May 28, 2006

Healing The Wounds Of War

New Population Of Wounded Veterans Emerges

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By Daniel Schorn

Play CBS Video Video The Wounds Of War
A new generation of veterans is emerging, many of whom suffered traumatic injuries on the battlefield. Mike Wallace talks to some of the resilient survivors.

Video Wallace's Reporter's Notebook
Mike Wallace talks about wounded soldiers who've come back from Iraq and the hardships they encounter as they rehabilitate their bodies and their lives. (Recorded in Feb. 2006.)

- Jessica Clements had been a model in Akron, Ohio, when she left high school to join the Army. (CBS)
- Melissa Stockwell is studying to be a prosthetist. (CBS)
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Interactive Iraq: 4 Years Later
The conflict wears on as the nation struggles to rebuild.
Interactive Battle For Iraq
The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
Interactive American Heroes
Profiles of U.S. soldiers who've died in Iraq, a look at the war's toll and pictures of mourning.

(CBS)
No one thought Jessica Clements could ever survive after a roadside bomb in Iraq exploded under her truck, shooting shrapnel into three lobes of her brain.

Doctors put her chance of living at just 2 percent. But Jessica beat those odds with her optimism and determination. Now she wants to inspire others to recover from their wounds.

Jessica had been a model in Akron, Ohio, when she left high school to join the Army.

"It gave me such a sense of pride, putting on the uniform. And it was just the best feeling I've ever had in my entire life, putting the uniform on and knowing that I'm part of something. And I am part of something that's gonna make a difference in the world," she explains.

In boot camp, Jessica admits she got herself in a little trouble. "I had a hard time taking the drill sergeants serious sometimes. They were trying to be so mean and stern, and I would break a smile and I would laugh. So I was always doing pushups," she remembers.

As a staff sergeant in Iraq, she spent her days driving fuel trucks.

Jessica says there were so many roadside bombs she had to wear ear plugs,

"Sometimes every day you would hear them for a period, maybe three, four days in a row you would hear them," she recalls. "And then maybe there would be one day where things would be quiet. So you know the next day something was coming."

Asked if she was scared, she says, "Definitely."

"I remember days driving down the road thinking to myself, 'Is today the day I’m gonna get hit?” Or, 'Am I gonna get shot today?' And just praying, 'OK, keep us safe. Let us get where we need to go without any casualties,'" she explains.

Her luck ran out on May 5, 2004, when a bomb exploded under her truck, shooting shards of shrapnel — large and small — into her brain.

"I still have shrapnel that's remaining in my brain," she says. "This right portion here, you can see a little, the line … from where my skull was removed. The neurosurgeons physically cut the right portion of my skull and removed it."

The doctors removed a part of her skull because the swelling would have caused so much pressure that it could have killed her.

The doctor put that half of Jessica's skull in her abdomen for safekeeping and to keep the bone alive.

"I could show you," she says, laughing. "He did. Placed it in there and sewed it shut so that skull piece would remain with me until I got back to the states and I was able to undergo surgery to have that skull piece replaced."

It stayed in her abdomen for four months before doctors put it back on her head. For much of that time, Jessica remained in a coma.

Continued