Superior honors soldier who lost her arms in Iraq

“You're going to scream, you're going to cry, you're going to hate, and you're going to think why me and it's just going to kill you, but you have to do it. You can't bottle it up or it will destroy you.”

Those are the words 23-year-old Mary Dague, a U.S. Army veteran and local hero, who lost her arms dealing with a bomb in Iraq, uses to describe her experience to other amputees in the Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

“Her courage makes this something that I can deal with. I'm just so proud of her,” said Dague's father and Mineral County's Undersheriff Mike Johnson.

Dague was honored by her hometown of Superior Wednesday when residents filled the lawn in front of the courthouse for a ceremony in her honor.

“It was so much to take in all at once; it was kind of overwhelming, but in a good way,” Dague said.

“It was really beautiful and nice. It was amazing to me to have the whole town come together for just one person.”

During the ceremony, which included words from Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and representatives from Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Denny Rehberg. Superior Mayor Michael Wood named Wednesday, March 12, 2008, Mary Dague Day, and presented Dague with a Superior Bobcat jersey.

“She graduated a Bobcat, and she'll always be a Bobcat,” Wood said.

There was a presentation of the colors by Lloyd Ridings Post 6238 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Also, Superior Elementary School second-, third- and fourth-graders sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “I'm Proud to be an American” and the Superior Junior High and High School bands and choir performed “America the Beautiful.”

During the ceremony, Mineral County Sheriff Hugh Hopwood presented Dague with the Military Appreciation Challenge Coin for her bravery.

Johnson said his daughter attended grade school and high school in Superior where her favorite sport was volleyball.

“I feel fortunate in the fact that she is the person that she is. She is so positive and upbeat and she keeps moving forward. If you're going to show her support you have to move forward with her,” Johnson said.

Dague said she had no idea there was going to be a ceremony in her honor until the day before when her father told her she was going to have a “busy day.” She said she thought the ceremony was only going to be a few people from the Mineral County Sheriff's Office and the courthouse, but the plans apparently snowballed into something much bigger.

“I really didn't expect news crews or anything like that,” Dague said.

Dague's husband, Jared Tillery, was also honored for his commitment to Dague during the ceremony.

Dague said the two met in the Army and are legally married, although they have not had a wedding ceremony yet. She plans to take his last name after their wedding ceremony, which will take place next year when Tillery's brother returns from Iraq.

Before her life-changing injuries Nov. 4, 2007, Dague was a member of the Army's Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team.

Dague and her unit had responded to a call from the Iraqi Armed Forces about an improvised explosive device in an area that was under Iraqi control. Dague said United States forces were not allowed to patrol that area, but they could respond to bomb removal calls.

“[The Iraqi army has] their own EOD. So, from my point of view, we were set up. They could have called in their own EOD, but they called us,” Dague said.

She said her unit found a large IED, designed to take out a tank or other large vehicle, in between a school and a housing project.

“Legally we could blow it up there, but morally we couldn't because there was too high of a risk of hitting somebody,” Dague said.

Dague said she and her commander took most of the explosives out of the IED and placed them in a plastic bag in the back of their truck before attempting to transport the bomb to a safe place for detonation. She said that while they thought they had removed all of the explosives from the device, there were still some highly sensitive devices left in the IED.

Dague said she remembers laughing with her fellow soldiers because she picked up the partially dismantled and very heavy IED to take it to the truck instead of her much larger commanding officer. She said that when she set the IED down in the truck, the rocking motion that occurred caused the IED to detonate, also detonating the charges they had already removed.

“Everything went black. All I remember was thinking, ‘Not me. I know I didn't just get blown up.' I started to hear this woman screaming,” Dague said. “She just kept screaming and screaming and all I could hear was her screaming and the ringing in my ears. As the ringing stopped, I realized that I was the woman screaming.”

Dague said a medic and another soldier immediately rushed to her side and put tourniquets on her arms. She said her flak jacket protected her chest, the truck protected the lower half of her body and her sunglasses kept her eyes from being seriously damaged. However, Dague said her arms were injured beyond repair and a piece of the bomb had gone through her lip, nose and eyebrow, severely injuring her face.

Dague said the first thing she asked was whether or not the other members of her team were all right.

“They were family; they were like my two big brothers. As soon as I found out they were OK, I stopped screaming, I stopped crying, I just laid there,” Dague said.

Dague said she was taken to a helicopter and evacuated from the area.

“The whole flight I was thinking about my husband. I was thinking ‘I can't die, I can't leave him, I can't do this to him again,'” Dague said.

Tillery, who was in the same platoon as Dague, lost his younger brother to an IED 10 months prior to Dague's accident. He was released to accompany Dague to San Antonio where she received much of her medical treatment.

“I'm glad that it was me and not someone else on my team,” Dague said.

She said most of the other members of her EOD team had families that they would not have been able to take care of with her injuries and that she knew that she could bounce back from this.

Johnson remembers getting a late night phone call about his daughter.

“I didn't believe it at first. My first reaction was that it was some kind of horrible prank phone call,” Johnson said. He said it took four days to get to Texas where he spent most of his time at his daughter's bedside.

Dague said Tillery did not sleep or eat until her parents arrived. She said she was surprised to see her father, who she says does not usually show affection to other men, hug Tillery.

“Did dad just hug him? What do they have me on?” Dague asked her mother.

Dague said when she arrived at the hospital, doctors informed her it would take six to eight months to recover from her injuries. She said all of her doctors were shocked when she was healed enough to go home in a little more than two weeks.

Since returning home, Dague has counted on Tillery for help dressing, bathing, eating, and performing almost all of her daily tasks. He took leave to take care of his wife and will soon be leaving the Army.

“He keeps a positive attitude through the whole thing. He amazes me daily,” Dague said.

Dague said that while she would love an opportunity to return to the Army, she does not think it is likely. She plans to spend her time working with “Wounded Warriors,” a program that helps wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with their morale and rehabilitation. She said she really enjoys talking with other wounded veterans and helping them with their day-to-day struggles.

“A lot of these guys, their wives and their families, have left them to do it on their own and it's horrible,” Dague said. She added that she thinks sharing her story with others has helped them deal with their own trauma in a healthy way.

“If you lay down and take it and you let this kill you inside and kill your spirit, then you let that bomb maker win. You can't do that; you can't let them beat you,” Dague said.

Dague said she joined the Army when she was 19, partially because her fiancée at the time told her that she could not do it.

“I never stopped, and I never said I can't do this,” she said.

Dague said ever since basic training, she has been helping other soldiers with the emotional stress of being in the Army.

“All through basic I never cried. The other females in the barracks needed someone. They needed a rock, someone that they could just depend on. I felt like from the beginning that was me,” Dague said.

Dague is now working with researchers who are developing a bionic prosthetic arm. She said that while research may take three to five years, if it is successful, she will be one of the first in line to receive an arm that can feel temperature, tell the difference between a raisin and a grape and feel textures.

“It's amazing, it's like having your arm back,” Dague said.

Dague said she has taken the experience in stride, but it has not all been easy for her.

“Don't get me wrong, there have been times where I would cry and scream and be like, ‘Why me? What did I do wrong,'” Dague said.

She said thinking about her fellow soldiers and support from her family and her husband has helped her deal with the loss.

“That's why I don't give up; it's because I refuse to let a bomb maker beat a bomb tech. It's just not going to happen; I'm not going to let them kill my spirit and I'm not going to let them destroy who I am.”