Living with the scars of war A CONFLICT'S PAINFUL LEGACY

Living with the scars of war A CONFLICT'S PAINFUL LEGACY: Thousands have come home from Iraq injured, sometimes severely. Here are the stories of three Marines' struggle to heal.
John Koopman, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 14, 2007


Faoa Apineru should be dead.
In May 2005, he was in a humvee driving down a road in Iraq near the Syrian border when a roadside bomb went off right next to him. The blast was enormous. A shard of metal pierced his face and rattled around his brainpan. He was flown to a hospital in Fallujah, then to another one in Germany and to Bethesda, Md. After many surgeries to fix his brain and face, Apineru made his way to the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System hospital for treatment and rehabilitation.