Purple Heart recipient's future cloudy

Woodbridge, VA. - Even before the injury to his hand, Marine Evan Rinkenberg knew he had poor penmanship.

Now?

"I have to hold the pen differently," said the Woodbridge native, who was shot during a June firefight in southern Afghanistan. "It's not very neat."

It's been two and half months since the incident and his scarred right hand still hasn't healed correctly after three surgeries.

Last Friday, he was scheduled to have a fourth operation. Doctors will graft bone from his arm and a tendon from his index finger to help improve the range of motion in his middle, ring and pinkie fingers.

Right now he lacks the dexterity to even reposition his daughter's pacifier, using his left hand to do so before putting it back in her mouth with his right hand.

With a new apartment at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and the arrival of Ryan Savannah, who was born just 10 days before the injury, Rinkenberg could use some good news.

By 2012, he hopes to return to Quantico and teach at Officer Candidate School as a rifle range instructor. That dream could be dashed, though, if his hand doesn't heal properly.

"A lot is riding on this surgery on Friday, on how it [my hand] heals," said the 22-year-old Rinkenberg.

Heat of battle

It was June 6 and Rinkenberg thought a rock from the incoming spay of bullets had hit his hand.

Rinkenberg and his infantry company were walking down a rural road in the Helmand province after performing security checkpoints in the area. Suddenly, they were under attack from the Taliban.

For approximately a minute after he was hit, Rinkenberg continued to fire his machine gun, providing cover for his mates who had fled to safety off a dirt road in the rural countryside.

But when he looked down, his hand was covered in blood. It was then that he realized that he'd been shot.

When his fellow troops couldn't find the exit wound from the bullet, Rinkenberg was airlifted to nearby Camp Dwyer where he underwent two surgeries to fix the broken bones in his hand.

Once in the States, he was presented the prestigious Purple Heart award in front of his mother, grandmother, wife and child at a hospital bed in Bethesda, Md.

By June 16, he was back in his parents' living room, still in a daze from everything that had happened to him in the last 10 days.

"I was thinking 'What do I do now?'" said Rinkenberg. "I haven't really had time to think about everything."

Northern Virginia-based orthopedic hand surgeon Thomas R. Shepler, who retired as a colonel in the Air Force, said gunshot wounds are particularly difficult to work on, especially if they are coming from a high-velocity weapon like the AK-47s commonly used by the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Because of the speed of the bullet, they tend to cause a sort of "mini-explosion" that tends to carve up multiple bones and tendons, said Shepler.

The healing of those types of injuries can be tricky as well. Rinkenberg thought the third surgery would be his last, but that turned out not to be the case.

"The hand is an extraordinarily mobile object," Shepler said. "When it loses its mobility, it loses its utility."

The worst-case scenario for Rinkenberg is to obtain a medical release from the Marines. With that would come disability pay, said Rinkenberg, the only certainty in his now cloudy future.

Just doing his job

As any soldier or Marine would tell you, Rinkenberg was simply carrying out his duties. After all, he only hurt one hand; his friend Steve Kiernan lost his legs.

In Rinkenberg's second tour of duty in Iraq in May of 2008, Kiernan stepped on an IED while on patrol in Fallujah. Rinkenberg was supposed to be in Kiernan's spot during their patrol that day but the twosome had switched positions that morning.

Both of them received Purple Hearts for their actions in the heat of battle. But after seeing what happened to his friend, Rinkenberg wonders why there can't be two versions of the award, with him getting the lesser of the two.

"I was just doing my job and I happened to get hit," Rinkenberg said.

And things could have been worse. Rinkenberg said firefights like this were common, estimating he'd seen close to 40 in the five-plus months he was overseas.

Also, the bullet that hit his hand missed his head by inches, said Rinkenberg, and proceeded to demonstrate how close his hand was to his face while firing at the Taliban.

Two months later, Rinkenberg is now out of harm's way, and hopes it stays that way. Meanwhile, his family is relishing the time he's been able to spend at home.

"I remember thinking in church that morning [of the incident] that I was so thankful but still scared...," his mother, Cherie, said. "I couldn't wait to get him home, so I could get my arms around him."

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-530-3904.