Granby Marine hurt: IED blast hits convoy in southern Afghanistan
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GRANBY - A Marine from Granby serving in Afghanistan suffered serious injuries Wednesday, including the loss of his left leg, when an improvised explosive device detonated while he led a convoy in a southern province.
Injuries suffered by Sgt. Joshua J. Bouchard, the son of James Bouchard of Darrel Avenue in Granby and Mary Hafford of Harwinton, Conn., came as the U.S. pressed a new strategy to take land in southern Afghanistan from the Taliban and hold it. The mission in Helmand Province involving Marines with Bouchard's brigade from Camp Lejeune, N.C., is a key part of President Obama's plan, outlined in March, to take on al-Qaida terrorists there and in Pakistan with a bigger force.
For the Bouchard family, Joshua's injury reopens wounds carried over from one generation to the next.
The sergeant's father, James Bouchard, was shot in the chest on a combat mission near Da Nang, in Vietnam, in 1969. The family moved to the Valley in the early 1990s so he could receive care for post-traumatic stress disorder at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds.
"This is just so tragic," James Bouchard said Friday. "I didn't think it would happen to him."
On the day Bouchard was hurt, as his armored vehicle led a convoy, a top Marine commander said more forces will be needed to push the Taliban from the province. Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson told the Associated Press enemy forces will try to return to harvest a lucrative poppy crop he called "the engine that drives the Taliban."
Family gets word
James Bouchard and his wife Sue, Joshua's stepmother, said Friday that the family received a call from military officials late Wednesday telling them Joshua had lost part of his left leg and suffered fractures in his back and an arm in the explosion.
Bouchard, a 2001 graduate of Amherst Regional High School, was riding in the lead vehicle of a convoy when an improvised explosive device went off Wednesday, killing two Marines and injuring two others, the Bouchards said.
Joshua Bouchard, who serves his brigade as a mechanic, was acting as a gunner on the armored attack vehicle when the IED went off, his father said. The family received a more detailed account in a call Thursday from a Marine lieutenant colonel in North Carolina.
James Bouchard said he was told that his son was blown from the vehicle by the detonation and some of his injuries may have been a result of the impact of his fall to the ground.
Late Friday afternoon Eastern time, Bouchard was undergoing surgery at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany on Friday.
The serviceman's sister Irene, who lives in Amherst, said her brother was undergoing surgery on his spine after arriving at the hospital earlier Friday. He has lost his left leg below the knee, received shrapnel in his right leg and left arm and had broken his right arm.
If the spinal surgery goes well, the family believes Joshua may be flown to a medical center in the Washington, D.C., area by Sunday. The family hopes to make the trip there over the weekend to see him.
In the call Thursday from Camp Lejeune, the officer told the Bouchards that their son's service with his team was "indispensable."
The Northampton chapter of Disabled American Veterans, of which James Bouchard is a member, plans to help the family cover costs of traveling to see their relative. It was also possible Friday that the DAV support would help pay for the injured Marine's half-sister, Susanna Sullivan , to travel from Olso, Norway, where she is living this summer, to the U.S. medical center in Germany.
On Friday, James Bouchard worked with contacts at the Leeds medical center to arrange for staff at the German hospital to deliver a special message from home.
"They're going to tell him that his father asked them to come visit him," James Bouchard said.
While the family is still getting information about what happened, Sue Bouchard said she hopes people will keep her step-son in their prayers. "People can pray for my son and the families of those men who didn't survive," Bouchard said.
She said people up and down the East Coast who know Joshua are praying for his well-being, and a prayer circle has formed in New Zealand, where the family has friends.
Military call
Bouchard, 26, grew up in Bristol, Conn., and moved with his family to Amherst in 1993. He attended the Wildwood Elementary School and went on to graduate from Amherst Regional. He spent a brief time at Greenfield Community College before pursuing a career in the military. He went to boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina and then spent two years training on Okinawa in Japan.
"He always played soldier," James Bouchard said of his son's early interest in the military. "He had my Purple Heart and my medals and I said he could have them. We're going to have a lot in common now."
Bouchard was on his seventh overseas assignment at the time of his injury. He was on his second enlistment with the Marines, according to his father, and had served two tours in Iraq. Bouchard has been in Afghanistan since last December, except for a two-week trip home in February. At the time of his visit, he expressed concerns to his father about continued military service.
"He was feeling stressed-out," James Bouchard said. "He was tired."
Still, his sister Irene said her brother, in her view, remained committed to choices he had made. "He loved his job," she said Friday. "It's what he wanted to do."
"He seemed to really enjoy being in the Marines," his stepmother Sue Bouchard said. "He was very proud of it."
In fact, she said her stepson told her the tours in Iraq were "basically easy."
On one visit home, Joshua Bouchard attended a meeting of the Disabled American Veterans with his father, who is a leader of the Valley chapter. James Bouchard recalls his son telling him after that session, "I don't want to be a member of the DAV - I want to come back."
Charles Coleman, commander of DAV Chapter 92 in Northampton, called Joshua Bouchard "a very intelligent kid."
He remembers telling him, at a DAV meeting, "I said, 'You don't want to belong to this club, because there's only one way to get in here. He laughed and shrugged it off."
The chapter will tap its "forget me not" account to help the Bouchard family offset costs of travel to see the wounded serviceman. "We feel that because of the severity of his son's wounds, he (or another family member) should go wherever he wanted to go, to be with his son."
James Bouchard was shot by an AK-47 rifle on Aug. 25, 1969, while serving as a medical corpsman during the Vietnam War. He said his son's injury has him thinking a great deal about his service, including its differences. "Mine was a bullet wound. It was clean. I wasn't blown up."
On Friday, James Bouchard went to the Leeds VA to find help not just for his son, but for himself.
"We went in a room and cried. They said, 'Jim, you know you have a support group, that's why you came here.' I have a support system that helps me. I have to let the emotions be real, but don't act on them - and let them go."
He added, "Hopefully, my son can get the same support."
The aftermath of Bouchard's service in Vietnam included a struggle with survivor's guilt. In the firefight near Da Nang, seven men were wounded and three were killed. He said he expects his son will face similar struggles over the two men from his brigade who died in the Afghanistan explosion on Wednesday.
The new offensive - dubbed Operation Khanjar, or Strike of the Sword - has involved some 4,000 Marines and 650 Afghan forces. The Pentagon said it expects to deploy 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in time for the nation's Aug. 20 the elections. Estimates call for the number of U.S. forces there to hit 68,000 by the end of the year, twice as many as a year ago.