John McClellan suffers serious head wound in Haditha

Lance Cpl. John McClellan, 20, has a tattoo of shamrocks below his belly button. The image symbolizes the nickname his fellow Marines gave him, “Lucky,” after he was shot in his right arm twice in one week last October, while serving with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Echo Company in Afghanistan.

Tuesday, while serving his second tour overseas, this time in Haditha, Iraq, the 2004 Hickman High School graduate was shot a third time. McClellan was injured when an AK-47 bullet entered his head over his left ear and exited the back of his neck, his mother, Connie McClellan of Columbia, said. During a five-hour surgery at a hospital in Balad, Iraq, doctors removed bone fragments and some brain tissue. He was then transported to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

His mother said McClellan’s brain swelled as a result of the injury, requiring a low-flying flight to Germany so the air pressure wouldn’t further damage his brain. McClellan is scheduled to arrive today at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. His parents and sister, Jane Bowman, 32, of Chicago, will meet him there.

Connie McClellan said she was thankful for the military’s assistance in taking care of her family’s travel arrangements.

“We’ve been very impressed with the Marines on how they’ve been taking care of us,” she said.

Doctors at the Balad hospital called Connie McClellan and her husband and McClellan’s father, Carl McClellan, around 1 a.m. Wednesday to tell them their son had been shot. His mother said it was the first time she had received the dreaded phone call from a third party, because the two previous times her son had been shot, he was less seriously injured and able to call his parents himself.

Connie McClellan said that when the doctors first called, the prognosis was that if her son survived, he would probably be a vegetable. Thursday morning, however, she said the doctor who called was “jubilant” because McClellan’s condition had improved. Although he was still unconscious, he was responding to commands and his vital signs were good.

“It was an antithesis of the report (Wednesday),” she said. “So what do you think made it happen? I call it a miracle.”

Allison Cooper, 20, who graduated from Hickman with McClellan, said he’s “invincible,” and that she and their other friends “knew if anyone would pull through, he would.”

McClellan left for Iraq on Sept. 11 of this year.

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