Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991                   TAG: 9103130103
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: WOODBRIDGE                                LENGTH: Short

MARINE WOUNDED IN WAR: `I FEEL OLD'

"I feel old," said Cpl. Harry Gardner. "I feel so old."

Gardner was injured by shrapnel from a land-mine explosion on Feb. 23, the first day of the Operation Desert Storm ground war.

His light-armored vehicle unit was screening surrendering Iraqi soldiers about six miles inside the Kuwait border. The Marines had watched about 25 men cross to the allied side, when one Iraqi chose a different path and triggered a land mine.

"I remember the guy stepping with his right foot and then seeing the explosion and feeling the pain," Gardner recalled while sitting on a living room couch in his bathrobe with both legs bandaged from half a dozen shrapnel wounds.

The man who tripped the mine was killed. A second Iraqi died at a nearby medical-aid station. Gardner, the only American injured, is expected to make a full recovery.

Gardner said he was angry that 11 Marines were killed by "friendly fire."

"That's what hurts the most," he said. "Thinking of them."

The toughest time for him was when his unit was told they were not far from the light armored vehicle where some of the Marines had died.

He said he wrote a letter to his church, asking members to pray for the men who died and to write letters to each man's family.

"That's one of the things that's hard," he said, " the death of actual Marines. I might not know them, but they were Marines. That's what bothers me. That's what hit hard."