Vicky Field is requesting prayers for her son Chad Snowden, a serviceman injured in Iraq.
A 27 December 2004 article posted on theiraqwarnews.net web site detailed the efforts of Soldiers' Angels, an Internet-based volunteer group, to assist Vicky Fields in tracking down her son, Jeremy Chad Snowden, after the was shot in the head while serving in Iraq at the end of 2004:[Vicky] Field's son Jeremy Chad Snowden is recovering from traumatic brain injury after he was shot in the forehead at Ramadi in October. In a written account, Field, a single parent from Granbury, Texas, told how her son's Army friends and Soldiers' Angels volunteers helped her find and stay with him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Field told how she first heard her son was wounded, when she checked voicemails on her cell phone at church. 'I ran into the church to get help. Some of the elders called the Army back. . . . He had been updated to critically injured but stable at the time. All we heard was that Chad was in a Humvee and was shot in the head and the bullet went straight through the other side, and they had taken him to Baghdad for a five-hour brain surgery.' Two days later, Chad's 17-year-old sister got a telephone call from one of his friends in Iraq, Field wrote. 'He promised my daughter and told her to tell me that he and his brother LeRon would go find Chad in the hospital in Baghdad and report back to us.' The pair tracked Chad down. 'He whispered to Chad and said: 'Chad it's LeRon, Lonnie's brother from boot camp, do you remember?' and Chad did a thumbs-up. 'He then said, 'Chad, I want you to know we love you, bud, and your mom and sisters love you and they're coming to get you, do you hear me?' and Chad raised his hand up in the air and waved it back and forth.' Soldiers' Angels volunteers helped the family track Chad's progress during a stopover at the Landstuhl Army medical center in Germany, until his parents could meet him at Walter Reed.In May 2005, the Hood County News reported that Chad's injury was fortunately less severe than initially thought, and that he was making a rapid recovey:Six months after Army Specialist Chad Snowden received a near fatal head wound fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, he is making plans to enter the University of Texas in Austin. Six months ago, Nov. 13, 2004, a sniper's bullet hit Snowden just above and behind the left eyebrow. It exited the right side. Because only a small part of the brain was damaged or destroyed, Snowden did not lose his mobility, nor senses, only some of his mental capabilities. Recovery continued to be rapid. In weeks he was ready to be transferred to a military rehabilitation trauma brain injury hospital. His transfer from Walter Reed Hospital to the needed rehabilitation center was being delayed, possibly for months, by the overload of paperwork required for transfers. Snowden's mother, Vicki Field, was in Washington with her son. The prospect on his needed treatment being delayed ignited her into action. Because of Field's driving concern for her son, she has been employed by the Department of Defense in a new operation to see that no severely wounded and disabled veterans or survivors are not [sic] lost in the paper shuffle. She is the Texas Advocate for Support of Severely Injured Military Residing in Texas. What she does is seek out wounded and injured veterans and families needing available assistance from government agencies and communities.Chad Snowden's wife provided this update in July 2009:My name is Shellyn Renken Snowden. Jeremy 'Chad' Snowden and I were married on 2/13/09 and I wanted to post an update to his entry. He was shot in the head on 11/13/04 in Fallujah and, after 5 hours of brain surgery in a field hospital in Baghdad, he was sent to Germany and finally to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where we met. I am very happy to tell you he has met and exceeded (by a LONG shot) the expectations his doctors had originally placed on his recovery. He played at the Colonial Pro Am with PGA pro Rory Sabbatini and George Lopez in '07 and amazed the other players by his ability, despite not having had the chance to practice. We were given a home in TX by an organization which helps severely wounded members in November of '08 and are building a wonderful life together. Chad truly is a miracle, thanks in part to his stubbornness and in LARGE part to the many prayers which have been made for him around the world.
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