When Veterans Day 2003 rolled around, Darrin A. Price was laid up in Blanchfield Hospital in Fort Campbell, Ky., where he would be from May 19 of that year to May 13, 2005.

Darrin A. Price spent more than two years in a hospital suffering from wounds he sustained in Iraq. He was awarded the Purple Heart this year for valor and depends on his wife, Teresa, for consolation. (Photo by Wiley Henry)

“It was my first Veterans Day Parade,” said Price, who was wounded in the Iraq War on May 9 after a gun truck he was riding in hit an IED (Improvised Explosive Device). “I injured both rotator cuffs, my back, left knee and I lost hearing in both ears.”

Price joined the Army in August 1988 after graduating from Fairly High School. While growing up around the Lauderdale/Wellington/Parkway area, he had some run-ins with law enforcement. So he set out on a different path.

“I wanted to make a better life for myself being that I’m the youngest child of 13 children,” he said. “I wanted to make my mom and sister, Shirley, proud of me.”

Price and his brothers, David and Curtis, followed their father, Bolivar Lee Price, into the military. The elder Price was a Korean War veteran and Price admired him.

“I followed my brothers’ footsteps, but I filled my dad’s shoes,” said Price, 40.

However, the path that led Price to the war zone in foreign countries was riddled with danger. He was an infantry soldier and found himself in the thick of battle during a major conflict.

Before Price’s discharge on May 15, 2005, he’d served several tours of duty in Panama in 1989, Desert Storm in 1990 and ’91, Somalia in 1992 and Iraq in 2003.

On March 17, 2009, Price was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds he received in Iraq on May 9, 2003. The Purple Heart is awarded to service men and women who have been wounded or killed while serving in the U.S. military.

For Price, the Purple Heart honors his commitment to fight for America. “When you first join, you go in for the jobs. But when you swear in you go in to defend the county at anytime. Your number could be called anytime.”

When Price finally returned home from battle, he discovered something was amiss. “I came home with post-traumatic stress disorder. Coming back from being injured, we were overlooked,” he said.

Price said PTSD causes undue stress and emotional outbursts that ripple through the home he shares with Teresa, his wife of two years. They have six children, ranging from age 15 to 19, between them.

“If he gets angry, I have to re-channel that anger because we have children,” said Teresa. “I explain to our children that this is a result of the war.”

For three years, Price has been going to PTSD group therapy every Thursday. After he was injured, he had to undergo physical therapy, water therapy, occupational therapy, and kinetic therapy, and was in traction for his spinal cord.

Teresa says she’s a prayer warrior and keeps a vigilant watch over her husband. He has nightmares, severe acid reflux and difficulty breathing sometimes in the middle of the night, she said.

“What do you do when they (soldiers) have been broken? You have to put them back together. I have to make sure I keep him encouraged. When he has a bad dream, I have to be there to listen.”

Price believes his acid reflux is a result of eating MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) during the war. “I still have nightmares and it takes me back to the war zone,” he said.

When Price reflected on the war, he got teary-eyed. “You meet a lot of people all over the country and build a bond that nothing can break,” he said. “And then you think about your family.”

The friendships Price left behind on the battlefield and the ones he’s maintained over the years often trigger emotional pain.

When he got wounded, he recalled the day the medevac helicopter flew him to a safe haven while his platoon continued to fight. “When I got hurt, one of the soldiers in my platoon got killed. If I were there, he wouldn’t have gotten killed.”

When he got weary in combat, Price said he learned to lean on the broad shoulders of friends such as James Lee McNeil and Demetrius Williams, both of Memphis.

“We kept each other focused and kept our minds on survival,” he said.

“I’m grateful he made it back in one piece. Thank God!” said Teresa.

“It hasn’t been easy putting up with me,” Price told his wife.

The Purple Heart, he said, will continue to be displayed on the living room table until his friend, James McNeil, is awarded one as well. “He was wounded the same day I was. When he gets his, mine goes up on the wall.”