Clyde Nipper

“I was an infantryman in Vietnam, and special forces.
I had a lot of pride. And now look.”

Clyde Nipper, 60
Trucker, KBR
Worked in Iraq November 2004-November 2005
Massive head injuries from an IED blast under his truck

It was to be Clyde Nipper’s last convoy outside the wire—one last run through Baghdad down to Kuwait, before moving to a cushy, high-paying job on-base.

At 56 years old, he’d already spent decades driving trucks, then organizing trucking operations and—just before he left for Iraq—teaching students how to drive big trucks. When he landed in Iraq, Nipper says he was surprised KBR was placing him in a basic trucking job. With management experience and a nearly finished Master’s degree in business, he says he was overqualified for the work he was given.

He says he’d been promised in Houston that once he arrived in Iraq, he’d be promoted quickly. After a full year, as his first contract was ending, he finally got his offer: a higher paying job in the relative safety of Camp Anaconda, or inside another American post.

First, though, Nipper had one more run to make. He drove a heavy equipment carrier, a hefty rig that takes two people to operate (the same kind Fred Gaus drove). That truck always fell into the rear end of the convoy – normally a safe place to be when the biggest concerns are IEDs waiting in the road ahead.

In the earliest hours of the morning, rumbling down the streets of Baghdad, Nipper was looking ahead and focused on the future. He was thinking about his new job, more money, safety and a chance to finish paying off his house in Salt Lake City—the job he’d come here to do.

In a flash, though, he was pulled back into the moment, catching a glimpse of a man leaping out on his left and hurling something at him. The explosion ripped gaping holes in his truck and sent shrapnel hurtling into his face.
Furious, and probably in shock, Nipper broke formation with the convoy and chased his attacker for half a block. "He was off to the side of the road,” Nipper recalls. “The truck died out on me before I got him. The military came in after the truck stopped and took us out.”

Weeks later, soldiers told Clyde’s wife how they found his left eye dangling out of its socket—they had to replace it and wrap his head in gauze—and even then, slumped beside his broken-down truck while he waited to be hauled away, Nipper took a moment to light up a cigarette, which he smoked until a medic returned with a knockout dose of morphine. For the next few weeks Clyde hopscotched from Baghdad to Landstuhl to Utah, as surgeons at each stop worked to save his life.

Clyde is a markedly different man today than he was before the attack. An infantryman in Vietnam and a Green Beret in the Utah National Guard, he retired from the military and spent decades handling transportation logistics—complicated work that kept him working long hours. When he needed a change and better paying work, Clyde crossed the country as a long-haul trucker. Iraq would be his last job, the big paycheck that’d cover the mortgage and a comfortable retirement with his wife Kristine.

After the brain damage Clyde received in the blast, he’s not only unable to work anymore, but unable to care for himself. He has seizures, reads and writes at a fifth-grade level, and has a greatly diminished short-term memory. He relies on Kristine to takes care of him.

“I tell people that I have part man and part 12-year-old,” she says. “I’m sure it doesn’t do a whole lot for his ego.”

Clyde is aware enough to understand he’s a different person today. “I was an infantryman in Vietnam, and special forces out of there. I had a lot of pride,” he says. “And now look.”

Clyde points out the place where there’s a gap between the metal plate in his head and his skull. In photos taken just after one of his brain operations, his head looks sunken-in at that spot; now, with his white hair grown back, there’s just a hint of asymmetry to his head. He still has shrapnel from the blast in his head, behind his false left eye. “They said it acts like a plug in his brain, so they’re afraid to take it out,” Kristine says.

The biggest of Clyde’s health problems now are the seizures he’s been getting—severe ones every few months, minor ones more often. After the last big one, he spent almost an entire day sleeping.

His medication and other health care has been covered by insurance so far, but Kristine worries that his benefits will be cut off, as his case worker has suggested they might, because it’s been so long since the injury.

Kristine’s health insurance cut off once Clyde was laid off by KBR. With Clyde unable to drive himself to the doctor, or even walk some days, Kristine says taking care of Clyde is her full-time job. The financial strain that’s built up over the years is a constant source of pressure on both Clyde and Kristine, looming over the peaks and valleys of Clyde’s health, and straining their marriage, she says. Years ago, at the hospital with Clyde, the stress boiled over and Kristine began feeling intense chest pains—she was admitted on the spot, told she’d had a panic attack, and she’s been on medication for her heart ever since.

Instead of paying off their mortgage, the couple had to refinance their house after Clyde came back from war. Now Clyde spends his days in the backyard, watching movies on a portable DVD player. He takes pills to control his seizures when Kristine reminds him.

“She has a lot of—I don’t know what you want to call it,” he says, “to stay with me and deal with this. There’s got to be a whole lot of love there somewhere.”