Husband, Wife Both Awarded Purple Hearts

HASTINGS, Neb. - In a special ceremony, a husband and wife from Central City were awarded Purple Hearts for injuries suffered in separate incidents while serving in Iraq. For Clayton "Eric" and Heidi Erickson, Saturday's Purple Heart ceremony was humbling.

"It's almost embarrassing, the whole deal, you know," Eric said. "I don't deserve a star or anything."

The Purple Heart is given to members of the U.S. armed forces who are wounded as a result of enemy action.

The Ericksons are members of the 295th Ordnance Company, U.S. Army Reserve. They were wounded in August 2004, having been mobilized in fall 2003 with different reserve units.

They arrived in Iraq with their separate units in early 2004.

Eric, 42, drove in convoys around northern Iraq and was wounded on Aug. 4, 2004, near Mosul.

A vehicle carrying explosives drove into the convoy and detonated about 20 yards from Eric's truck.

When the convoy reached safety at a nearby installation, Eric noticed that his ear hurt.

Three days later, he went to a doctor and learned that he had suffered a blast concussion to his right ear and that his ear drum had been bleeding.

"Yep, that's my injury," he said. "You're not going to see the scars from that unless you stick a scope in my ear.

"I can have conversations all day long. That doesn't bother me," he said. But certain frequencies drive him nuts, he said, because he either can't hear the sound or hears a ringing or pounding in his ears.

Fewer than a dozen days after her husband was wounded, Heidi, 37, found herself in danger as part of a convoy headed out to pick up some soldiers.

As she was passing three tanker trucks, one exploded.

One of the men ahead of her convoy in the convoy told her that when he turned around, all he could see was a hood flying across the median, then a big ball of fire.

"'Then here come Mom driving out of the fire just like on TV," the man told Heidi.

A piece of metal flew through her windshield, missing Heidi and her co-driver but showering them with glass fragments that cut their faces.

"We were pretty lucky," she said. "Our rear gunner, he just ended up with first-degree burns when we went through the fire. He looked like he was sunburned. That was the most severe injury: just some cuts and scrapes and a little bit of a sunburn.

"Somebody was watching out for us," she said. "It could have been a lot worse."

Although they were within a hundred miles of each other in Iraq, visits were rare.

Heidi said she enjoyed seeing her husband on those rare visits, but it was hard switching from soldier to wife.

That task was even tougher when she called their children - Nathan, 10; Taylor, 8; and Niklas, 4 - who were being cared for by both sets of grandparents.

"It was hard to call home and talk to my kids. You had to be in the mommy mode with them all crying and upset," Heidi said. "And then I'd have to go out on the road and be a soldier."

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Information from: Hastings Tribune, http://www.hastingstribune.com