Injured soldier to return to duty

U.S. Army Capt. Erick McFerran, an Independence native injured in an April 9 helicopter crash that killed four of his comrades in Afghanistan, is expected to return to duty in a few days, according to his mother, Barb McFerran of Independence.

Capt. McFerran, 28, a 2000 graduate of Independence High School and a 2004 graduate of the University of Iowa, escaped serious injury when the CV-22 Osprey crashed with 20 aboard in southern Afghanistan.

The military said three service members and a civilian contractor were killed in the first crash of the costly tilt-rotor aircraft in a combat zone.

McFerran said her son told her that the helicopter catapulted upon impact and pinned him upside down in the wreckage.

The former ambulance driver and paramedic was freed in time to help stabilize some of his most gravely injured comrades, she said.

Capt. McFerran, a civil affairs officer in Special Forces Special Operations, was hospitalized at Bagram Air Field northeast of Kabul.

When McFerran and her husband Rick learned that their son had survived the devastating crash relatively unscathed, she said they felt they “had been granted a small miracle.”

He was able to “limp away from the crash with comparatively minor injuries and help evacuate and triage those who had been less fortunate,” she said.

Capt. McFerran, who speaks three foreign languages, asked his family to pray for his dead and injured comrades as well as for the “innocent victims, often women and children, of terrorism worldwide,” his mother said.

McFerran said her family expects to see Capt. McFerran in late August at the end of his second tour in Afghanistan.