Life after war

Home from the fighting and explosions, away from the heat and sand of the Middle East, soldiers become veterans and sometimes become students.

Cory Brown and Chris Bowser are two soldiers who left the battlefield and entered the classroom. At Ball State University alone, 206 students are receiving veteran's benefits, John Hannaford, veterans benefits and financial aid assistant coordinator at Ball State, said.

Although their stories have brought them to college, both men arrived by their own topsy-turvy way.

For starters, Brown said he entered his first semester at Muncie's branch of Ivy Tech Community College in Fall 2008 and plans to transfer to Ball State. Bowser said he's in his first semester back at Ball State.

Brown said he got kicked out of high school twice. Bowser said he got kicked out of college twice.

Brown said he served 27 months in Iraq and left with a herniated disc. Bowser said he served 19 days in Iraq and left with a Purple Heart.

BOWSER'S STORY

On Dec. 8, 2003, Bowser was just doing his job. As the gunner on his Humvee, he manned his MK-19, an automatic belt-fed grenade launcher. His Humvee and three others were escorting 30 troops on patrol in front of them along a four-lane highway separated by a median.

In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Bowser said he shined his flashlight at the ground to check for any roadside bombs or piles of trash that might hide explosives. It was night, and he said few streetlights illuminated the desert ghetto.

Bowser's Humvee was going against traffic, he said. So his Humvee drove behind another vehicle while leaving a lane for oncoming cars next to them. Not only was Bowser's Humvee last, he said, but he faced backward and didn't see what happened.

But he did see two guys in the middle of the median smoking a hookah. Bowser said he thought it was funny and began to laugh at the same time something exploded.

Smoke poured around him. All he saw was a white flash.

What the hell was that?

Explosions happened all the time in Iraq, Bowser said, so he tried to figure out where the explosion happened. Was it a grenade? A roadside bomb?

It turned out someone from an oncoming car threw a grenade into his Humvee, and Bowser's legs took a direct hit.

After the grenade hit him, he said, the fact he couldn't feel his legs also did.

It was at that moment Bowser realized his legs got hit, and he said he sat on top of the truck. He said he couldn't look at his legs.

If Bowser did look at his legs, he would have seen bone sticking out of his pants. The blast of shrapnel gave him a compound fracture.

But he didn't want to be a target on top of his truck, he said. He didn't have a pistol to protect himself and he couldn't maneuver the grenade launcher. So he shoved himself off the truck into the street, he said.

Other men and a medic came to his aid while he lay on the ground. He said his first sergeant was one of the guys who came to his side.

"Hey buddy," the first sergeant said. "Look at the bright side: Now you get to go home and see your family."

Bowser said he laughed.

"I just got here and was looking forward to staying awhile," he said.

Bowser even spoke to his mother a few days before the blast and said it seemed like he was on a vacation with explosions and guns, he said. Even all the sand didn't bother him. Bowser said he matured a lot during his stint in the military. After he graduated from high school, he went to Ball State only to get kicked out twice in one year.

From there, he moved in with a girlfriend and worked at an amusement park in Michigan during the summer and fall of 2001.

On Sept. 11, he remembered reading about the events. Bowser said later he saw several people huddled around televisions.

"I had a family member who could see the wreckage from her office in New York," he said. "Obviously, there are people who had much more personal loss, but just to even have someone in my family see something like that wasn't fun."

Afterward, he joined the military.

His training took him from boot camp to more training in South Korea. Bowser said he wasn't mature before Korea, but he matured during a 30-mile road march.

Bowser had been stationed there for about six months, and new arrivals looked up to him. But he kept complaining about the training.

On his run, he kept complaining about how his body couldn't cope with it anymore, he said. He said he thought the military could punish him, but he couldn't keep marching - until someone he hated came up to him and told him to set an example for the new troops.

"At that moment in my life I just learned mind over matter," he said. "I knew the concept, but finally started applying it."

From Korea, Bowser went back to the States and left for Iraq on Nov. 12 as Specialist Chris Bowser with the 1/502nd Infantry Division. There, Bowser got hit with a grenade and made it back to America on Dec. 12.

The one consolation for being hit with a grenade was that it saved his Humvee's driver and passenger. Bowser said the windshield was littered with shrapnel except for the spots where their heads were. His legs also blocked the blast from hitting or setting off a box of 75 grenades by his feet.

If the blast would have detonated the box of grenades in the turret, Bowser said he would be nothing "but a pink mist."

In an Iraqi hospital, Bowser said, Gen. David Petraeus presented him with the Purple Heart. He was flown up to Germany where doctors put screws in his legs and cut out four hunks from his skin. Underneath the skin, Bowser said, tissue called fascia started to bunch up like crumpled Saran wrap. It was cutting off circulation in his legs and it was either get his legs amputated or get scars.

Doctors told him at the time he wouldn't walk for two and half years, he said. But by the end of following January, Bowser was walking with crutches. The only downside he said is that he couldn't run, but he felt he got so much out of the situation.