Christopher Shelton expected to die.
The U.S. Army paratrooper ducked a split-second before the gunfire hit. The rounds shattered the windshield of the Nissan pickup he’d driven into a neighborhood north of Baghdad to help root out troops loyal to Saddam Hussein.
Bullets tore through the side of the truck, flying over his lap and brushing his legs. The solider sitting behind him yelled, "I’m hit, I’m hit!"
Then Shelton’s arm got tingly, as if he’d pinched a nerve.
"I thought I was dead," he said. "I was just trying to get the boys out."
At least 50 rounds hit the pickup. The ambush was the longest 10 seconds of his life, said Shelton, 22, who was first soldier from Snohomish County known to be wounded in Iraq.
Now fully recovered from the bullet wound in his shoulder, Shelton returned to Washington on March 23 for a two-week visit with his mother in Snohomish and his father in Spanaway.
He thinks about the attack every day, he said.
Everyone in his pickup, the lead vehicle in the convoy ambushed at close range, lived — including one soldier whose face was grazed by a bullet. But that violent experience was a small part of the work he and other soldiers from the 173rd Airborne did in Iraq, he stressed.
"My brigade has 1,500 soldiers, and we built up the third largest city in Iraq (Kirkuk). We gave it a court system, security, 19 police stations, computers and school supplies," he said. "Nobody heard about that. All they hard was about soldiers getting wounded and killed."
Shelton, who’s based in Italy, parachuted into Iraq on the pitch-black night of March 26, 2002. His commander told the 1,000 Army Rangers that they expected to land in an area with 40,000 Iraqi troops.
"We were like, ‘What?’" Shelton said. "We thought it was going to be like Normandy."
Wearing 185 pounds of gear, Shelton parachuted out of a C-17 aircraft and landed in a muddy drainage ditch near Bashur in northern Iraq.
"I was instantly soaking wet," he said.
But he wasn’t in danger; the thousands of troops they’d expected weren’t there. Most had abandoned their guns or fled to Baghdad, he said.
On his jump he carried a coin the size of a silver dollar, a gift from his Army Ranger team leader. It reads "Rangers Lead the Way."
Shelton earned it during a Ranger training exercise. An explosive charge set to blow apart some razor wire didn’t go off, so Shelton covered his face and threw himself on the wire. Twenty soldiers ran across his back to reach a bunker complex.
When pressed, Shelton admits it hurt. A lot. But they needed to get the job done.
Shelton has the same straightforward view of his mission in Iraq.
"Saddam Hussein needed to be taken out," he said. "Me and the guys, we thought that the U.S. over there was the right answer … I was ready to do my job."
In northern Iraq, U.S. troops were greeted by thankful Kurdish families who smiled, waved and offered tea, Shelton said.
"It made me think about what our grandfathers went through jumping into Market Garden (in Germany 1944) or Normandy and seeing the locals," said Shelton, whose father served in Korea and whose grandfather served in World War II.
They moved to Kirkuk, where Shelton and other soldiers helped train Iraqi police, patrolled oil fields and worked as scouts.
One night, three rocket-propelled grenades landed in the room where he and fellow soldiers slept. The blast seriously wounded one of Shelton’s friends, whose legs were amputated from the knee down.
"We were always expecting something," Shelton said. "They’d shoot and run. We couldn’t do anything about it. These guys wouldn’t stay and fight. They’d run like cowards."
Shelton and his unit also helped quell unrest and stop looting, which was common during the first few months after the invasion.
"I’m telling you we were cops over there after the fighting stopped," he said, adding that his unit helped successfully train Iraqi police — despite having no law enforcement training themselves.
Shelton said he missed his family, Italy, his mom’s cooking and cooler temperatures most.
"I was going through bottles of sunscreen like bottles of shampoo," he said.
The night Shelton got shot was one of the few times he wasn’t driving with one hand and holding a gun in the other. The pickup — the Army scouts usually used cars and trucks instead of Humvees — was too small.
Before they left, Shelton knelt in front of the pickup and prayed for "a shield of angels around my men, for protection."
He felt that protection when he drove around a corner "and my whole world just lit up," he said. "If I hadn’t put my head down on the seat, it would have been blown off."
With three flat tires and no brakes, Shelton shifted the pickup into gear and drove about 500 meters down the road, then slammed into a pole.
Shelton, who didn’t immediately realize he’d been shot, turned down medical help for his bleeding shoulder and went to continue fighting.
"I was pretty irate," he said. "I wanted to go kick some butt."
That night, the soldiers accomplished their mission, killing three high-ranking Baath party members and capturing a fourth. Three American soldiers died in the fighting.
Shelton says it’s tough for him to talk to family and friends about his experience in Iraq.
"When I look at people who’ve never experienced that kind of stuff, I think they don’t understand. There’s nothing I could do to explain how it really is," he said.
The TV cameras that met him at the airport made him uncomfortable, he said. It was also difficult for him to enjoy a special church service for him and the fund set up to help replenish a bank account allegedly emptied of $13,000 by another soldier
Every soldier deserves recognition, he said, and wishes the smaller victories in Iraq — such as the Iraqi interpreter who helped them arrest more than 100 people — were celebrated.
"It’s upsetting when I come here and people ask me, ‘What did you do over there?’" he said. "People in the United States have no clue what’s going on."
During his visit here, Shelton, son of Susan Locke and stepfather Terry Locke of Snohomish and father Randy Shelton of Spanaway, went snowboarding, enjoyed eating his mom’s cooking and relaxed with friends.
Shelton leaves today for a trip to Miami with Army friends and then will travel back to his base in Italy. He’ll spend a year there, then expects to spend a year serving in Afghanistan.
Yet with the future of Iraq still in doubt, Shelton said he’d serve there again.
"I think they should send me back," he said. "It will only get worse before it gets better."
Reporter Katherine Schiffner: 425-339-3436 or
MICHAEL V. MARTINA / The Herald
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