Two days later, Chad's 17-year-old sister got a telephone call from one of his friends in Iraq, Field wrote. "He promised my daughter and told her to tell me that he and his brother LeRon would go find Chad in the hospital in Baghdad and report back to us."

The pair tracked Chad down. "He whispered to Chad and said: 'Chad it's LeRon, Lonnie's brother from boot camp, do you remember?' and Chad did a thumbs-up.

"He then said, 'Chad, I want you to know we love you, bud, and your mom and sisters love you and they're coming to get you, do you hear me?' and Chad raised his hand up in the air and waved it back and forth."

Soldiers' Angels volunteers helped the family track Chad's progress during a stopover at the Landstuhl Army medical center in Germany, until his parents could meet him at Walter Reed.

"I was afraid to look at him at first because I knew he had gotten shot in the head, but when I saw him I thanked God because Chad looked so good," Field wrote. "Yes his head was swollen, he had the halo incision from ear to ear and the bullet wound in two places, but he looked good and he was alive."
Chad was never in a coma, and after four weeks could "see, walk normal, talk, no paralysis anywhere on his body, feed himself and reason to a great capacity," his mother wrote. "Things are not perfect though. He needs therapy, has severe headaches and unknown things that can pop up that we don't know about yet."

Field and her family are being helped by Soldiers' Angels, but she doesn't know when they will get back to Texas after Chad is transferred to a traumatic brain injury unit at the Veterans Administration hospital in Richmond, Va.

"These brave soldiers believe in what they are doing over there, and willingly fight to save our lives and our country. My son needs me to protect him now and that is my duty," she wrote. "I cannot go home until he is taken care of fully and gets the best care our country can provide for him. This goes for all our wounded soldiers."

-- Kirk Moore: (732) 557-5728

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