''If I do the marathon I want to be the first one in.''

There's no worries, he said. The Army is paying him and will pay him for the rest of his life. His 4-year-old son Hunter will go to college for free. That lets him forget about his previous plumbing job and focus on nonprofit work for groups like the Paralyzed Veterans Association. He calls himself a ''spokes-amputee''.

Now he spends a lot of time visiting other injured veterans in the hospital.

''They respond a lot better to me than the psychiatrists,'' he said. He takes off his camouflaged prosthesis and sets it on the coffee table in his room at Fort Sill as his son plays with a toy police car on the floor. There's a picture of his slain comrade Troy Miranda laminated on the side. There's a purple heart and Arabic script.

''I hope it says my last name in Arabic,'' Pannell said shrugging. ''You never know.''

He takes pride in saying that he never took himself too seriously. Like when he woke up in the hospital in Washington.

''I thought I was in Germany because all I heard was you get hurt, you go to Germany,'' he said. ''I told the doctors when I woke up, I'm not leaving here without seeing some of Germany.''

When he met his troops, they walked him across the gymnasium at Fort Sill to a standing ovation. But what was going through his head? He was worried about a wrinkly tarp laid down over the floor.

''I was thinking 'I'm gonna hang a toe on one of these wrinkles and bust my butt in front of every one.'''

It wouldn't have been the first time.

This from the man who says he did wheelies in his wheelchair up and down the halls of Walter Reed, often crashing to the ground. The man who road his motorized wheelchair to the crest of a steep hill near a highway running by his Glenwood backyard and got stuck in the mud as motorists drove by.

He does get a little sick of the hype, he said. The constant attention and appreciation everyone shows him.

There's a sign honoring him in his former hometown of Dierks. He said he's going to call and have them take it down before the other soldiers in his unit go home.

''I don't think it's fair for it to be there,'' he said. ''Everybody did the same job. I just happened to be in the wrong place.''