By Dan Nienaber
MANKATO — Here’s a date that rolls off U.S. Army Sgt. Anton Brown’s tongue in a military second: July 20, 2005.
That’s the day he walked into the Armed Forces Recruiting Center in the River Hills Mall knowing he wanted to become a soldier. He’d spent the day sitting around his apartment watching television, as he did regularly back then, and remembers seeing one of those Army commercials. A few weeks later he was on his way to boot camp.
Here’s a date that’s buried a little deeper in Brown’s mind, forcing him to stop and think before it can be recited: March 28, 2007.
“I don’t even remember what happened,” he said, recalling the day he was on patrol about four miles north of Baghdad, Iraq. “I woke up on the helicopter.”
Brown was doing gunner duty on a Humvee while his combat team searched for an abandoned house that could serve as a patrol base. The military build-up that’s commonly referred to as “the surge” in Iraq was underway and the unit was working in an area where al-Qaida had been moving freely for more than a year.
An improvised explosive device made that clear. Brown was told he was “dismounting” from the Humvee when it exploded, burning his face and causing a severe head injury.
He earned a Purple Heart that day. The most painful part, Brown said, was the four days of rack time in the hospital followed by two weeks of just hanging around the medical facility at his forward operating base.
He’d lost his taste for spending an entire day doing little more than watching television.
“I was going crazy sitting in my room,” Brown said. “I wanted to be back in the field with everyone else.”
Here’s another date Brown remembers well: Oct. 2, 2010.
He’s engaged to marry Krista Clavel, a woman he’s known since high school, on that day. They rekindled a relationship when he came home on leave after his tour in Iraq.
They remained friends before then, though, and Brown’s father called Clavel to tell her about his injuries.
“I knew he wasn’t going to die, but I didn’t have any details,” she said. “When I finally got to talk to him, he was already going nuts not being able to go out with his troops.”
Brown recently re-enlisted and currently plans to retire from the military, which means at least 16 more years of service. His injury in Iraq didn’t cause any facial scars or lasting problems that would keep him from combat service.
Clavel will earn a nursing degree from Minnesota State University in December. She said she is ready to live the life of a military wife after they’re married.
As a nurse, she’s pretty sure she’ll have no problem finding jobs on or around the military bases where Brown, who she calls Tony, is stationed in the future.
They won’t have to worry about moving for a while, however, because he landed duty as a recruiter in Mankato when he agreed to re-enlist. So they’ll be here for at least a couple more years.
“This is the exact office he joined out of,” said Sgt. 1st Class James Lacey, Brown’s station commander.
Brown said he’s enjoying recruiting duty, but he’s also looking forward to getting back with a combat unit. His military training is in field artillery, working as a forward scout who calls in coordinates for cannon, rocket and missile attacks.
Clavel suspects he chose recruiting duty, then put in the extra effort to get stationed in Mankato instead of the Marshall office where he was originally assigned, to be closer to her. She said his plan worked out, resulting in their March engagement, because military life has changed him for the better. He’s more responsible and works harder than he did before he joined, she said.
“I think a lot of it is he just wanted to come back here and see where things went,” Clavel said. “He loves what he does and I’m fine with all of it except the deployments.
“It’s nice having him around, but I can tell he can’t wait to get back and do the drills every morning.”
Brown is up front with potential recruits about the price he’s paid as a combat soldier. His Purple Heart is part of a scrap book he shows to the people he talks to at the recruiting office. When they ask what happened, he tells them.
“That might be one thing that hurts me in this job,” he said. “I tell them, ‘When you go over there in combat arms, it’s a chance you take.’”
His boss doesn’t see the medal, or the way Brown earned it, as a recruiting drawback at all.
“He’s been there, done it and he can explain to people things do happen while your there,” Lacey said. “You have to be very patriotic to be injured in war, then come back to your hometown and talk to people about it.
“People need to know we have a guy like this in the community.”
