Positive thinking and enthusiasm have played a big role in molding recent Tualatin resident Joel Dulashanti’ s life. Critically wounded in an ambush in Afghanistan in 2007, he could have taken a medical discharge from the Army. But he chose to stay in the Army to prove that it could be done. Joel was wounded while deployed as a sniper assigned to 4/73rd RSTA, 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division out of Ft Bragg, NC.  He and his partner were tasked to a cavalry scout platoon chasing two Taliban guys who were riding together on a moped. The Taliban ran into a field and they went after them. He said it was “about 110 degrees, some 6,000 feet above sea level.  There was no humidity, all you could smell was the earth and burnt grass.” While walking in knee high grass, he said “I started to smell body odor. So I stopped. As I turned to my right, towards the direction of odor, they started shooting with AK47s.”  Joel explained “they were firing from a prone position on the ground about 10 meters away. I took two rounds to my right knee. As I continued turning and falling, I was shot through my left knee. The next round came through under my arm, through my rib cage and, since I was parallel to the ground, traversed my entire abdomen down to my pelvis. That last round was the worst.”  He said “We returned fire and those guys were finished.” He added “we learned that one of the two was number 34 on the Taliban ‘most wanted list’.  He was the cousin of Saraj Haqquani, who had a well-established network of terrorists.”

Two platoons that Joel operated with as a sniper were on his route out of Afghanistan. One donated plasma when he reached his first treatment table. The platoon leader for the second group stayed at his bedside until he was boarded up for Germany. It took eight months at his next stop, Walter Reed, for him to feel comfortable walking again.  He explained the “the recovery process started off slow but I accelerated fast. I have a partial knee replacement on my left side.  I have an above-the-knee amputation on my right side.  I’m missing half of my stomach and 90 percent of my intestines and gall bladder and half of my abdominal wall is gone” When he returned to active duty, he was assigned to the Pentagon where he worked in the Army Legislative Liaison office. He also finished course work to earn a BS in Biology from University of Maryland. When asked why he didn’t get commissioned, he said “Being an NCO meant more to me than any other aspect of the military. I couldn’t have led from the front or impacted soldiers the way that I wanted had I been commissioned.” Next he served as an instructor at Fort Benning, GA where, for three years he trained between 400 and 500 paratrooper students every three weeks to safely parachute. 

In Oregon, Joel has been very active in veteran support organizations and into Purple Heart recognition. He testified to help pass legislation to make Oregon the 15th Purple Heart state and designating I-5 and other Oregon highways as memorial highways. He also worked with Forest Grove, Beaverton, King City and Tualatin city councils to make each a Purple Heart City. Joel was a speaker at Tualatin’s latest annual Vet Appreciation Breakfast. He plans to start graduate school in March but says he will continue to help veterans, their families and severely disabled children through the local chapter of Military Order of Purple Heart.

Joel’s advice to others with handicaps is simple — choose whether or not to have a positive outlook. “Make up your mind,” he said. “Everybody has to go through their own coping mechanisms. Sometimes you’re in a denial state; when you come out of that denial state, then deal with what it is you have to deal with. If you need it, get counseling. I never gave negativity even an opportunity to invade my mind. There was only one route for me.” 

In 1968, America believed that we would easily win the Vietnam war.  However, early that year, the Vietnamese announced a seven-day cease-fire for the end of January to celebrate Tet, the Vietnamese New Year.  But instead, on January 31, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong military launched the Tet Offensive against major South Vietnam cities. The resulting TV coverage of these fierce battles turned public opinion against the war.  It was a shock to learn that the war was not going as well as being told by our military and political leaders.

Earlier, on January 21, to divert American attention and military away from populated areas, North Vietnamese forces began massive artillery bombardment of the U.S. remote Marine camp at Khe Sanh. Tualatin resident Bradley Barton was a Marine Corporal at Khe Sanh when the attack began. He joined the Marines at age 19 after passing draft physical. He qualified as a rifle sharpshooter before sent to Vietnam.  At Khe Sanh, he was in charge of secret and classified material with orders to burn them with a phosphorous grenade if the base was overrun. On February 29, the 38th day of the battle, he was working in a tent that he shared with the Chaplain. He heard a thump, followed by a tremendous explosion from a 155 howitzer in front of his tent. It was a mortar from a North Vietnamese Army howitzer. He felt like he had been whacked hard in the back by a baseball bat and fell forward. For a while, he felt detached from his body and watched himself fall in “slow motion” to the ground. Laying on his right side, he couldn’t move. When he saw a huge puddle of blood under him, he believed he was dead. His entire life flashed before him and he prayed to God “if I die, take me with you”. Blood continued flowing out of his wounds, gushing with each heartbeat.  

The Chaplain was in shock. Bradley yelled “get down”. Then he asked for corpsmen. Two came. They packed Bradley’s back with bandages, log rolled him onto a stretcher and then off at nearby Aide Station. He was yelling and screaming because of tremendous pain.  The Navy doctor told him “shut up, you are a Marine and you can take it.”  Bradley was advised to keep his dog tags with him, adding “you didn’t know who you were after you were hit.” Bradley was helicoptered to Da Nang.  As his nurse anesthetized him there, he remembers thinking she looked like an Angel. His spinal cord had been severed and his left lung had collapsed. In surgery, his spine was fused, left lung re-inflated, and spleen and two-thirds of a kidney removed. Afterwards, found he couldn’t move his legs. When he asked his nurse if his condition was temporary, she cried and said it was permanent.  

He was next airlifted to Japan. His older brother flew there at his own expense to provide critical morale support.  He was scheduled for Walter Reed when medevac’d to the states for rehabilitation. But his brother intervened. Instead Bradley went to a VA hospital 30 miles from his home town where he learned how to take care of himself.  After earning a business degree with emphasis in accounting from Indiana University, he had difficulty getting a job. He asked one employer why he wasn’t hired and was told “because you are in a wheelchair, our clients will not like you”.  Employers felt that their customers would feel uncomfortable dealing with a handicapped person.  After interviewing with all the Big Eight accounting firms with no success. a partner in one told him about a client who did hire him. He eventually became a VA Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist for NW Indiana. He excelled there and was named “1979 Handicapped Hoosier of the Year.” That year, two time Academy Award winner Harold Russell who lost both hands in WWII, chaired the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped that year. Even at that event, he encountered discrimination when a waitress told his group to “push him out of the way”.

Bradley graduated from law school in 1982 and practiced law in Indiana before moving to California to clerk with the San Diego County Probate Court. He came to Oregon in 1993 to help veterans. He is thankful to be alive and not traumatized by his Vietnam experience.  In 2006, he served as National Commander of Disabled Veterans of America. He advises other handicapped in wheelchairs that you can do everything you normally do in life, except it is in a wheelchair. He reminds everyone that “In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” which is inscribed on the American Veteran Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington, DC.