“BJ”, the amputee from Baghdad

Robert Jackson – “BJ” -, 22, lost both of his legs in August 2003 in Iraq.
The former soldier, a married father of two, is learning to live with his wounds.

Des Moines. His wife Abby is waiting for him on the dance floor. Robert “BJ” Jackson lays his crutch against the wall of a Des Moines suburb nightclub. He joins Abby limping. He takes her hand and they start dancing almost like any other couple. But you can feel BJ’s pain. His moves are unsteady and BJ soon has to leave the dance floor. In two days, his leg is to be amputated again.

Robert Jackson lost both of his legs in Baghdad. According to what soldiers from his battalion told him about the attack that took place in August 2003, the truck he was driving hit a landmine and was hit rocket. BJ and his fellow soldiers then came under heavy gunfire. “Private Lienemann pulled me out of the truck”, the young father from Des Moines says. “He lay over me during the attack to protect me”. Both of BJ’s legs had to be amputated below the knees. Today, he has to wear a hat to protect his badly burnt head and cannot move two fingers.

BJ did not flinch under the blows of his year of pain. He is quietly talking about his projects. Before the war, he was working in home improvement. Now that he is one of the 9000 wounded US soldiers, who had to be evacuated from Iraq since the beginning of the war, he wants to open up a nightclub with his wife and a friend. And he wants to look after his two children aged 1 and 3: “My family joined me in Texas where I am treated. That is the most precious support you can ever get”, he says. In the sunny Lone Star State, far away from the unending cornfields of Iowa, he has started his long way to recovery. “I feel pretty good there but I miss the cold!”.

BJ is not angry. “It was my job and I knew the risks”, he says. “You have to accept what life has in store for you. I could be dead”. The young man supports Howard Dean, the energetic former governor from Vermont, in the upcoming democratic primary because “democrats are better than republicans for what I intend to do”, and also because his father is a union leader. He does not know what to think about the war that made him lose his legs: “We did not find the weapons of mass destruction we were supposed to find, he adds. But on the other hand we caught the guy (n.d.l.r: Saddam Hussein) most Iraqis would like to see dead. I have seen kids tear apart banknotes with Saddam’s face on it. That is why I think there must have been a reason to our presence there”.

Back home, BJ received a lot of support from fellow citizens, who “support their troops” no matter what the reason invoked by the White House to go to war in Iraq was. But his infirmity confronted him to human stupidity. The reason BJ is in the Des Moines nightclub tonight, is because he was denied the entry to that same club a couple of weeks ago. The bouncer did not want to let him in because of the sneakers attached to his prosthetics.

The story came out in the local press and the club owner tried to diffuse the outcry by inviting “BJ” and his wife Abby for a special night in his honor. Private Mentzer and Lienemann, the two soldiers, who were caught with him in the attack, have also been invited. “These two guys have been the targets of so many attacks that the army decided to send them back home”, says BJ.

A little while later, a middle aged man with a sad look comes to the booth, where BJ is seating: “How are you buddy?”, asks Art Hedgecock, a Vietnam Veteran. My son Jake is in Iraq now”. “I am good, thank you, replies BJ. But how is Jake?” “He is ok I guess, says the man. I was on the phone with him last week. I was trying to make him laugh and suddenly the line died”.

Jean-Cosme Delaloye / Des Moines (Iowa)
Tim McKulka (pictures)

A French version of this story was published in January 2004 in 24heures and Tribune de Genève.

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