The Associated Press
MADISON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — U.S. Army Cpl. Ignacio Garza ended a 30-day leave Monday to what he calls his southern Michigan hometown after receiving a Purple Heart and Bronze Star for treating himself and 12 soldiers wounded in Iraq.
“I’m injured and whatever, but the adrenalin is flowing, and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” he told The Daily Telegram of Adrian. He was visiting his sister and brother-in-law, Terry and Doug Grossman of Lenawee County’s Madison Township, before heading back to Germany.
Garza, a medic in the 1st Armored Division, had been in Iraq a month when his unit came under its first orchestrated attack in June near a traffic checkpoint and command post outside Ramadi, a city 45 minutes west of Baghdad. Garza, part of a group of U.S. troops training Iraqis, was watching as Iraqi troops manned the checkpoint and mortars started falling, followed by rifle fire and an exploding dump truck.
When the truck approached, the command post’s guards shot and killed the driver, Garza said. But the blast killed four Iraqi soldiers.
Garza was about 40 yards away, but the explosion knocked him onto another soldier. Garza saw he was bleeding from his right forearm and the other soldier had a shrapnel wound to his shoulder. He dressed his wound, then treated the other soldier.
Ambulances arrived, and Garza and two medics treated the wounded before they were taken to an aid station in Ramadi. Garza was treated for wounds to his arm, face, lower back, right shoulder and right hip.
Garza said the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Anthony Deane, saw him working and recommended him for the Bronze Star.
Garza was in the Navy in the 1980s, working on a submarine tender as a welder’s assistant. He enlisted in the National Guard after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He later moved from Texas to Adrian to be with his family and was serving in an Army National Guard military police unit when, at 38, Garza joined the Army. The recruiter suggested he become a medic.
“We have very honorable men and women” serving in Iraq, Garza said. “They’ll do you proud.”
He is working to become a physician assistant, and expects to retire in eight years.