PALMDALE, Calif.–Reunions for buddies whose bonds were formed in combat are always important to veterans and active-duty troops alike, and only more so when one of the buddies survived catastrophic battle damage and devastating injury.
For the catastrophically wounded of the Post 9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s a fact there are wounds that will never heal, but things happen that can inflame even the worst of wounds.
Something like that happened last year when local wounded warrior Jerral Hancock returned on a flight home from a trip to visit an Army buddy on the East Coast.
Hancock cannot walk, and cannot even feed himself, or sip a drink. He needs help for every action he does, other than lying in bed or communicating on social media, or operating an electric wheelchair with the three fingers and thumb remaining on his one remaining arm.
From his wounds sustained in Iraq, he also copes with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury caused by the Improvised Explosive Device detonation that nearly blew him out of life on his 21st birthday driving an M-1A Abrams tank in Baghdad 16 years ago.
Hancock’s life is the aftermath coda of the Post 9/11 wars.
Veterans in his fraternal service organization, the Brotherhood of Tankers, say the only reason he is alive is because he is “tough as a two-dollar steak.” In addition to his Purple Heart, he is a member of the Order of Saint George, an honor bestowed to combat tank crew members.
The tank’s underbelly, its only soft spot, was pierced by an Iranian-designed munition called an Explosively Formed Penetrator. The projectile detonates like a land mine, triggering a projectile that penetrates the armor, explodes and burns so hot it shreds the tank interior turning the vehicle into a weapon against the crew.
Hancock’s tank was providing battle zone security for a Special Forces team hunting high-value targets, terrorists, in Baghdad, when it struck the mine.
Three crew members got clear, jumping out of the turret, but Hancock was trapped as the tank burned. It took rescuers a couple of hours using a welding torch to cut him out of crew compartment while the stricken Abrams smoldered and seared his flesh. He fluttered in an out of consciousness during the ordeal.
Rescuers pulled him from one of the few tanks destroyed during the Iraq war, but, in their haste, they dropped him. His head struck the paving stones of Baghdad.
By 2007, military medicine had advanced light years. Army doctors saved Hancock’s life several times, in transit, in Germany, and at Brooke Army Medical Center near San Antonio, Texas. He survived, but Hancock lives paralyzed from the chest down, his right arm severed at the shoulder, with burn scars on 30 percent of his torso, two fingers and a thumb remaining on the hand he uses to communicate on social media.
Most days, he manages life from a hospital bed in a house that was built from hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds raised by Lancaster High School students as part of their nonprofit Operation All The Way Home. His house was completed with more funds and design expertise by the Gary Sinise Foundation. Sinise has visited with former Army specialist Hancock numerous times.
When he is helped out of bed, Hancock also gets around, aided by an electric wheelchair and family caregivers. His stepfather, Dirrick Tscherny, a gentle giant built like an NFL linebacker carries Hancock, and lifts him into and out of his wheel chair.
For the catastrophically wounded of the Post 9/11 wars, the day they got blown up, burned, limbs lost, spinal cords and brains injured, is called their “Alive Day,” the day they survived. These survivor troops are known as Wounded Warriors.
About 15 years after his “Alive Day,” Hancock got dropped again. This time his head hit the floor of a jetliner when airline help staff dropped him trying to get him off the plane.
The United Airlines flight had landed at Los Angeles International Airport. Hancock, accompanied by his stepfather-caregiver and his former sergeant, Billy Amundsen, had been on a March 2022 trip to celebrate an Army comrade’s birthday.
The Sinise Foundation secured upgrades to first class for wounded warrior Hancock, his sergeant in Iraq, and his stepfather, both escorting him. Although Hancock is never comfortable – he still has shrapnel from the tank explosion moving in his body 16 years later, the seven-hour flight from New Jersey was as comfortable as possible.
It was the airline’s attempt to de-plane Hancock that went drastically awry. Instead of letting his stepfather-caregiver lift him from the seat and carry him off the plane, as Tscherny had already done on two previous flights, someone insisted airline help staff be used to get him off the plane.
Instead of the robust stepfather and VA-compensated caregiver, two female assistants were brought forward, with a small carriage mobility chair.
“They said it was liability,” Hancock recalled. “Only the people they got could not lift me, and they didn’t communicate with each other. The one lady, was, like, 90 pounds.”
In jostling Hancock into the small wheelchair, he was left unstrapped, and fell out of the chair onto the aisle floor of the aircraft.
“I hit my head, again, and it was like being dropped (in Iraq),” he said. “It’s like a PTSD thing. It brings you right back to Baghdad.”
United Airlines responded to a detailed email, sent Dec. 14, 2023, regarding the incident.
“We did speak with Mr. Hancock last year and apologized for his negative experience,” said Charlie Hobart, a spokesperson for United Airlines. “We understand the challenges customers who require the use of a wheelchair encounter during their travels and are implementing solutions to improve their experiences with us.
“Next year I’ll have more specifics to share on this matter,” Hobart concluded.
Hancock, like many Post 9/11 veterans, lives with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He also sustained Traumatic Brain Injury from the tank explosion, in addition to the burns, paralysis and severed limb and fingers.
“I had a spasm,” he recalled. “She did not take the time to strap me into the chair, and I spasmed out of it.”
“There was no way these two females could do the job that they sent them to do,” Hancock said. “I am not downgrading them because they’re women. They just didn’t have the strength.”
Dirrick Tscherny, the stepfather-caregiver who is built like an NFL linebacker spoke of his frustration at being shunted aside from carrying Hancock the way he has always done it since Hancock’s broken body was returned from Iraq.
“They would not let me do it the way I have always done it. I carry him everywhere,” Tscherny said.
Although the incident happened in Spring 2022, the reverberations of it still feel fresh. Hancock cycles through nightmares on a regular basis, sometimes a vivid PTSD re-experiencing being in the tank. Sometimes it takes the form of falling and being dropped before rescuers got him on a litter, to a Combat Surgical Hospital, and on a flight to higher levels of care in Germany, and at Brooke Army Medical Center.
Hancock is represented by legal counsel and has no idea if some kind of recompense will be negotiated, but he has misgivings aplenty about the end of what should have been a trip to celebrate an Iraq War buddy’s birthday, and to mark his own survival, and ability to travel with assistance.
The motto of Hancock’s armored unit, the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cav Division, is “Honor and Courage.”
Although he will never be able to wear the ceremonial spurs awarded by his Cavalry unit, he remembers the motto.
“It does not seem like a big deal at the time, the words,” Hancock said, recalling being an American soldier still in his teens. “The honor part, and the courage part, the words mean more later on.”
Editor’s Note: Aerotech contributing writer Dennis Anderson is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who works on veterans’ assistance and therapy. He deployed to Iraq the embedded war correspondent with California National Guard in 2003-2004. He serves on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.
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