Capt. Joshua A. Mantz

Life and Death and Life in Iraq

This is a soldier’s story, a tale of life and of death and of life’s return.

It is the story of one soldier, Capt. Joshua A. Mantz, who was shot in Iraq. Technically, he was dead, a flat-liner for a full 15 minutes - long past the time many doctors use as their mark for ordering a halt in life-saving efforts, since brain damage can start within just a few minutes without vital signs.

But it also is the story of how Captain Mantz will journey to Washington this week, where he will speak of the battlefield physicians who brought him back to life, and thank the counselors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who balanced discipline with empathy and pushed him through rehabilitation.

Five months after he was revived, Captain Mantz returned to his unit in Iraq to finish a tour of platoon command, and he is preparing to deploy again, most likely early next year.

The 27-year-Qld from Sunbury, Pa., got to practice his compelling narrative this past weekend, when he met Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was visiting the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kan., with a stop at nearby Fort Riley, to deliver a challenge to cut wasteful Pentagon spending.

Captain Mantz was wounded in Baghdad on April 21, 2007, when he was a first lieutenant and leader of a Scout Platoon in the 1-8 Cavalry operating in Baghdad. He was guiding his soldiers on the edge of the rebellious Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, when the soldiers crossed into range of an adversary sniper using high-powered, armor-piercing bullets.

A round entered through the left arm of Staff Sgt. Marlon B. Harper, 34, of Baltimore, and exited through his chest, but only after severing his aorta and delivering a mortal wound.

The force and heat of the round caused the bullet to fuse with Sergeant Harper's body armor. A chunk of bullet and melted armor plate the size of a human fist ricocheted into Captain Mantz's upper right thigh, severing his femoral artery, another of the deadliest combat wounds possible. But first the adrenalin of combat kicked in.

"1 didn't know that 1 was shot," Captain Mantz said. "I was simply confused and knew that something was wrong. 1 experienced tunnel vision, as my attention immediately focused on the face of Staff Sergeant Marlon Harper. I looked into his eyes with crystal clarity and watched as his lifeless body fell to the ground. 1 experienced auditory distortion, in that 1 could hear nothing except for the muted shot of the sniper round, and hear my own voice call for my medic. 1 also experienced slow-motion time. 1 could feel my body absorb the shock of the round as it hit my body. 1 could feel myself moving backwards."

Captain Mantz dragged Sergeant Harper out of the way and began to perform first aid on him while calling for assistance. "When my medic arrived, no more than 15 seconds later, 1 briefly passed out," Captain Mantz said. "1 regained consciousness when my men carried me into the nearest Bradley Fighting Vehicle and drove to FOB Loyalty," the forward operating base that was their home in Baghdad.

‘I could feel myself starting in die’

During the 10 -minute ride, the medic cinched-up a tourniquet and helped Captain Mantz stay conscious. "But 1 had to fight for every breath that I took," Captain Mantz said.

The convoy was met by a team of Army medical personnel who within seconds were administering CPR and electronic defibrillation.

"But by this time I could feel myself starting to die, and I became desperate in my struggle to stay conscious," he said. "We're taught in Combat Lifesaver Training that the body will pull blood to the chest cavity during a catastrophic injury in order to protect the vital organs. I could actually feel this happening. It started with my legs. I could feel the blood creeping up from my legs to my chest cavity. When all the blood was gone, my legs locked-off. As the feeling crept up my body, it became harder and harder to breathe. The blood-creeping sensation moved to my quads, and they locked off. The feeling then crept to my stomach, and it locked-off. When the feeling moved to my stomach, it felt as if! was running wind sprints around a 400-meter track while breathing through a straw.

"I started to repeat three names in my head over and over again: My mom, my sister Melissa, and my sister Kendra. For the last 60 seconds of my life, I rapidly repeated these three names in my head. They helped me hold on a little longer and knew I had to fight for them. But the feeling then crept to my chest, and I knew I was done. I calmly said my last thought, took my last breath, and died."

There is one question Captain Mantz said he gets every time anyone hears his story: Did he see a tunnel of white light? The sound of angels? A gateway to the afterlife?
"I had no out -of-body experience," he said. "Either that means it doesn't exist or it means I need to change the way I am living."

The medical team working on Captain Mantz did not quit. "I don't know what possessed the brigade surgeon and his team to continue working on a dead guy for 15 straight minutes - many doctors will 'call it' after 6 minutes because that's usually the point at which brain damage sets in - but they kept going," Captain Mantz said.

When they restored a faint pulse, Captain Mantz was loaded onto a Black Hawk helicopter for a short flight into the Green Zone and more advanced emergency care. There, the military hospital team went through nearly 30 units of blood during a complicated vascular surgery. Blood was in short supply, and the medical team pulled soldiers into the surgery ward, drawing blood straight from their arms and putting it right into Captain Mantz. (He was ordered to take tests for a year to check for blood infections or disorders from the unprocessed transfusions, and he is fine.)

"Our military surgeons are gods in their profession," he said. "With the proper resources, they can, and do, bring soldiers back to life against impossible odds."

When he was stabilized, Captain Mantz was flown first to the larger military hospital at Balad, Iraq, north of Baghdad, and then to the military facility in Landstuhl, Germany, where it was determined that he had suffered no brain damage.

Recovery

Then he was transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where he underwent follow-up surgery before being transferred to the Warrior Transition Brigade, a unit at Walter Reed designed to assist soldiers in recovering from physical and mental wounds, and returning to service or moving on to the civilian world.

He arrived at Walter Reed shortly after The Washington Post had disclosed shoddy conditions there, prompting Mr. Gates and the Army to replace the facility’s top officers.

Captain Mantz had only compliments for new leadership at Walter Reed, which he described as "a utopia" of Army medical care.

Scrutiny has fallen on the broader effort to help wounded soldiers, however. Clifford L. Stanley, the new Under Secretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, recently forced out the civilian deputy in charge of Pentagon¬-wide programs to care for wounded troops because of concerns the program was not functioning as well as it should.

And the New York Times studied one Army trauma care center at Fort Carson, Colorado and interviewed more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals who described significant and troubling shortcomings in care.

In response to that article, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff, visited the Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Carson. He said that more than 80 percent of the soldiers who had passed through these units said they had positive experiences, he pledged that any problems would be examined.

Captain Mantz said one reason he wanted to return to Walter Reed this week was to offer his thanks for the care he received, which he credits with allowing him to return to his combat unit less than five months after his catastrophic injury.

"I wanted to redeploy for two reasons," he said. 'The first reason was for my men. The sniper round that hit us on 21 April took out the platoon leader - me - and the senior scout of the platoon - Staff Sergeant Harper - in a matter of seconds. One month later, the platoon sergeant was struck by an lED and was medevaced out of theater.

"I went back to the same unit," he said. "One of the best moments of my life was landing on that helicopter. They didn't know I was coming back. I looked like a ghost walking around the comer. They just swarmed me. It was amazing."

"I needed to know that I could go outside the 'wire' and be mentally capable of performing my job as an infantry officer. You can say that you're 'fine' all you want back in the States, but the true test happens when you have to perform. I needed to know that I wouldn't freeze up. And as it turned out, I was scared to death on my first patrol. I could barely move and was completely incapacitated."

He went out again with his troops, "and was perfectly fine on every subsequent patrol. I soon learned that I'd be able to continue to perform as an infantry officer, and that gave me an immense amount of closure."

Helping Others by Sharing His Story

Captain Mantz currently is assigned as aide-de-camp to Brig. Gen. David C. Petersen, the deputy commanding general of the First Infantry Division at Fort Riley, and is expecting to return to Iraq as a company commander early next year. In the meantime, he has decided to tell his story as often as anyone will listen.

A few weeks ago, Fort Riley hosted a counseling session for spouses and parents of those killed in combat. Captain Mantz was approached by a mother whose son had been killed by a high-powered improvised explosive. She said the explosion had severed both of his legs at the waist, and she had been tormented wondering what her son, a hard-charging, type-A personality, had felt and thought in his last moments.

"The question that bothered her for the last three years was, "I wonder if my son lost the will to live because he knew his legs were gone and knew he couldn't walk ever again. 1 wonder if he gave up.' 1 was able to look her straight in the eye, and tell her that I used to think the same thing. I used to think that I’d rather die than lose a limb in combat. But as soon as I was shot, that thought went completely out of the window. I couldn't have said to the doctor fast enough, "Take my leg! I'll figure the rest out later!' As I answered her question, I could see it in her eyes that 1 gave her a little bit of closure. And that was a question that only I could answer."

"I never thought I’d get an answer to that question until that mother walked up to me that day," Captain Mantz said. "Your experiences are valuable in ways you may not realize yet. I strongly encourage you to talk about them. You'll never know who you're going to help."