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Dec 17, 2007 4:04 pm US/Mountain
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Soldier Wounded In Iraq Welcomes Home Comrades
FORT CARSON, Colo. (CBS4) ―
Hundreds of soldiers from Fort Carson came home for the holidays over the weekend. The soldiers were welcomed home by family and friends and also a comrade who had returned to Colorado months ago.
Staff Sgt. Matt Keil was badly wounded in Iraq and he's looked forward to the day he'd see his buddies again. Keil's buddies were just as moved as he was by the reunion.
The "welcome home" signs had Christmas trees on them and the decorations may have been evergreen, but the feeling was absolutely red, white and blue.
Keil thought he would be coming home with them, but instead he arrived 10 months ago in very bad shape after a sniper's bullet left him a quadriplegic.
"I'm alive and that's all that matters," Keil said.
Through months of rehabilitation, Keil and his wife Tracy worried about his fellow soldiers still in Iraq.
"Those are brothers that you'll never forget -- never," Keil said.
So Keil and his wife made sure they came to say their welcome home -- and then something quite extraordinary happened. Soldiers who had been away from their families for more than one year came to greet Keil, even before they held their wives.
One by one, war-weary soldiers expressed respect, not with a salute, but with a hug. Then, John Barrow, the medic who saved Keil's life, came through the line.
Barrow was just doing his job, as were all the soldiers, as was Keil, but during war, that job takes on new danger and new meaning.
"They look at Matt and they know that could have been them," Tracy said.
Just knowing that can move an old soldier to kiss a young hero.
Immediately after leaving Fort Carson, the Keils flew off to Ohio. It will be Keil's first visit to his home town since he was wounded.
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