Marine from Fremont recovering from bombing injuries

By Matthew Artz

Oakland Tribune

Posted: 05/25/2010 01:45:34 PM PDT

Updated: 05/25/2010 08:35:34 PM PDT

FREMONT — A Marine from Fremont lost his right eye and suffered other injuries to his face and his right arm earlier this month when his bomb-sniffing dog inadvertently set off an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.

Jonathan Melbourne, a 2006 graduate of Irvington High School, is recuperating at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., with his girlfriend and parents at his side.

"We do get little smiles here and there," David Melbourne said of his son, who has his jaw wired shut and a breathing tube inserted into his throat. "We keep reassuring him that he's a hero and we're all proud of him."

Jonathan Melbourne, 21, enlisted in the Marines out of high school and later became a dog handler with the K-9 unit, whose animals are trained to sniff out roadside bombs for Marines to safely diffuse.

But on May 6, less than a month after being deployed to Afghanistan, Melbourne's black Labrador, Tara, set off a bomb. The explosion killed the dog instantly and left Melbourne, a Marine corporal, with a broken chin, missing teeth, no right eye and wounds to his face and arm.

Melbourne's parents are piecing together exactly what happened. They don't know where the bomb was planted or where in Afghanistan their son was patrolling, but they've been told that Jonathan might have triggered the concealed bomb himself had Tara not done so first.

"I guess you could say the dog saved his life," David Melbourne said.

The Marines called the Melbournes the day of the accident but offered few details about their son's condition.

"When you hear 'shrapnel to the face,' that was hard to take," David Melbourne said. "I kept calling left and right, day and night," to find out more.

Two days later, Melbourne learned that his son's injuries weren't life-threatening and that he'd been taken to a hospital in Germany.

The couple first saw Jonathan two weeks ago after he was transferred to the naval hospital. Seeing her wounded son was too much for Florence Melbourne, who at one point cried so uncontrollably that she was taken to the hospital's emergency room.

"There were so many tubes in him, and the eye, and the stitches in the face," she said. "I couldn't take it. I felt like my head was going to explode."

Melbourne is scheduled for surgery next week to replace damaged skin on his right arm. In mid-June, doctors will unwire his jaw, at which time his parents hope he'll be transferred to the veterans hospital in Palo Alto, where his younger sister and two younger brothers will be able to visit him.

Melbourne, who has one year left of full-time Marine duty, will have to rethink his career plans. He had hoped to go into law enforcement, but the loss of his eye will likely preclude that, his father said.

Melbourne had wanted to be a Marine since he was 14 and was thrilled the day he enlisted.

"He said, 'I want to do this for you guys and my country,'" his mother recalled.

Jonathan thinks that he still belongs in Afghanistan on patrol with his fellow Marines, David Melbourne said. But for now it's his girlfriend and parents who are giving him a lot of love and camaraderie.

"I hold his left hand, and I squeeze it," Florence Melbourne said. "And I tell him that I love him and that God is with us."

Contact Matthew Artz at 510-353-7002. For more Fremont news, read his blog: www.ibabuzz.com/tricitybeat.