Central Ohio Vet Recalls Service In Iraq

Al Anbar. Haditha. Fallujah. Places that most Americans have only heard of. But Matthew Wyman knows some of these areas of Iraq first-hand. Ten years ago, he stepped off a plane into the Iraqi desert. Wyman is an Iraq war veteran but he says it’s hard to convey to non-veterans the experiences and the sacrifices that he and his comrades made. “It would be hard for me to do and here’s why. I’ve got both legs, both arms, my whole face is intact,” Wyman says. “You know, I didn’t get shot. You know…um…” Wyman lapses into a reflective pause. Some things, he says are better left forgotten. But he collects his thoughts and continues. “In Iraq I was a corporal, I was a vehicle commander. Our company was tasked with forming four-vehicle platoons that drove around, kind of like highway patrol just looking for bombs and trying not to get blown up. For the most part that’s what we did,” Wyman says. Wyman acquired the name Linebacker in Iraq. Partly because of his agility and prowess at football; more so because his truck was last in the convoy. When he was not on patrol he manned a checkpoint overlooking a vital supply route near the Haditha Dam on the Euphrates River. The enemy knew the Marines were there and shelled the position heavily. “The fighting for your country thing sounds good, but when you’re actually getting shot at, you’re just thinking about the people who are around you; you’re not thinking about, oh, stars and stripes. I’m thinking about hooking and jabbing and maneuvering and where to put people so that they’re protected but also can get the job done,” Wyman says. From his vantage point, Wyman says he saw a lot of detonated IEDs. He says it was a blessing that he could not see the carnage up close. “[There were] plenty of explosions but never close enough where I could actually see the damage as it occurred. But I was within 50 yards. There were times when people’s trucks got blown up and you’d come and help get the Blackhawk loaded up with the folks; the Marines there who were wounded. You can see holes blown in Humvees and a leg blown off or something like that,” Wyman says. The day Cpl. Wyman flew home from Iraq was his 25th birthday. Once home he began struggling, he says, with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. “My sacrifice was more mental anguish and adjustment issue. Now the last few years I’m happy to say that I’m much better off,” Wyman says. Q: Would you say you’re a PTSD survivor? “I’d day that I’m doing pretty well. It never really leaves you but I think I might be better at managing it really. To be honest.” “Jesus Christ is what really brought me to the point that I can say that if I am ever healed, I think it’s because of that. It brought me a lot of peace to give my burden to a higher power,” Wyman says. That’s Matthew Wyman, now a Marine Corps sergeant. He’s a 2005 graduate of Ohio State University; a husband and a father. He works for Franklin County’s Department of Job and Family Services where he counsels and assists military veterans.