ROGERS : Wounded Marine refuses to give up fight
Posted on Thursday, November 22, 2007
ROGERS — Cpl. Aaron Mankin learned firsthand the power of one’s will on May 11, 2005, when a roadside bomb detonated in Iraq.
The blast destroyed his unit’s 26-ton amphibious assault vehicle, killing six Marines and sending the Rogers High School graduate on a long journey to recovery.
Mankin suffered second- and third-degree burns over 25 percent of his body. His face was disfigured. He inhaled heat, flames and debris that permanently damaged his lungs.
The 25-year-old has endured more than 30 surgeries so far.
Lying on the ground in western Iraq, Mankin tapped a soldier’s command — “Fire at will !” — for inspiration to stay alive, a mantra he has turned to repeatedly as he perseveres. When soldiers in the heat of battle hear “Fire at will,” they know they’re in self-preservation mode, Mankin said.
The will to fight almost eluded him a couple of times that day.
By the time he was loaded onto a medical-evacuation helicopter, exhausted, he had done all he could to save his own life.
He’d managed to dive off the burning vehicle. He’d dropped and rolled his flaming body, just as he was taught as a child.
Lying in the helicopter, he shut his eyes.
“Hey ! Hey ! HEY !” someone was screaming at him. “Don’t close your eyes ! Stay with me !” He realized the medic was right: His fight was not over. “That doctor telling me to keep my eyes open was my command to ‘Fire at will, ’” Mankin said.
“My goal at that time was survival. My goal at that time was to see my family. My goal at that time was to have a future, and to make a family of my own. So, ‘ Fire at will.’ This is it. “ Here we go.”
POSTED AS JOURNALIST It began that day with Mankin, a combat correspondent for the military, focused on two missions as part of the 2 nd Marine Expeditionary Force. He wrote stories, shot still photographs and video for the base newspapers and his command’s Web site. He was a soldier and a journalist.
“I had a camera in one hand and a rifle in the other,” he recalled while visiting Rogers recently.
It was the seventh day of an 11-day mission, Operation Matador.
“We crossed the Euphrates River,” said Mankin. “We closed the Syrian border so nobody was crossing in or out.”
The operation was almost over, but Mankin wanted to get a bit more footage.
He was standing on the back hatch of the amphibious carrier when the bomb exploded.
Mankin instinctively gasped, inhaling the blast’s hot fury.
“I was thrown back inside,” he said. “My sleeves immediately caught fire. I opened my eyes inside the vehicle, and all I could see was black, black smoke.”
The bomb buried beneath the road was built using two saw blades, he later learned. When compressed by the weight of the carrier, the blades completed a circuit and detonated the bomb.
“The accelerant that was used for the IED was so hot that our bullets, our ordinance started cooking off,” Mankin said. IED is short for improvised explosive device.
With all their ammunition and grenades firing, the Marines at first thought they were under attack by gunfire.
If he stayed inside the carrier he would surely die, Mankin said. He dove off, blindly.
“As soon as I hit the ground, that kindergarten mentality kicks in, of ‘drop and roll’ — I was a rolling fool,” he said. “There came a point where I had rolled so much, I couldn’t roll anymore.”
A first wave of exhaustion set in. There was nothing more he could do.
His life didn’t flash before him. Instead, he saw images of family and close friends.
“The last image I landed on, the last thing that I saw, was this girl that I was dating at the time,” Mankin said. “And she — she was an angel. Beautiful. It was then that I realized that: ‘This is it. I’m going to die. ’”
Suddenly, other Marines were diving on him, putting out the flames that engulfed him.
BURN UNIT 1 In the 2 / 2 years since the blast, Steve Mankin of Rogers still gets emotional when recounting his son’s recovery. During the first three months, Aaron Mankin was at risk for pneumonia and infection from the various wounds to his upper body, arms and face. “They literally vacuumed his lungs every morning,” his father said of the doctors. “They even got bits of uniform out of his lungs. Dust. Particles. Vegetation. The belief is, to their best knowledge, that he actually did inhale flame.” After the blast, Aaron Mankin was first taken by helicopter to a field hospital in Balad, Iraq, then flown to Germany. He ended up at the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. Early surgeries included skin grafts and removal of half of his index finger and half the thumb on his right hand, Steve Mankin said.
Despite doctors’ expectations he would lose the hand, it was saved and he can still write with it.
There were surgeries to extend Mankin’s arms and widen his mouth, his father said. There is a tendency for the arms, hand and mouth to draw up because of the skin grafts and scar tissue. Mankin also underwent elbow and wrist surgery to restore flexibility.
Mankin lost most of his nose and outer ears during the explosion.
Other operations he had at the Brooke Army hospital laid a foundation for facial reconstruction, such as some grafting and a nose flap procedure, Steve Mankin said.
Aaron Mankin was featured in a story on CNN, capturing the attention of doctors and a philanthropist who were planning a pilot project to help wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Oct. 4, the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center and the Brooke Army hospital announced their partnership — Operation Mend — a collaboration of surgeons and staff from both facilities. The two entities established the initiative with the help of philanthropist Ronald A. Katz, a UCLA hospital board member.
Aaron Mankin was chosen as the project’s first patient. He has since undergone more reconstructive facial surgeries under the care of Dr. Timothy A. Miller, the UCLA center’s chief of reconstructive and plastic surgery.
“I am reconstructing his nose by using the forehead,” Miller said, describing a graft of skin taken from above Mankin’s brow. In such procedures, surgeons build a larger nose. After a blood supply develops and swelling subsides, the nose is sculpted smaller. Miller said he will reconstruct the nostrils using skin grafts taken from behind the ears. The outer ears will be reconstructed later, most likely using prostheses, Miller said. It is difficult to estimate how many more surgeries will be needed — perhaps four or five more, he said.
A HUSBAND, A FATHER The angel’s face Aaron Mankin saw when he stopped rolling belonged to Marine Lance Cpl. Diana Kavanek. The two wed in February 2006, and the Mankins had their first child, daughter Madeline Paige Mankin, in January. They live in San Antonio, where Aaron Mankin works with the Brooke Army hospital’s public affairs office as a patientmedia liaison and counsels other wounded soldiers. Steve Mankin said his son is a fighter who looks for the good in a situation.
“He’s always been upbeat, he’s always been — I’ve never known him to give in,” he said. “He’s very persistent. And he didn’t want to quit. “ He didn’t want to quit the military, he didn’t want to quit getting better. ‘How much better can we make this ?’ That’s his attitude.” Recovery has led Aaron Mankin to accept his life. “That’s not to say I didn’t have my bad days,” he said. He also has been healed through encouraging other injured soldiers.
“I have the opportunity to walk into the room of a serviceman who was wounded, and say, ‘ I know what you’re going through, ’” he said. He tells them that one’s own determination is “very personal,” but that others can see it.
“It comes down to one aspect of an individual, and that is your will,” Aaron Mankin said.
“When it comes to that firing at will, either you take the day or the day takes you. At some point, you fire your last shot, and you choose when to fire this last shot.
“ I have never stopped shooting.”
MORE INFO To find out more about Cpl. Aaron Mankin or Operation Mend, log on to the following Web sites for videos, a photo album and print interviews: http: // www. uclahealth. org / body. cfm ? xyzpdqabc = 0 &id = 502 & action = detail&ref = 375 http: // abcnews. go. com / WN / WoodruffReports / story ? id = 3683605 http: // transcripts. cnn. com / TRANSCRIPTS / 0701 / 29 / acd. 01. html http: // transcripts. cnn. com / TRANSCRIPTS / 0611 / 10 / ldt. 02. html
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