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James B., Jr. “Jim” Harris, of Haddon Township, Korean War Veteran, Retired Sun Oil Employee

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A Soldier's Wish: Part III | The American Legion |

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Alex Marrocco hung up on the first person who called his phone at about noon, Easter Sunday. He thought it was a telemarketer. Thirty seconds later, it rang again. On the other end was a U.S. Army major from Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

“I’m sorry to tell you, Brendan has been involved in an explosion,” the major said when Alex demanded to know what happened to his son. “He lost his legs. He lost both his arms.”

The elder Marrocco’s knees buckled, and he dropped to the kitchen floor of his Staten Island, N.Y., home.

When Mike Marrocco – Brendan’s brother – heard his father scream, he ran downstairs and grabbed the phone. The Army representative repeated the news. “I kept it together until

I realized what had happened,” Mike says.

Brendan’s mother was attending Easter Mass when the Army first tried to reach her. She listened to the voicemail as she sat in her car after church. “It said I needed to call the Department of Defense,” Michelle Marrocco remembers. “I started to shake. It couldn’t be good.

“When they told me about his wounds, I thought, ‘How much worse can it be?’” says Michelle, a nurse who deals with severely debilitated patients at the home health-care agency she manages. “Four amputations. His carotid artery severed. The vision in his left eye... All I kept seeing was a head and a torso.”

In the hours after an armor-piercing roadside bomb ripped through the vehicle he was driving, Brendan Marrocco had been flown from the battlefield to hospitals near Tikrit, then Balad, and finally on to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Michelle called the intensive care unit at Landsthul. The nurse held the phone up to Brendan’s ear. He listened but could not speak. The nurse told Michelle that Brendan was mouthing the words, mamma, mamma. She broke down in tears. “We’re coming,” she reassured Brendan. “We’re coming.”

Alex and Michelle immediately flew to Germany. “I had to go see him,” Michelle says.
Brendan was attached to six IVs and other medical equipment, and his face was burned. Still, seeing him made Michelle feel better. The bomb had severely injured Brendan and, ironically, helped save his life. The explosion blew off three of his limbs and mangled his right leg beyond repair, yet was so hot that it also cauterized most of his wounds.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Next: A Soldier’s Story

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