TEXAS CITY — Holding his 7-week-old daughter, Faith, and playing with his 5-year-old daughter, Lauren, 1st Lt. Christopher Ayres looked more like a proud father than an injured Marine.
But then the scars from the skin grafts become more visible, as do the arm crutches resting against the sofa and the dressing that covers up a massive leg wound.
Ayres is a 1989 Dickinson High School graduate. He returned to Texas City on Tuesday after spending 74 days in the hospital and undergoing more than 20 surgeries.
“A month ago, I was still bed-ridden and in a wheelchair, but then I moved to a walker, and now I have walking crutches,” said Ayres.
While looking for insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, Iraqi soldiers against the occupation attacked Ayres’ unit. A blast from a rocket-propelled grenade nearly blew his leg off, while his arms, legs and back were severely burned.
Ayres said his mission was to weed out “the enemy” after four Western contractors were killed, burned and hung from bridges in Fallujah.
With those images splattered around the world, Ayres said that after he was hit, he worried that his wife and family would have to see the injuries played over again on television.
Two things kept Ayres going as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
“I just kept praying and asking God to please let me go back to see my wife and my daughter,” he said.
Whether others would openly admit it, Ayres, a Marine since 1989, said lying injured in Fallujah, he was afraid.
“Hell yeah, I was scared,” he said. “I was scared for my Marines and scared that they would die because we were overtaken.”
But never did the idea that he wouldn’t survive enter his mind, said Ayres.
“I kept thinking about what we could do to get out of there,” he said.
Meanwhile, Renee Ayres was back in Texas pregnant with her second child. Her heart stopped April 13 when she got a call from DADD — Dependent Assistance During Deployment, a support network within the Marines.
“I just starting crying and asking them what happened to him (Chris),” she said. “I kept having dreams that something happened to him. It was scary. He’s my best friend.”
From DADD’s description, Renee Ayres said her husband’s injuries didn’t sound that bad. But when she got the call from the hospital in Germany, she said she knew that the injuries were more severe than she had originally thought.
Once Ayres arrived at the Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Renee spent nights by her husband’s bedside. Worried about his safety, she gave birth prematurely to their daughter, Faith, almost a month after he came back to this country.
Now the family of four is back together and looking forward to the future, but not without strong feelings about the war and people’s reaction.
“We’re doing good things over there,” said Ayres. “I believe that we’re doing the right things for the right reason. I don’t understand people who mock the system and poke fun at it. There are still soldiers over there.”
Ayres’ comments are directed at Michael Moore’s newest documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Ayres said he would not support the film and that it added nothing to the debate over whether the war was justified.
“It just pisses me off,” he said. “I don’t want to see it. It’s easy to do the bad things in life. Bitchin’ is fine, but come up with a solution. Bush didn’t have a manual to run the wasp’s nest he stepped into.”
Ayres will remain in Texas City until the end of next month. He not only will be a part of the city’s Fourth of July parade, but was featured on ABC’s “Nightline.”
“I feel that I’m just blessed that I got to come home,” said Ayres. “Some never got the chance to see their families at all.”
