Hurt soldier brings insights home from Iraq
TWIN FALLS, Idaho – Sgt. 1st Class Shane Hohnhorst didn’t plan on coming home from Iraq this early, or this way.
He arrived in Twin Falls on May 20 to recover from a shoulder injury. “It was great, but I wish I didn’t have to come home broke down,” he said Wednesday.
He’ll head to Fort Bliss, Texas, on June 18, where he’ll most likely be put in a program that will bring him home for good, and back to his original job as a full-time tank mechanic at the Idaho National Guard armory in Jerome. The 1988 Gooding High School graduate and former Idaho State University student has been in the Guard for 17 years, the last 13 full time.
It was December when he and his fellow soldiers of the 2-116th Brigade Combat Team traveled by convoy from Kuwait to Iraq. One of the trailer’s wheels wouldn’t turn, so they used a wrecker to put the trailer on a flatbed truck. Hohnhorst was trying to unhook the trailer when he suddenly got a pain in his shoulder. He didn’t know it then, but he’d torn his rotator cuff – the group of muscles that move the shoulder.
“I knew I’d hurt myself about 30 minutes after we started driving again,” he said.
But Hohnhorst pressed on. Knowing it was safer to travel in the dark hours of early morning, they set out at 2 a.m. on the last leg of that first journey to Forward Operating Base Normandy 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. They were relieved to arrive at the FOB without incident.
“We thought we were going to get attacked, but nothing happened,” Hohnhorst said.
Hohnhorst said he’d never seen such poverty. He said the most heartbreaking thing he saw was Iraqi children begging for food.
“It was hard for everyone,” said Hohnhorst, who with his wife, Karen, has two children – daughter Kourtney, 7, and son Nick, 3. “Every time you drove by, they’d point at their mouths.”
The 2-116th spent a month at FOB Normandy providing security as Iraq prepared for the elections. Then it was off to FOB Warrior in the northern city of Kirkuk.
“When we got to Kirkuk, that’s when we got busy,” said Hohnhorst, who supervises a maintenance team.
Fourteen-hour days were the norm as Hohnhorst and his fellow mechanics repaired armored vehicles.
“They’re heavier so they wear out faster,” he said. “The new, up-armored Humvees work very well. They save a lot of lives.”
He said they caught up by March and cut back to eight-hour days with one day off a week. Meanwhile, doctors treated Hohnhorst’s injured shoulder with cortisone injections and anti-inflammatory medication.
Living conditions at FOB Warrior were the nicest the 116th had seen in a long time, Hohnhorst said. Located on an Air Force base, soldiers live two to three in air-conditioned trailer-like quarters.
There’s a Pizza Hut and a Burger King on the base and two large gyms in which to work off all those pepperoni pizzas and Whoppers. There’s even a coffee shop – “Green Bean Coffee” – where the troops can pick up an espresso or latte. Saturday nights feature bingo and karaoke.
The main mission of the 116th is to help train Iraqi security forces. But soldiers have also involved themselves in humanitarian efforts and have taken a local orphanage under their wing. Extra food from care packages is collected in a big box and troops are busy building playground equipment, he said.
Hohnhorst was pretty much restricted to the base because his injured shoulder couldn’t stand the weight of body armor.
He said he feels confident his fellow soldiers will be home by Christmas. Their mission, he said, is a good one. He said 95 percent of the Iraqi people welcome the troops.
“The average Sunni is like the average Kurd or Shiite,” Hohnhorst said. “They just want to make a living and raise their families in peace.”