Warrenville welcomes home soldier injured in Iraq

Once, Jacob Foss couldn't find direction in his life. On Thursday, he couldn't mistake it: crowds of flag-waving well-wishers led the way.

A former high school dropout, the Army private returned to his hometown of Warrenville as a hero wounded in Iraq.

After arriving late in the afternoon, Foss' mother, Kathy, lured him to the Glen Ellyn Wal-Mart parking lot. There, Patriot Guard Riders and police and fire vehicles from Warrenville, Lisle and Wheaton gathered to surprise Foss with a ceremonial escort home.

"We want to make sure that he knows people of the community and country are supporting him," said Capt. Rick Phelan of the Patriot Guard.

Foss grew up one of five children raised by a single mother. He never met his father, something that made him angry and lost, but not a troublemaker, his mother said.

"I said 'What are you going to do with your life?'" Kathy Foss remembers asking her son about three years ago.

"'Join the Army,' he said.

"I asked him 'Are you crazy? There's a war.'

'That's why,' he said."

After training in Oklahoma, Jacob Foss was sent to Ramadi, Iraq, in January, where he served as a guard and a medic. He was injured when a Humvee door was slammed shut on his left hand.

The wound led to bacterial infections that doctors couldn't control. Foss was told his hand would have to be amputated.

"It was a nightmare," Kathy Foss said.

One doctor disagreed, and the hand was saved after eight surgeries in hospitals in Germany, Washington, D.C., and Georgia. Foss has no use of his left hand, but he still has it.

Two weeks ago Foss was recovering in Georgia when he learned that a close friend he had served with daily in Iraq had died.

"He has had to deal with a lot. A lot of heartbreaks," Kathy Foss said. "I think his whole outlook now is 'Nothing I'm going to do is going to be selfish.' "

Jacob Foss will stay in Warrenville two weeks, then go back to Georgia for more therapy. Kathy Foss said he expects to receive a medical discharge. Then he hopes to go on to school, she said, where he'll train to be a nurse.