Next month, members of a local Army National Guard unit will return to Butler County after nearly a year in Iraq.

But one soldier will remain in Washington, D.C., where he is making his own kind of comeback.

Hit at close range by an improvised explosive device, Sgt. Paul Statzer of Butler has been undergoing treatment since March, when the brutal explosion outside Tikrit ravaged much of his head and face.

Scoured by shrapnel and losing part of his brain and skull, Statzer has quietly defied the odds by recovering.

“Everybody thought he was dead,” said his father Jim, of Prospect, who now helps with his son’s day-to-day care at the Walter Reed Medical Center.

“This bomb he was standing on, it would blow your house apart. … That’s the bomb that’s blowing up Humvees. He was standing 2 feet from it.”

“His head was huge,” Jim Statzer also said. “He didn’t even look like a human being. It was just like hamburger on the left side. It was all black. As days went on it started looking like big black scabs.”

“I don’t remember the explosion or a month and a half afterward,” Statzer said of the ordeal.

“He lost quite a bit of his frontal lobe on the left side of his brain, and his eye was blown back into his brain,” his father explained.

Statzer’s eye will likely remain in its awkward location, since removal could result in paralysis.

An artificial eye in the empty makeshift socket is among numerous procedures Statzer will undergo at Walter Reed over the next two years.

Although the surgeries will encompass much of Statzer’s foreseeable future, recovery so far has yielded optimism.

Within a couple months, Statzer was walking and talking. Some reconstructive surgery, including a procedure to restore use of his vocal chords, was behind him. Several months later, he was going fishing.

On Friday, Statzer underwent a procedure in which an artificial skull was inserted where a part of his own skull had been lost.

In a story about the 3-D imaging technology available at Walter Reed, Statzer was interviewed by CBS News before the cranioplasty, a procedure the network continued to follow as it occurred.

“He’s doing good. He’s not taking any medicine. If you see him, he looks like Frankenstein,” his father laughed, describing the temporary swelling and stitches.

The cranioplasty will eliminate need for the protective helmet Paul wore prior to the surgery, he added.As associate members of the R.B. Thieme Jr. Bible Ministries based in Texas, the Statzers say they attribute much of the recovery to God’s will.“We just left it in the Lord’s hands, because it’s his timing, not ours,” Jim Statzer said.“Oh yeah. Oh yeah,” Statzer confirmed when asked if faith in God was at play.“I prayed for him to take (my son) home,” Jim Statzer said, describing his initial reaction to the explosion.Paul had been transported to Germany. Jim Statzer took a trip to the barbershop as he and his wife, Kathleen, anticipated being summoned overseas, which happens when the injured cannot survive the trip home.“On the way to barbershop, I prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘If he’s brain dead, take him home. If you have a purpose for his life, I’m just going to pray in my Lord Jesus Christ’s name,’” he said.“I asked (Jesus Christ) to pray for me because I was kind of lost for words — I didn’t know what to pray.”Minutes later, the Statzers were told in a phone call Paul might have a 50 percent chance of survival. “I think they were asking for our permission,” Jim Statzer said of the decision to transport their son to Walter Reed.“Believe it or not, they didn’t know if he would talk or walk. He’s fine now. He’s swinging a golf club and everything.”“It’s been fine,” Paul Statzer said. “I had the promises of God in my head. I woke up and I just had to do what I had to do.”Jim Statzer said problems will likely continue with Paul’s short-term memory and his ability to sometimes find the correct words to express himself.“If he’s asked a lot of questions, it’s hard. I think he’s going to have problems like that for the rest of his life,” his father explained.

Capt. Cory Angell, a National Guard public affairs specialist in the state office near Harrisburg, said Statzer’s faith has left an impression on many of his fellow Guardsmen. “A lot of people I know who have met him and know the story, all feel God is the contributing factor. That’s how I feel about it.“I really think there’s a lot of character in him as a soldier, as a person — and that character is also a contributing factor in his survival. There’s something about him that inspires me.”With a military background coloring the views of father and son, both say their support of the war remains strong.An Army paratrooper in the 1960s, Jim Statzer is now retired from a job at the Butler Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Butler Township.“We’re pro-military. We completely believe in fighting for your country. … That’s the way you keep your freedom,” he said.“As a citizen of the United States, it’s your duty, and Paul knows that,” he said.At 36, Statzer has accumulated 17 years in the military: four years of active duty in the Navy and 13 years in the National Guard.Statzer had been working at Strikers Sports Bar in Jackson Township for 10 years when his unit, Company A, 1st Battalion, 112th Infantry Regiment, was mobilized July 1, 2004. They departed for Iraq the following December.“He’s a nice guy, he would do anything for anybody,” said bar manager Carrie Marburger. “He always helped people out down here.”Statzer visited Strikers during his two brief trips home from Walter Reed, and in June the bar held a fund-raising bowl-a-thon that earned $5,000, she added.“He’s doing good. Everybody was happy to see him. He looks good for what he’s been through. He was able to joke around with everybody,” Marburger said.In addition to paying a visit to friends at home, Statzer has achieved a certain level of renown in Washington.“He’s met a few movie stars,” Jim Statzer said, explaining how a variety of politicians and other well-known figures have also visited his son. Recently, Statzer even attended a barbecue at Vice President Dick Cheney’s house.Despite his notoriety, much of Paul Statzer’s days are taken up with various types of therapy and building strength to undergo as many as eight surgeries to come.Although Jim Statzer remains by his son’s side, the still-employed Kathleen Statzer makes frequent trips to visit the couple’s only child, who says he is the same person despite what happened in Iraq.Likewise, when Statzer’s surgeries are complete, he plans to embrace his everyday life. “I’m going to go back to work at the bar,” he said.