USMA IN THE NEWS

'We Have to Get Things Fixed Over There'

How Maj. Tom Deierlein, paralyzed by a sniper's bullet, is helping to save Iraqi children - from his hospital bed

Parade
April 26, 2007 

Army reservist Tom Deierlein was 38 when he was called up for active duty and sent to Iraq. The order came as a surprise: His diploma from West Point was 18 years old. He hadn’t worn a uniform in more than a decade. 

Nonetheless, the New York-based marketing-research executive reported for duty without complaint—and went through physical training with men and women half his age. He was promoted to major, and hit the ground in Baghdad in April 2006. 

Deierlein was assigned to Sadr City, the impoverished suburb where the Iraq insurgency has carried out many of its deadliest attacks. He was shocked at the destitution around him and called on friends and family to send shoes and vitamins for malnourished Iraqi children. 

Then, on Sept. 9, 2006, Deierlein was shot in the spine by a sniper. He woke up four days later at a hospital in Germany with almost no feeling in his lower body. While his condition stabilized, his family and friends back home organized a large fundraiser and established the Tom Deierlein Foundation—to continue his good works on behalf of Iraqi children. 

A few weeks after he was shot, Deierlein began to get feeling back in his legs. Today, doctors are optimistic that he will regain full function of his lower body.

Deierlein recently spoke with Parade.com about what he saw in Sadr City, his memories of the shooting, and what he hopes his foundation will accomplish.

Parade.com interviewed U.S. Army Maj. Tom Deierlein at the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, Fla., where he is recovering after being shot in the spine by a sniper. Deierlein has regained much of the feeling in his lower body, and with rigorous physical therapy, he expects to get back full function within a year. The interview was conducted and filmed by Ryan Bailey. 

PARADE.COM: Let's start by talking about how you were called up for duty. 

MAJ. TOM DEIERLEIN: I graduated from West Point in 1989, served my first commitment and left the military in 1993. I entered what was called the IRR: Individual Ready Reserves. I was in that for 12 years—I wasn’t in uniform, I didn’t go to drill, I wasn’t really associated with the military whatsoever. Then I got back from a business trip in October 2005. 
It was literally a Western Union telegram and a letter in my mailbox, saying, you got to report for duty in 30 days. I called them up and said “Man, I think you got the wrong guy.” “We got the right guy.” I read them my Social Security number. They were like, “No, that’s you,” and I’m like, “No, I don’t think so.” 

As we all know, it’s really important to have people over there that aren’t hunting the bad guys but helping rebuild the government, the infrastructure, the essential services, and that falls under a group called Civil Affairs. The army was drastically short of people in that specialty. That’s why they called up a bunch of reservists to be Civil Affairs officers. So I went to training for about six months at Fort Jackson [S.C.] and Fort Bragg [N.C.], and then deployed to east Baghdad. 

P: What was the hardest part of your physical training, especially being 12 years older since your last training?

TD: The push-ups! Push-ups were always the hardest part. But also, in general, just regular endurance, trying to get back in shape. I mean, I had been sitting on the couch, you know. And upper body strength was always the most difficult thing for me. So, I would say chin-ups, pull-ups and push-ups were extremely difficult. The running and the sit-ups were a little easier. Yeah, I definitely was feeling my age. But the good news was I was there with a lot of other guys in their late 30s and even 40s and 50s, so I didn’t have to feel that far behind. 

P: You shipped out to Iraq in April 2006. What was your first impression of Baghdad? 

TD: It was kind of this dichotomy: It was obviously a war-torn zone, but people were also trying to get on with their regular lives—there were marketplaces, people going to work. You know, it’s just like any big city. 

But in terms of Sadr City, it’s a slum. It’s a slum of 2.3 million people. And it’s not like a slum you would think of in the United States where it’s just a little downtrodden. The slum is like people living in cardboard boxes, not knowing where their next meal is coming, kids without clothes, without shoes on their feet. Kids who are so malnourished their growth has been stunted. That’s where I was assigned, and it was tough seeing the conditions that people were being forced to live under. 

P: Did you feel that your life was constantly in danger? 

TD: Well, absolutely. But it’s war, you know—it’s not like we didn’t know that we were in a war zone. It’s that dichotomy of extremes, because we were sitting here in our Humvees rolling down the road watching for car bombs, roadside bombs, snipers, insurgents. We definitely felt like we were in constant danger. Roadside bombs were the thing that caused the most fear. 

P: You said the Iraqi children always asked for soccer balls? What else did they ask for? 

TD: It’s not that they didn’t ask for anything else, but that’s really what they all wanted. Boys, girls, 4 years old or 14 years old, they all wanted a soccer ball. One of the things I gave out a lot was shoes. I had people back home send me children’s shoes. And school supplies. The kids weren’t going to ask for that, but it’s what they needed. And vitamins. Kids weren’t running up and begging me for vitamins, but I’d find their mothers—who would come out in a burka, they wouldn’t look me in the eye and I wouldn’t look them in the eye—and I’d have my interpreter hand them the vitamins and explain not to give them to kids under 3 and to give out only one or two a week, because I wanted them to last for a while. But the kids all asked for soccer balls. That’s all they wanted. They’d put up their hands like that as the Humvee drove by. They just wanted soccer balls. 

P: You were shot while responding to an area where violence had been reported? 

TD: Yeah. We were working with some contractors doing what we called “area beautification,” but really we were just getting all the trash and debris off the streets. So we were just having them clean up the streets, and the insurgents started shooting at them. We went there to try and protect them, but when we got to that neighborhood, nobody wanted to talk to us. So as we were leaving, I was standing by my Humvee, I told everyone, “Let’s go,” and I got shot while I was standing there. 

P: Where were you hit? 

TD: The bullet entered in my left hip. It shattered my pelvis. It was a “tumbling round,” so as soon as it entered my body it started to tumble. It shattered my sacrum, which is the base of the spine, and it tumbled through the other side of my pelvis. Fortunately, it didn’t hit my hips. It just went through the pelvis, damaging a lot of nerves in there. 

P: What do you remember most about the shooting? 


TD: How quickly everything happened. As soon as people figured out it was a sniper, everybody popped smoke to obscure the area. They pulled up another Humvee, and the medic was with me within seconds. It really went into the battle drill of getting me evacuated out of there to safety. They got me to a primary location, where I was checked by medical personnel. Got on a helicopter and out of there. So the thing I remember the most about it is just how fast everything went. And I was really proud of the soldiers that I was training with. Because of all of the training we had done, they actually executed it very well under the pressure and the stress of the environment and got me out of there. I am alive because of it. If there had been any delays, I actually would have bled to death. And I actually came very close to doing that. So literally, minutes mattered, and they got me out of there. 

P: Did they capture the person who shot you? 

TD: My understanding is that they caught his spotter. As you know, maybe from movies or the History Channel, snipers work in teams. There’s a spotter and a shooter. About a month later they ended up finding his spotter. How they knew it was him I’m not really sure. In the beginning, I was very obsessed with them finding the guy and killing him, but does it really matter? The reality is that we just have to get things fixed over there. That’s the most important thing of all. 

P: As soon as you got to a medical unit, you asked someone to call your wife. Did you think you might die? 

TD: No! The funny thing is I didn’t realize how close to dying I actually was. I was under a lot of morphine. So I was floating in and out, and I didn’t feel the pain. When I talked to her on the phone, I told her, “Hey, I’m shot,” and I didn’t even know if I was going to return to duty. I didn’t know how bad it was. 

P: What was it like when you finally saw your wife again? 

TD: Oh, it was great. She’s a great woman. It was wonderful just to see her and to see everyone. She took six months off of work to make sure that I was taken care of during this time. It was wonderful to see her that first time. 

P: Is it true the doctors said you would never walk again? 

TD: Well, no one ever told me that to my face, no. Maybe I was too optimistic, but none of the doctors ever said, ‘You may never walk again.’ I think maybe they told my mother and my wife that behind my back. But I was never concerned about that. I never thought that was a possibility. 

P: Was there a single moment when you realized that you could move your legs again, or did it happen gradually? 

TD: There was kind of a moment—about two weeks after I was shot. I realized I could kind of wiggle my left leg. Overall it had been very gradual, and I still have a lot of deficiencies. 
But there was that moment I was like, “Holy cow, did you see that? Did you see that?” to the doctor. And he said, “Yeah, it moves!” So, there was that excitement when that happened, because it’s just very odd when your body doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do and what it has been doing for 38, 39 years. 

P: How difficult was your recovery? How do you feel right now? 

TD: The medical treatment I’ve been getting is great, and everyone has been really wonderful. They say I am ahead of pace, but it’s just slow! It just takes a long time, and I am still in a lot of pain on a regular basis. And so that’s difficult. 

P: Do you expect to get back full movement in your lower body? 

TD: Yes, you know, 95 to 100 percent back. It should take another six months to a year before I don’t have any pain in my leg. 

P: What made you decide to start your foundation?

TD: Well, I was just getting more and more people to try and send me stuff when I was in Iraq. I was trying to shortcut the Army bureaucracy of getting basic humanitarian aid supplies. Unfortunately, especially in Sadr City, I saw a lot of people that had very basic needs: food, water, clothes, shelter. So I just started having people send me stuff: vitamins, school supplies, shoes, clothes. That’s how it initially started: so I could determine—not the Army—when and how to give out this humanitarian aid. Some of my friends and supporters had a big fundraiser. Then, after I got shot, it became the Tom Deierlein Foundation. 

P: What is the foundation’s goal? 

TD: I hate to sound corny, but it’s really to just help one family at a time. If you can make a difference for one kid, even just by providing them vitamins, I think you could make a huge difference. So, if I were able to provide a year’s worth of vitamins to a kid who’s 8 years old, who otherwise would have had stunted growth, who would have had health issues for the rest of his life, and give him a decent living, then that would be a big, big difference. 

P: Can you tell me about Addulah, the child who's coming here for surgery? 

TD: Yes. Addulah’s hip was destroyed by an RPG shrapnel about eight months ago. Basically, he’ll never walk again unless he gets proper orthopedic surgery. My company commander over there, Phil McIntire, knew some people at the University of Michigan, so they found the surgeons, other people agreed to let Addulah and his mother stay with them, and my foundation is providing the flight and travel arrangements. So, he’s going to have one of the elite pediatric orthopedic surgeons in the world repair his hip. 

P: How can people help your foundation? 

TD: The main way people can help is just through donations. And knowing that that money—because this is grassroots, I don’t have any paid employees—100% of what you donate is going to go towards supplies, providing medical care, vitamins, school supplies, shoes, clothes. All of the information about the foundation is on our Web site, as well as some pictures of the people and families that we have helped.