Utah soldier's wound leads him to true love

Pale and in pain last year at an Army hospital in Texas, Spc. Casey Mayor met the love of his life.

A roadside bomb in Iraq had left him with a mangled leg, and he was recovering at Fort Bliss. Less than a week after he arrived, Nicole Cartmill, a secretary at the hospital, walked into Mayor's room.

"My jaw literally hit the floor," he said in an interview Friday. "Her beauty struck me."

Today Mayor, 22, and another reservist will be getting Purple Heart medals during a ceremony at Fort Douglas.

The road to Mayor's medal — and his meeting with Cartmill, who is now his wife — began on a highway near Tikrit on Sept. 16, 2006. He had arrived in Iraq five months earlier. On the day of the attack, he was driving the lead vehicle in a supply convoy early in the morning as part of his duty with the 423rd Transportation Company.

"All of a sudden, there was an explosion like I've never heard before," Mayor said.

He recalled a boom and a bright flash of light that disabled his gun truck. Mayor looked over at his passenger, a sergeant who chuckled as he said, "'We just got hit by an IED (improvised explosive device)."'

Then the pain arrived.

"My left leg was completely covered in blood," Mayor said.

No one died in the blast that day, but IEDs have been blamed for about one-third of the over 3,360 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq since 2003, according to the Department of Defense.

Mayor was the only one injured in the blast that hit his convoy. The same sergeant in his truck cut open Mayor's pant leg to reveal tissue that was missing — "blown off," Mayor said.

A helicopter flew Mayor from the blast site to a hospital not far away. He arrived at Fort Bliss on Sept. 22, 2006.

The day Mayor met Cartmill, they talked for about 45 minutes. In the month he spent at Fort Bliss, Mayor underwent 12 surgeries to repair his leg. He had no family or friends close by, and Cartmill cooked him dinners and brought him movies and gifts.

Mayor returned to Utah for 30 days of convalescence leave and talked almost every day on the phone with her. He went back to Fort Bliss. "Nicole and I fell deeply in love," he said.

While still in a wheelchair and in front of a small crowd at an airport in El Paso, Mayor popped the question. "I told her, 'I've never met someone like you before,"' he said. "She started crying and she said, 'Yes."'

The two married this past Feb. 13. And Mayor realizes he never would have met her if he hadn't been injured.

"Something so bad turned into something so good," he said.

His wife now works at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City. The Army still considers Mayor, a reservist for over three years, to be in recovery as he prepares to pursue a college degree. The couple recently purchased a home in Murray.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com