'Something Was Different.' Vet Copes with Invisible Injury

March 7, 2007 — -- Gina Hardy never had much of a chance to enjoy her husband's homecoming from Iraq. Warren Hardy, a decorated veteran of the Iraq War, had sustained an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury when his armored personnel carrier rolled over a land mine near Tikrit.

"You see pictures of soldiers coming home, reuniting with the families and … everything is great," said Gina. "We didn't have that kind of reunion. When I saw him for the first time, I was disappointed. He was just different, and I couldn't understand why."

Hardy was sent to Iraq with the first armored division in 2004, and was injured by the land mine a few months into his tour. An eyewitness to the explosion said Hardy's 14-ton vehicle went 10 feet into the air. Military doctors diagnosed Hardy with knee problems, but he wasn't screened for a head injury, even though he blacked out after the explosion.

"When I went into the combat hospital," said Hardy, "all they did was look at my knees and X-rayed them. And they put down on my emergency sheet, [I] have a lump on my head. They gave me two days' rest and then returned me to duty, and I went straight back onto patrol again.

"I just don't think the doctors at the time really understood … the new kind of injury that I had coming out of Iraq."

After the blast, Hardy immediately felt like a different soldier. "I was always banging my head against obstacles," he said. "And it's like my memory of what's around me wasn't keeping the information. So I would always end up with these cuts and scrapes on my head. I just didn't feel as smart. I knew there was something wrong, [but] it never dawned on me that I had a head injury that way. I just noticed that something was different."

When Hardy returned home, he was unable to concentrate and would have unprovoked outbursts. He could walk and talk, but with his memory failing him, he found it impossible to return to work as a software engineer.