Carrie and David McDonnall in 2003 Courtesy of Integrity Publishers

March 15, 2004. What started out as a day full of meaning and purpose, discovering how to meet the needs of a community in northern Iraq, turned into a surreal nightmare, the scars of which Carrie McDonnall will bear for the rest of her life.

Carrie and her husband of two years, David, were humanitarian aid workers doing an assessment at an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp on that spring day. With them for the day were visiting veteran aid workers Larry and Jean Elliot and Karen Watson, one of the first missionaries into Iraq.

The visit at the camp went well—but as the afternoon wore on, the team grew anxious about arriving at their destination for the evening (a protected Kurdish zone) before nightfall. Driving in Iraq in the dark was simply not safe, especially for Caucasians.

Hoping to save time, they chose the most direct route, which was to go straight through the city of Mosul instead of around it. It was a calculated risk, since Mosul was home to a disproportionate number of insurgents and angry Islamic extremists.

The attack
It was still light as they approached town, but Carrie's heart raced at the scene ahead of them: traffic. Once downtown, the traffic became gridlock, and the truck with five white Americans became a sitting duck.

	Seeing Carrie across the hospital, David shouted out, "I love you! We're gonna make it through this, baby!"

And then Carrie felt something sting the top of her ear. Clutching it, she blacked out, coming to again only when she heard David's loud voice: "Everybody get down!" But sitting in the backseat between the two other women, there was nowhere to hide. The deafening staccato of automatic rifles filled the air.

"It was like a nightmare, everything was in slow motion," Carrie says. "All I could hear was the gunfire, and all I could smell was gunpowder—and blood." Six men with AK-47s and at least one Uzi submachine gun surrounded the vehicle; their weapons were raised, and they fired at will. "I felt pain everywhere," Carrie recalls. "Bullets and shrapnel were ricocheting off the walls and floor of the truck. There was no way out."

Carrie couldn't move. She couldn't think. She could barely pray that God would stop the bullets, and once she did, she blacked out again, only to awaken later to an eerie silence. All the bustling people on the streets had disappeared; even the traffic had disintegrated. All that was left was the remains of the truck and the shattered humanity within it.

Carrie's limbs wouldn't move. Her left hand was missing fingers; bones were exposed. She couldn't breathe through her nose but couldn't figure out why.

	"I still want to be involved in missions. I want to encourage believers to be obedient to God's Word and go share the gospel."—Carrie McDonnall

Jean Elliot, slumped against Carrie, was dead. Moments later, Karen also breathed her last. Larry, in the front seat, was gone as well. Carrie started hollering for help in Arabic, but she could barely breathe and her voice was faint. Still, at the sound of Carrie's strained call, David sat upright in the driver's seat and sprang into action, moving as if he hadn't even been hit.

Unbeknownst to David and Carrie, their attack was the start of the targeting of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Iraq. In the next 48 hours, more news became available about American civilians who were killed, burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. "Soft targeting" had officially begun.

Finding help
After looking at his wife, who was covered in blood, dust, and shattered glass, David got out of the truck and began shouting for help in Arabic. Finally, three reluctant Iraqi men were recruited to help Carrie out of the truck. As they pulled her out, every nerve in her body seemed to spring back to life with unspeakable pain. "I couldn't move because I had too many broken bones," she recalls. "I had been hit in the face, too."

The taxi ride to the hospital was agonizingly slow. Once inside the unsanitary facility, the McDonnalls were still not at ease: they weren't sure if the Iraqi doctors there in Mosul, a known insurgent territory, would dutifully work for the Americans' recovery or dutifully push them over the brink toward death. They had to get to the American Army's Combat Support Hospital (CSH).

As Carrie fought to stay awake, she noticed that the doctors were focusing more on David, even though he appeared to be okay.

Soon, armed American soldiers arrived to protect David and Carrie until the medics arrived. But precious minutes ticked by as the helicopters were shot at and unable to land. While they waited, two soldiers who professed to be Christians prayed over Carrie at her request.

At long last, the Army got the situation under control, and Carrie and David boarded two separate helicopters to the CSH unit. Once inside, Carrie heard David pray, "Jesus, we don't know what is happening. Just help us." Then, seeing Carrie across the hospital, he shouted out, "I love you! We're gonna make it through this, baby!"

Waking up to loss
After being prepped for surgery, Carrie finally allowed herself to fall into the arms of a deep sleep. She awoke eight days later at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Her mother, father, and sister were with her.

She had been hit 22 times by bullets and shrapnel. In the CSH unit, they immediately gave her a blood transfusion without first screening for antibodies, which is only done when the risk of death without the transfusion is extremely high.

For the first several days at Parkland Hospital, Carrie drifted in and out of consciousness, flooded by memories of the attack, a feeling of helplessness, and a longing to see her husband.

"Where's David, Mama? Tell David to come in," she would say.

Finally, on the eighth day, when she was firmly lucid, her father spoke to her. "We have something to tell you," he said softly. "Baby, David didn't make it." The room spun as Carrie's mind and heart reeled at the shock of those words. She cried out in agony, but encased in casts and hooked to multiple tubes and wires, she couldn't even hug her mother, father, or sister Jennifer. It was the most alone she had ever felt.

She discovered that David had gone into cardiac arrest in the helicopter on the way from Mosul to Baghdad, completely shocking even the surgeons. His internal injuries were more serious than anyone had imagined. He died the day after Carrie last saw him.

On the same day she learned of her husband's death, she discovered his funeral was being held in Colorado and that she could not travel to be there. Understanding the logic with her mind, her heart wept at not being able to share in the celebration of her husband's life.

Slow recovery
Carrie still had to focus on recovering from her physical injuries. One bullet shattered her left tibia. Another bullet went through her upper left leg, and another scraped her right thigh. She lost all the fingers on her left hand except the middle finger and thumb. A shattered bone in her right arm and bullet to the joint in the left elbow rendered both arms useless for a while.

Bullets and shrapnel hit her right ear and face, breaking the septum in her nose and fracturing her mandible. Another bullet hit her in the right chest, broke her ribs, and exited beneath her left breast. Amazingly, only one small scar on her face gives any hint as to what she endured.

Now, two years after the attack, Carrie says it still feels fresh. "My senses went into overdrive that day," she says. "I remember it all. I have never had to relive that experience in a dream because it's so vivid when I'm awake. I replay parts of it every day in my mind."

Even with her incredible losses, however, Carrie never was angry with God. "I did go through a time of questioning, and came to understand that even if I had answers to all those questions, I would still miss my husband and friend."

Carrie's heart for the Muslim people also remains unchanged. "I still love them and desire that they come to know Christ," she says. "They were very loving people. Not all Muslims are terrorists. This is just a fallen world."

She continues to heal and recover in the States, but she doesn't rule out one day returning to Iraq. "I still want to be involved in missions," she says. "I want to encourage believers to be obedient to God's Word and go share the gospel. That's what I'm doing now. But if God should ever show me He wants me to go overseas again, I'll be obedient."

Editor's Note: Read more about Carrie McDonnall's dramatic story in her book, Facing Terror (Integrity Publishers), coauthored by Kristin Billerbeck. For more information about Carrie's new speaking ministry, visit www.carryonministries.org.

Jocelyn C. Green is a full-time freelance writer living in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

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