GILROY
– Lance Cpl. Alec Ganzel was on what was supposed to be his
final mission in Afghanistan. The mission was cut short when he was
thrown from the bed of a 7 1/2-ton truck after the dirt road
suddenly gave way.
GILROY – Lance Cpl. Alec Ganzel was on what was supposed to be his final mission in Afghanistan. The mission was cut short when he was thrown from the bed of a 7 1/2-ton truck after the dirt road suddenly gave way.
“The truck rolled off the mountain to the right, and we got spit out,” said the Gilroy resident Tuesday from his Maryland hospital bed.
Ganzel, 19, suffered a compound fracture to his lower left leg in the June 6 accident. Four days later, he arrived at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where he underwent two surgeries. First, doctors at the Naval hospital inserted two pins into his shin and two pins into his ankle. Doctors removed the pins during a second, seven-hour surgery Sunday and placed a metal rod in one of his lower leg bones. On Tuesday, he received his fourth blood transfusion.
“His spirits are good, and his color is much better today,” said his mother, Debbie, who flew with his younger sister, Jenna, to Maryland Sunday to be with him.
“I’m just so glad I’m here if he needs anything – I went out to get him McDonald’s – to be his mom again,” she said.
On the day of the accident, he was riding second in a convoy behind a Humvee heading toward the Pakistani border. He was seated in the bed of the truck with 18 other Marines.
“We were driving along at kind of a slant. There was kind of a pause when the truck started tipping over, and I looked at everyone else,” he said Tuesday.
Then, he saw the whole sky turn yellow from the dust.
The accident happened quickly, he said. After he was thrown from the truck, it rolled over his leg and down the mountain.
The part of the rifle he was holding broke off and the magazine crumpled from the force of the rollover.
“When we stopped, there was someone on top of me and they couldn’t get off of me because they were unconscious or something,” he said.
Ganzel remained conscious the whole time. He remembers medics arriving in less than two minutes. They gave him morphine, applied a tourniquet and transported him to the helicopter landing zone.
He was flown to a hospital at the Kandahar airport and then taken to Ramstein, Germany, for four days.
When he arrived in Maryland, he learned the full extent of his injuries. Besides breaking two bones, his tibia had punctured the skin and he had a few scrapes on his arm. Doctors thought they would have to graft skin onto his lower leg but decided not to, his mother said. Instead, the skin is held together by several stitches. Doctors also had to reattach a tendon in his leg to his toes.
“I can bend them down, but I can’t bend them upward,” he said of his toes.
Eight other Marines were hurt, with injuries ranging from a broken hip, dislocated hip, nerve damage to the left arm and a broken arm.
“I think we got really lucky,” he said.
His family is grateful he is doing so well.
“We’re all just thankful that he’s doing well and look forward to a full recovery,” said his father, John Ganzel, Tuesday.
However, the first few minutes after the family learned of his injuries were terrifying. Ganzel called his mother on a cell phone from the helicopter shortly after arriving in Germany to let her know he was injured but OK. It was only an hour before the military called to tell her the news. She was glad to have heard from her son first.
“They had him on morphine, but he was very coherent,” she said. “Your adrenaline just shoots through you. It was very early in the morning when he called. Your mind is thinking a mile a minute.”
Ganzel’s leg is still elevated in a sling, and it’ll be a few more days until doctors let him stand on it, she said. But he should be able to walk on it.
“They’ve taken really good care of him,” his mother said.
While at the Naval hospital, Ganzel was visited by several U.S. representatives, the commandant and assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and Gilroyan Cory McCarthy. McCarthy is staying at Walter Reed Hospital after recovering from a hand injury he suffered in Iraq nearly a year ago when his Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb.
On Tuesday, both Ganzel’s spirits, as well as his appetite, were improved.
“Today was the first day he really had an appetite and ate half a breakfast,” his mom said.
The hardest part for Ganzel is not knowing how the rest of his unit, the 1st Battalion, 6th marines, 22nd Military Expeditionary Unit, is doing.
“I don’t get any word on where they are. And I’d like to know where they are or how they’re doing,” the 2002 Gilroy High grad said. “It’s going to be a while until I see them.”
His unit, which is trained in amphibious landing, sailed for Afghanistan in February. By now, he thinks they have crossed into Kuwait.
While in Afghanistan, Ganzel helped search villages, man vehicle checkpoints, set voter registration and provide medical services in barren and mountainous rural areas of the country. His unit would often leave on three-day missions, return to a base for food and head out again.
“It’s hard to transition over from a fast-paced everyday life to just sitting here,” Ganzel said.
His dad plans to visit him over Father’s Day weekend.
“It’ll be great,” John Ganzel said. “He is loved very much by his father and very much admired.”
