Iraq veteran: ‘I remember everything’

Published 11:15 pm Tuesday, July 3, 2007

ARLINGTON – Dary Finck plans to hang out with friends, view a Fourth of July parade and watch fireworks today – just like most folks for this Independence Day celebration.

But while the floats pass by and the rockets burst, his thoughts will return to his buddies, he said, who are still on the front lines in Iraq.

Finck, an Army private first class, knows how lucky and blessed he is.

He should have died March 5 when an insurgent shot him with a machine gun in the left leg, severing the vital femoral artery. He probably should have bled to death during that firefight and the time it took to get him to a field hospital.

By the time doctors pumped 16 pints of blood into him, the pain was unbearable.

“I remember everything,” he reflected this week. “When my arm went numb, I knew I was running out of blood. I should have been dead. If it hadn’t been for God, I would be dead.”

For four months, Finck, 25, has undergone surgeries and vein grafts. His legs are decorated with surgery scars. Then came physical therapy. Perhaps the best therapy of all was his Walter Reed Army Medical Center marriage in April to Arlington resident Anna Long.

She’s the daughter of Atonement Free Lutheran Church Pastor Rick Long. Finck said he had been asking her father for permission to marry her for three years. He finally got permission and proposed over the telephone three weeks before he was shot.

The couple pushed up their wedding – which was originally planned for the fall – after he was wounded.

He is the son of missionaries serving in Africa and was raised in Senegal. He lived in the Arlington area for four years before enlisting in the Army.

While in the Northwest, Finck attended a course at Arlington Airport that teaches missionaries how to fly in remote locations. He also took air mechanical courses at Everett Community College.

He joined the Army and ended up in the 82nd Airborne Division. His squad was on a reconnaissance mission when it was ambushed in the eastern Iraq town of Baqubah.

Anna Finck, 22, was a little surprised when he joined the service.

“I thought it was kind of a guy thing,” she said. He said he just wanted to see if he could be a good soldier. Also, going into the military gave him access to the GI Bill’s benefits and credits for more schooling.

The couple had planned to become missionaries, and hope to continue on that course. They don’t know where they will go.

“We had a grand plan to go to Africa, but we don’t know now,” he said. “We’d really like to work with orphans.”

The rehabilitation continues to be painful. He walks with a cane sometimes, limps noticeably and struggles going up and down stairs.

It may be two years before he knows how much nerve damage he suffered.

Just the flight from Washington, D.C., to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was painful. A pilot with a commercial license, Dary Finck said he flew with a friend after arriving in Snohomish County a couple of weeks ago and things didn’t go well.

“We went flying on Thursday and my foot kept falling off the right rudder pedal,” he said early this week.

His wife has been a blessing in his recovery.

“It’s been hard at times,” Anna Finck said, “but God gave me a lot of strength.”

He is on leave from the Army now, and doesn’t know if it will be extended or if his wound will mean his discharge. Moreover, he doesn’t know how much use he will regain of his left leg.

“We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “It will be a while, but I guess everything takes time.”

Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.