A Unit's Fitful Year at War

'You Gonna Be All Right'

Two weeks later, Combat Blue rolled out of the gates of Camp Paliwoda. Tickal, the platoon's medic, made a mental note of the date. "I remember thinking, 'Something bad always happens on September 11,' " he said.

The three Humvees hugged the middle of the two-lane road. Outside the inch-thick windows, the view was total darkness: orchards and empty fields, obscured by night. The damp air smelled sweet, like ripening fruit.

The Humvees crossed an overpass when suddenly an explosion -- a familiar orange fireball, followed immediately by a concussive blast -- ripped open the night. The bomb hit the trailing vehicle. The Humvee careened down a 15-foot embankment before rolling to a stop near a field.

Soldiers on the two other vehicles fired into the darkness with their heavy machine guns. Tickal ran to where the truck had disappeared from the road. He was met at the top of the embankment by Sgt. Stanley Brooks, 23, of Orangeburg, S.C.

Brooks was covered in blood, Tickal recalled. He was racing back and forth atop the embankment "like a jackrabbit," talking a mile a minute and screaming: "My face! My face! My face!"

Tickal grabbed Brooks by the shoulders and stared. The right side of Brooks's face was splattered with shrapnel and glass. But his eyes were intact. Tickal asked about the three other soldiers in the Humvee.

"They're all dead," Brooks told him.

Tickal ran down the steep embankment, trying not to trip in the dark. He found Hagood lying on his side near the Humvee, his right foot nearly blown off, his head resting across the legs of Cpl. William Young, 24. Young's face was mangled and bloody. A piece of shrapnel had entered below his right eye, traveled through his nose and exited his left tear duct. Both men were alive: They had been pulled from the Humvee by the 20-year-old gunner, Pfc. Jose Rosario of St. Croix, Virgin Islands, who was unharmed.

Hagood and Young were screaming.

"I'm gonna die!" shouted Hagood, using an expletive, as blood pooled in the dirt beneath his foot.

Baker arrived just after Tickal. He straddled Hagood's legs so Hagood couldn't look at the gaping hole in his ankle.

"Man, shut up!" Baker recalled shouting at Hagood. "You gonna be all right. Don't worry about this, man! We got you. We got you. You're good. I got you, dawg, you good. Man, you ain't gonna die. You talking to me, right?"