LUKE A.P. CONNALLY
PATRIOT, Chapter 1919
Marine Corps, IRAQ
Luke A.P. Connally
was born in 1982 in Maryland, at which time his father, a career
Marine Corps officer, was serving at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. In
fact, Luke’s extended family had always been Marine Corps. His Elementary
School years were spent in Quantico, Virginia where His father retired in
1995. The family then moved to Round Rock, Texas where Luke attended Middle
School and then McNeil High School where he graduated with the class of
2002. He had enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 2001 and immediately
after graduation from High School he was sent to California where he went
through training at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot. He completed
training August 23, 2002, and returned home where he was assigned to a
mortar crew in Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines, United States
Marine Corps Reserve, located at Camp Mabry in Austin. Luke was promoted to
Lance Corporal on February 2, 2003. He had been in the Boy Scouts of
America from an early age and he has attained the rank of Eagle Scout.
Luke attended Texas A&M
University at Galveston for three semesters during which time he was
selected for Officer Candidate School and, during the Summer of 2003,
completed the six-week Platoon Leaders Course in Quantico (under that
program, graduates are commissioned upon completion of a bachelors degree).
But, Luke’s college career was interrupted when his battalion was activated
on June 1, 2004.
The 1st Bn, 23rd Marines
were sent to Twenty-nine Palms, California where they rapidly went through
their “work-up” for deployment. On August 9, 2004 the battalion deployed by
air to Kuwait and from there was immediately airlifted into Iraq to Al Asad
in Al Anbar Province by C-130 aircraft. By mid-August they were already at
work patrolling roads in the area, principally along the Euphrates River.
Luke’s mortar section had
been integrated into a Combined Anti-Armor Platoon (CAP), and he was in a
four-man team that made up the crew of a Humvee that mounted a Mark-19
Grenade Launcher. After about a month at Al Asad the unit moved further
north, establishing camp at the Hadytha Dam on the Euphrates. For the next
several months they continued patrolling the main supply routes and
conducted other types of operational or humanitarian missions.
On the morning of
December 1st, Luke’s Humvee had gone out on patrol of the main road to
secure the movement of supply convoys. About noon they observed a car that
aroused their suspicion, so they pulled it over out of the traffic. Luke
and the commander of his Humvee dismounted and started to approach the
vehicle to question the driver. The suicide bomber detonated his car bomb
when they were about thirty feet away. Luke says, “My vehicle commander was
killed. It maimed me pretty good, it should have killed me too, and; I
know I am fortunate to have survived. Our other two men were with the Humvee about fifteen feet further away and they were unhurt.
This all happened at a
place that was only about five minutes outside the perimeter wire of our
base at HadythaDam and the Medics there got the bleeding stopped and put me
on a Blackhawk medevac helicopter that flew me into Bilad, just north of
Baghdad where they had a large airstrip and a major trauma center. From
there I was flown to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for a
couple of days and on December 7, 2004, I arrived at Balboa Naval Medical
Center in San Diego.”
Luke Connally
had sustained massive wounds to the top of his left foot and left ankle,
large fragments from the car bomb were in the calf of his left leg, another
had entered by the left kneecap and fractured the tibia, another entered his
left side and lodged in the buttock. Smaller fragments were in the right leg
and his right hand had been cut nearly separating the thumb from the hand.
He required multiple
operations and weeks of rehabilitation treatments at Balboa.
Finally, two and one-half
months after being wounded, on February 15, 2005, Luke arrived back home in
Texas, as a hospital patient on convalescent leave. He was promoted to
Corporal on July 2, 2005.
Luke
was married July 29, 2005 and since Mary is a full-time student at Texas A&M
University, they are living in College Station. Luke takes physical
therapy, but still has time to also keep up with classes as a part time
student. At this writing,
Luke Connally
remains on active duty, assigned to the Medical Holding Detachment, awaiting
Medical Board action.
|
