April 16, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST A Soldier's Sacrifice By BOB HERBERT WASHINGTON It was about 3 a.m.

and pitch-black when the convoy of U.S. Army trucks, traveli ng south on Highway 1, turned right and began moving along a rutted dirt road ne ar Bayji, a small town in the Sunni Triangle about 25 miles north of Tikrit. Tyler Hall, a baby-faced 23-year-old sergeant from Wasilla, Alaska, was among th e six soldiers in the second truck, which took the brunt of the explosion when t he bomb that was buried in the road detonated. Sergeant Hall puts the matter quite succinctly: "I was blown up in an I.E.D. att ack on Aug. 22." I.E.D. stands for improvised explosive device. That the sergeant survived at all is incredible. He will never be the same. "All I remember is, like, sparks," he said during an interview this week at the Washington headquarters of Disabled American Veterans. "I saw these sparks, and then the whole truck kind of caved in." The first time he regained consciousness, he was lying on his back in the road. And he remembers, with the dark humor common to troops in combat, a brief John W ayne-like moment. "My buddy was trying to resuscitate me. He thought I was dead. I came to for a v ery brief time, and he was about to give me mouth-to-mouth. I said, `What do you think you're doing, trying to make out with me or something?' And he said, `Ser geant Hall, you're alive!' And everybody's like, `Hey, Sergeant Hall's alive!' A ll I remember after that is hearing the Blackhawk helicopter coming down, and I just lost consciousness from there." He wouldn't wake up again for another 45 days. Sergeant Hall's mother, Kim, who is 40, sat beside him during the interview. Fro m time to time she rubbed salve on the burns that have disfigured both of her so n's hands. The sergeant also has a burn across the bridge of his nose. The lower half of his face, which had to be reconstructed because both of his jaws were b roken and 10 of his teeth were blown out and part of his palate was destroyed, l ooks surprisingly normal. The surgeons at Walter Reed Army hospital seem to have done a good job. Sergeant Hall also sustained a brain injury, but you can't tell that from talkin g to him. He's not just lucid he's bright and funny. (He compared the negotiatin g process for his enlistment bonus to plea-bargaining.) But he tires easily. And he gets headaches. He also had three bones in his back broken, and his arm was broken, and he lost his left leg below the knee. This, of course, is what war does to people. It takes the human body and grinds it up like sausage meat. Sergeant Hall was the most severely wounded victim of the attack. When his mothe r was informed by phone that he had been hurt, the caller said his death was mos t likely "imminent."

"He was in the hospital in Germany," Ms. Hall said, "and it took me a few days ith the visa and everything to get over there. So every night I would call and eg the nurse in the middle of the night to please put the phone by his ear and would talk to him, even though he was unconscious. I don't know for sure that e heard me, but I like to believe that he did."

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Ms. Hall recalled a moment at Walter Reed when a decision had to be made about t he amputation of Sergeant Hall's leg. She spotted a young man her son knew who w as a triple amputee. "He had lost three limbs and his father was pushing him in the wheelchair, and they were laughing and talking. And I thought, `You know, if they can do that, well ' I kind of knew then that we would be all right." Sergeant Hall said he doesn't dwell on his injuries, and he hasn't had to wrestl e with bouts of rage or bitterness. "You try to have a good attitude," he said, "because there are other people around you with injuries that are more severe. E ven on your worst days, you kind of feel, you know, that if you don't keep a goo d attitude you're letting down the people around you." He said he joined the Army to earn money for college and to serve his country, a nd that he didn't regret enlisting. Ms. Hall leaned over and gently rubbed more lotion onto his hands. Sergeant Hall said he expected he'd be able to run pretty soon. He is looking fo rward to it. Keeping busy, he said, helps keep his spirits up. He said he felt h e was doing pretty well, considering all the "amazing stuff" that had happened t o him. E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com