Lexington Park soldier wounded in Iraq

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Submitted Photo Matthew Wallace, center, is surrounded by some of his family members, including, from left, his father Keith, sisters Jessica and Abigail, mother Mary and sister Micah during his visit home to St. Mary's County last spring from Iraq, where he was severely injured Sunday in an explosion. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story   To help Contributions to help Matthew Wallace’s family be with him during his recovery can be made through checks made out to PRAG, with ‘‘Wallace family” written in the memo space. The checks may be delivered to the Patuxent River Assembly of God church on Route 4 in California, or mailed to P.O. Box 828, California, MD 20619.

The family of 22-year-old Matthew Wallace is receiving help through donations to their church to pay in part for the cost of flying family members to Texas. He was in the care of a hospital in Germany at press time Tuesday, and the family expected a call as early as that evening that their son would be flown to the United States.

Keith Wallace said that he and the rest of the family were vacationing on the Outer Banks of North Carolina last weekend when a family friend watching their Lexington Park home received a call from the 4th Infantry Division in Fort Hood, Texas. The friend called the Wallaces, and Keith Wallace called a duty captain to find out what had happened to his son, an Army specialist working as a cavalry scout in Baghdad. ‘‘He was on patrol with his unit,” Keith Wallace, 54, said Tuesday. ‘‘He was the top gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle and they were struck by [the blast of an] IED.”

The improvised explosive device killed one soldier and left Matthew Wallace with second- and third-degree burns on 90 percent of his body, his father said. The wounded soldier was at a U.S. medical facility in Balad for 14 hours before he was flown to Landstuhl, Germany. ‘‘His condition is that he is slowly improving,” Keith Wallace said. ‘‘He is on a ventilator, and he is unconscious.”

Matthew Wallace attended Great Mills High School through his sophomore year, earned a GED in 2001 and worked at the Sheetz store on Route 235 in California. He enlisted with the Army in February 2004, and was deployed to Kuwait last November. His unit entered Iraq in December.

‘‘He wanted to do something that made a difference in the environment that we’re living in now,” Keith Wallace said.

On Monday night, about 100 people took part in a two-hour prayer service at the Patuxent River Assembly of God church in California. ‘‘A lot of friends of the family turned out, and we spent a good amount of time praying for him and his recovery,” Marilyn Dickerson, the church’s administrative assistant, said. ‘‘We were a gathering place for those concerned people to come and join together.”

The Army will pay for Matthew Wallace’s parents and oldest sister to fly to Texas to be at his beside upon his return from overseas, and the church is accepting donations to make sure his two other sisters can be there and to meet the inevitable additional expenses ahead.

Mary Wallace said that, also for her son, ‘‘I would ask that everyone pray for Matthew’s full recovery, with minimum scarring and that his lungs would be healthy.”

E-mail John Wharton at jwharton@somdnews.com.