Staff Writer

In one split second it all got stripped away.

In one split second, an explosion ripped through a 72-ton tank, leaving behind mangled pieces of steel.

And in one split second, Mike Payeur sustained a head injury that would change his life forever.

It was the 11th IED explosion the Biddeford native experienced during his two deployments in Iraq, and the one that cut short a military career he had dreamed of since high school.

On May 17, 2007, Cpl. Payeur was on a routine road patrol in a D33 tank near Baquba, Iraq, when he came across a crater from a previous explosion. The crew jumped the tank onto the sidewalk to avoid it, only to hit a live explosive the second they pull back onto the road. 

“It tossed the tank across the road, which is pretty incredible considering the size of those,” he said. 

Payeur, who was driving, was thrown into the hatch and knocked unconscious. He also strained three vertebrae in his neck and fractured his legs and foot.

 “I really didn’t know what happened. I didn’t feel anything. All I saw was a flash of white and everything went black,” he said. “The first thing I saw when I came to was a broken rifle on the front slope of the tank.”

As the ruins of his beloved “72-ton horse” were hauled away on two trucks, he was treated for his external injuries. He later declined further medical exams for his head injury because he did not want to be away from his fellow soldiers, who he had come to consider family.

Within three months, Payeur was having trouble remembering things and making decisions. He also struggled with comprehending what people were saying to him.

“I knew there was something wrong but I fought it as much as I could. I didn’t want to leave my guys,” he said. “We were in a place most people can’t dream up in their worst nightmares.”

When his condition began to affect his job performance, a commander pulled Payeur aside and told him to get checked out again. After tests at a theater medical center in Baquba, he was sent for more exams in Balad. When he was transferred to a medical center in Germany, he said he knew his time in Iraq was over.

“It was at that point I knew I was going home,” he said. “It was hard. If it was just a quiet, boring part of Iraq I wouldn’t have minded so much. I wouldn’t wish this place on my worst enemy. My family was there.”

Payeur’s desire to stay with his unit in Iraq came as no surprise to those who know him. He decided to enlist in the Army after researching all branches of the military while still in high school, he said. 

“I liked what I saw, I liked what I heard,” he said. “I knew what I was getting myself into and I was 110 percent willing to do that.”

He left for boot camp three weeks after graduating with the Biddeford High School class of 2004. Only 17 at the time, his parents, Mike and Pam Payeur, had to consent to his decision.

“We totally supported his decision because Mike doesn’t rush to any judgment,” Pam Payeur said. “By the time he gave indications that was his line of thinking was going, we expected it.”

After completing basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., he returned home for a month before reporting to his permanent duty station in Fort Hood, Texas. On his 16^th day in Texas, he left for a five-month deployment to Iraq. 

Stationed on the front lines with battles raging around him every day, he had no contact with his family.

“You don’t really get to think about it too much,” he said. “We were pretty busy.”

Within a week of arriving in Baghdad, Mike Payeur experienced his first IED blast when his tank rolled over an animal carcass stuffed with explosives. 

“When you get blown up you really just feel a concussion of moving air,” he said. “Once you get blown up a few times, you make a record of what blew you up.”

Mike Payeur was not injured during his first deployment, though he had to get used to being on guard all the time. He said soldiers are constantly on the lookout for enemies and explosives, a state of alertness that becomes “normal” after a while.

Mike Payeur spent 14 months stateside after his first deployment. He trained “day in and day out” at Fort Hood, seeing his family when they came to Texas to visit him. On Oct. 4, 2006, he left on his second deployment as a corporal with the 1^st battalion 12^th cavalry regiment.

He said he was surprised by the amount of violence he encountered in this part of the country.

“It was hell. There wasn’t a single day that went by we didn’t have a fire fight or get blown up,” he said. 

Mike Payeur and his unit lived in a school building they seized from insurgents in the middle of Baquba. Conditions were rough for a while, he said, because they didn’t have running water, food or air conditioning. 

He also had to deal for the first time with the loss of close friends in Iraq. Throughout the deployment, 14 soldiers from his company were killed.

On Dec. 23, 2006, Mike Payeur was in the midst of a “huge fire fight” when he paused to help Cpl. John Paul Barta reload ammunition in a tank. Barta was standing in the hatch when a mortar dropped on the tank behind him, killing him instantly.

“I was about three feet away from him when he died,” Mike Payeur said. “You don’t think it’s real. He was gone instantly.”

Days after sustaining his head injury, Mike Payeur found himself grieving another friend when his roommate, Spc. Frank Trussel, was killed by an IED on May 25, 2007. The father of two from Dansville, Ill., died five days before his 21^st birthday.

“I’ve never gone through something like that ever. It was horrible,” Mike Payeur said. “The bond in my platoon grew incredibly strong. We were family. When you lose family, it kills you.”

Mike Payeur said he thinks of Barta and Trussel every day. A tattoo on his back is a permanent memorial to his fallen friends, he said.

“No matter what training you go through, you’re not prepared for that,” he said. “It’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through.”

Meanwhile, back in Maine, Pam Payeur would rush to the computer each morning to scour the Internet for news her son had died overnight. 

“It’s not that he was sent there to do work away from the hornet’s nest. His job dictated he’d be on the front lines,” she said.

She and her husband came to terms with knowing their son was going away, but Pam Payeur said it was difficult to watch her other children, Dani and Jon, worry about their older brother.

“It’s been really, really hard for his siblings,” she said. “As a mother it’s hard to watch them struggle, worry, miss him. It’s impacted them both very deeply in a lot of ways.”

The worry intensified when Mike Payeur was injured during his second deployment, she said. She did not find out about her son’s injuries until he was taken for treatment in Germany. He called home to tell his mother he was hurt.

“Even then, we weren’t aware of how extensive the injuries were,” she said.

The extent of Mike Payeur’s injuries became evident when he was taken to the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. Pam Payeur said she realized how “not good things were” when she visited her son for the first time at the hospital.

“Being his mom, the most notable and heartbreaking thing was the look in his eyes,” she said. 

He looked fine on the outside but had a lonely and guarded look about him, she said. While at the hospital he went through more tests and began therapy for his brain injury and severe post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition to treatment for his brain injury, Mike Payeur had rounds of physical and speech therapy and counseling sessions.

“Basically, every day was a round of appointments for this, a round of appointments for that,” Pam Payeur said.

Pam Payeur and her husband took turns visiting their son while he was in the hospital. After he was discharged, he was sent back to Fort Hood. Mike Payeur said he should have been placed in a special warrior transition unit to receive more supervised care, but was instead sent to the regular barracks because of a paperwork glitch.

It was five months before he was transferred into the transition unit and resumed his medical care.

“It was a huge setback because I wasn’t getting medications I needed, physical therapies I needed,” he said. “It was rough.”

He spent a year at the facility, receiving treatment and coming to terms with the end of his military career. 

“I knew I was done, so I kind of just accepted that and focused on getting the medical treatment I needed,” he said.

Mike Payeur – who received a Purple Heart following his second deployment – has been home in Biddeford for a month, living with his parents while waiting for surgeries on his wrist and knee. Once those are out of the way, he plans to work in his family’s insulation installation business.

The transition back to civilian life has not been easy, he said.

“I was one of the few people who found a job I absolutely loved doing, but it was also the first job I ever had. I was going for a career in the military – that got cut short,” he said. “I loved being in the Army, I loved being a tanker. I loved absolutely everything about it.”

Though mourning the end of his career, Mike Payeur said he has no choice but to think ahead. He is now medically retired from the military and spends as much time fishing as possible between medical appointments.  

Despite waiting for months to get treatment for his brain injury, he said he has no regrets about the decisions he made in Iraq.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “If I had a chance to do it all over again, I’d do it the exact same way.”

Staff Writer Gillian Graham can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 213.