Despite injuries, he'd rather be driving in Afghanistan

<p>Adam Brashears survived a violent bomb blast that destroyed his eight-ton, steel-hulled truck in Afghanistan. Two months later, he was back on the road, hunting for the hidden explosives that have become the Taliban's deadliest weapon, killing more than 1,000 coalition troops and civilians in the past five months.</p><p>He found one on a dirt road in remote Paktia Province, and it went off right beneath his driver's seat, lifting the tractor-like Husky off the ground and blowing off the wheels.</p><p>Both times, the MRAPs — mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles — did their job, deflecting the blast's force and shielding Brashears, a 25-year-old California National Guard corporal from Rohnert Park, from deadly shrapnel.</p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nugdmJWcLZw&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nugdmJWcLZw&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><p>But the jarring impact inside the Husky fractured his spine, ending Brashears' second tour in Afghanistan with the Petaluma-based 235th Engineer Company in April. A video on YouTube indirectly shows the explosion, recorded by soldiers in the truck behind Brashears.' It's titled “Husky in front hits an IED.”</p><p>Home since September, Bra-shears, a 2001 graduate of Rancho Cotate High School, walks with a slight limp from a knee injury in the first blast. He depends on medication to get through the days of relentless pain, working out at a Rohnert Park gym and hoping his injuries heal.</p><p>“It's not a big deal,” said Brashears, a sturdy 6-foot, 240-pounder who says he was about an inch taller before the second bomb went off. “I probably had the worst luck ever.”</p><p>He regrets leaving the 150 men from the 235th behind in Afghanistan.</p><p>“I don't feel right not being with them,” Brashears said. “You always feel bad leaving.”</p><p>The company, including about 40 soldiers from the North Bay, is due home by Thanksgiving after a year in an increasingly violent war.</p><p>Today, Brashears plans to ride in a Humvee in Petaluma's Veterans Day Parade, driven by his National Guard buddy, Spc. Ryan Bush of Santa Rosa.</p><p>The holiday, Brashears said, is for veterans who sacrificed more than he did, such as Jon Belli, his former truck gunner, who was shot in the chest and critically wounded during a firefight in July.</p><p>Belli, who kept firing after he was wounded, has been recommended for a Silver Star for gallantry in action.</p><p>“I like to go out and show my support for people who actually gave something for their country,” said Brashears, who earned two of the 60 Purple Hearts awarded to soldiers with the 235th.</p><p>The company, which arrived in Afghanistan in January, has cleared more than 6,200 miles of road, operating from a remote base ringed by mountains near the Pakistan border.</p><p>Their mission: Finding and destroying roadside bombs, officially known as improvised explosive devices, buried in the shifting sands of Afghanistan.</p><p>IEDs now account for 70 percent to 80 percent of U.S. and coalition casualties in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said last month. More than 1,000 IEDs exploded or were found in Afghanistan in August, more than double any monthly total until this summer.</p><p>Too often, the bombs find the soldiers first, triggered by remote control or by pressure plates, as their trucks roll through empty, arid land and small towns.</p><p>The MRAPs are likely to blow apart, but their V-shaped hulls are designed to divert the blasts and protect the soldiers inside. In flat-bottomed Humvees widely used in Iraq, an IED would blow straight through the floor, often with fatal consequences, Brashears said.</p><p>He downplayed the nerve it took to go back out at the wheel of a one-man Husky in April, just two months after his truck, a four-man RG-31, was blasted on his first mission as a truck commander.</p><p>It was his second tour in Afghanistan, and he'd seen plenty of violence there in 2006 and 2007. Battling San Diego County's Cedar fire as a state firefighter in 2003, he heard superheated trees explode like rockets.</p><p>“You can get blown up at any moment when you're outside the wire,” Brashears said. “It could happen any time. There's no point in worrying about it. </p><p>“Just keep your eyes peeled; know what to look for. If you get blown up, you get blown up.”</p><p>Soldiers call route-clearing the military's most dangerous job. Capt. Cory Marks of Ukiah, commander of the 235th, called it “the tip of the spear,” a phrase widely honored in the military.</p><p>In an e-mail from Afghanistan, Marks said: “If you were in a car accident that totaled your car, you got sent to the hospital with a headache and back pain. The next day you were told you had to drive back to work along the same route and there was a 90 percent chance that you would get hit again, would you go to work?</p><p>“This is what we ask our Sappers to do every day,” Marks said. “No complaining, get in the truck and clear the route — and the car crash is going to happen.”</p><p>Life is on hold now for Bra-shears, whose workouts include stretching his back and strengthening his knee, which lost cartilage in the first blast.</p><p>He owes the National Guard two more years and says he would go back to Afghanistan a third time if doctors would clear him for active duty. His anticipated career in public safety, possibly with the San Francisco Police Department, also hinges on a recovery.</p><p>Sue Brashears hates to see her son in pain but realizes it could have been much worse.</p><p>“I feel extremely blessed and lucky that he's still with me,” she said.</p><p>Sue Brashears will be marching with the Mothers of Military Servicemembers, a local support group, in today's Petaluma parade.</p><p>Adam Brashears wishes he never had to see another doctor and won't settle, yet, for a career behind a desk.</p><p>“I'm not ready to accept that I was hurt,” he said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.</p>