Families bear catastrophic war wounds

Army Spc. Ethan Biggers, 21, left, is in a coma at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington after being shot in the head by a sniper in Iraq on March 5, 2006. Twin brother, Army Spc. Matthew Biggers, is shown on the right.

WASHINGTON — Army chaplain Kenneth Kaibel touched a cup of Communion wine to the lips of Spc. Ethan Biggers, who lay comatose at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. A drop slipped down his throat. The soldier gagged and coughed twice as his stepmother, Cheryl Biggers, cradled him ever more closely.
"That's all right," she whispered, her left hand gently supporting the base of his head. Depressions revealed where battlefield surgeons peeled back his scalp and removed large sections of skull to relieve swelling from a bullet fired by a sniper in Iraq in March.

His stepmother grasped his clenched fingers and kept her face close to his. "I want to make sure that he knows that I have him," Cheryl Biggers explained.

That was in June. Ethan Biggers, 22, was later transferred to a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Tampa and remains in a near-coma state.

"He can hear us. He opens his eyes. And we think he can follow our voices," says Cheryl Biggers, 51. "But he can't quite focus."

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