CB West Grad Injured in Afghanistan

A CB West grad who was injured in Afghanistan on Thursday has undergone surgery and is expected to make a full recovery.

Bryan Buckley is being treated in Afghanistan, his mother Connie Buckley, of Doylestown, told Doylestown Patch on Monday. Military officials gave Bryan the option of returning to the United States, but he chose to remain in Afghanistan, Connie Buckley said.

"He is doing just fine. He was offered to come home, and - which does not surprise me - he’s said he's going to stay there," Connie Buckley said Monday afternoon. "Within two or three weeks, he will be back out in the field doing God only knows what."

Bryan Buckley, 32, was commissioned in the U.S. Marines in December 2004, Connie said. He was injured Thursday, July 12, during a firefight. A grenade launcher fired on the position where Buckley and two or three of his men were hunkered down, Connie said.

He received injuries from shrapnel to both his legs and lower back, as well as behind his left ear, Connie Buckley said. He underwent surgery on Thursday and again on Friday to remove the shrapnel, she said.

Though first listed in serious condition, he was later upgraded to stable condition, Connie said.

"He's been released from the hospital and he's doing fine," Connie said. "He’s going back for the next couple weeks for therapy and then he'll be back out in the field."

Getting the phone call from the military is something every military spouse or parent dreads, and the Buckleys were no exception.

When the phone rang last week at the Buckleys' Doylestown home, Connie said she saw a Virginia phone number come up on the caller ID.

"I thought it was a telemarketer," she said. "I hung up on him. Then they called back, and I thought, 'Oh this sucker is persistent.'"

But when she answered the second time, the voice on the other end asked if she was Captain Bryan Buckley’s mother.

Then she knew.

She walked over to the front door.

"When they're, God forbid, killed, they come to your front door," Buckley said Monday. "I wanted to make sure no one was on my front steps. And no one was."

In the few days since Bryan's injury, Connie said she and her husband Bill have fielded many phone calls, emails and Facebook messages from friends of theirs and Bryan's, wanting to make sure he was ok.

Bryan Buckley was captain of the CB West football team in 1998. His decision to join the military was profiled in the book Fading Echoes by local sportswriter Mike Sielski. The book tells the stories of Buckley and Colby Umbrell, who had been captain of the CB East football team and became an Army Ranger. Umbrell was killed in Iraq in May 2007.

Now stationed out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., Bryan Buckely left May 7 of this year for his fourth tour in Afghanistan. Connie said he is expected back home in January 2013.