Wounded female soldier finally comes home

There’s really no place like home for U.S. Army SGT. Monique Guerrero Sablan.

The 23-year-old finally returned to Saipan just this week after a year of recuperation from an injury she sustained in Iraq in 2004.

Sablan agreed to an interview Wednesday morning accompanied by her mother, Margarita, and Military Veterans Affairs Office executive officer Ruth Coleman.

Her homecoming, Sablan admitted, is very emotional because it was the first time she saw her father again after a long time. She said that when she was wounded, her mom spent two months with her in the hospital in Kentucky.

Family, friends, and even local veterans office welcomed Sablan at the airport last Dec. 7. Coleman said the moment Sablan stepped out of the airport with a visible limp her family rushed to her and hugged her ever so tightly.

Sablan said now it’s okay for her to talk about the day of the incident in Iraq. She said it was a hot sunny day when they were in a convoy going from northern Iraq to the border of Kuwait, when suddenly a landmine went off that catapulted her truck off course.

She said there were four of them inside the vehicle and three of them got hurt when the bomb exploded.

“Everything happened so fast,” she said, adding that the incident was so quick that there was no time to think.

There was blood all over, said Sablan, who sustained an injury to her left leg, ironically caused by the weapon she was holding. Her thigh and knee bones were crushed.

“It was really a mess,” she said. Sablan also sustained injuries from several shrapnel that hit her body.

Fortunately, medics immediately came to Sablan and her colleagues’ rescue, because the site of the incident was near a U.S. base. She said all she could remember was that she was hauled away on a stretcher to the base, where she was treated for first aid.

Soon, she and other casualties were airlifted for treatment at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Three days later, Sablan’s mother recalled that she received a call from Germany, informing her that her daughter had suffered an injury from a bomb explosion in Iraq.

Her mother said she was crying on the phone and all she could ask was if her daughter was alive. “She’s very much alive,” came the nurse’s reply.

Sablan’s mother said she could not speak on the phone to her daughter and that she dreaded the moment she had to pass the phone to her husband, Manuel.

The wounded NMI soldier spent one and a half days at the German hospital. She was then transferred to a Washington, D.C. hospital where she underwent reconstructive surgery and physical therapy to help her walk again. She spent a month and a half in the nation’s capital for further convalescence.

She was then transferred back to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and continued her therapy for another month and a half.

STILL IN ACTIVE DUTY

The injury from the bomb explosion, however, did not temper Sablan’s commitment to serving her country. She opted to enlist again for another three years of active duty despite the incident.

She is back on Saipan only for the holidays. She will be leaving on Jan. 5 to head back to Kentucky and fulfill her duty as a flight system repair specialist. Sablan is the only Saipan native in her department, which fixes helicopters for daily operation.

Sablan said she chose to continue her service because it has been her passion to serve her countrymen.

Her mom recalled when she first enlisted in the Army. “I was in shock why she did it,” Margarita said. She enlisted in February 2001 and began her training at Fort Jackson in Georgia. It was in 2003 when she was deployed to Iraq.

“Mom this is it. I would finally have the chance to defend our country,” Sablan said then about her deployment to the war zone.

Sablan said being in the Army has, in all essence, has given her independence from having to earn her own money and getting the college education she wanted after graduating from high school at Mount Carmel.

Sablan said she would like to clarify the common misconception that life in the Army is always dangerous. She said her work is like an ordinary 9am-5pm job. “It’s an easy job.”

LIVING THE PAST BEHIND

Sablan said if someone could turn back the hands of time, she would want her life to be the same as it was before the incident, but in reality things have changed. She said she has been trying to get her life back. “It feels like I can’t even comb my hair like it was before,” she said.

Sablan said even after the incident and her visible limp, she still doesn’t consider herself a handicap because she could still join friends in parties and getaways.

Coleman said she is truly proud of Sablan. “We’re very proud of her. Monique is very unique.” Coleman said there are at least 80 local female soldiers in training and in active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces.