Name: Joey Coleman
Hometown: Panama City, Fla.
Age: 20
Branch: Marines
Rank: Lance Corporal
Job: Heavy equipment operator
CAMP CHESTY, central Iraq – Lance Cpl. Joey Coleman waits outside a Navy surgical hospital. His right hand hangs limp, swollen to twice its normal size.
“My right hand is my life,” says Coleman, who is right handed. “It’s my biggest fear, if anything happens to my right hand. I just don’t want any scar tissue.”
Coleman, 20, a Marine reserve, is studying to become a cartoonist. He smashed his hand into a rock six days earlier when he jumped into a hole after a mortar shell landed about 10 meters from him.
