Julia Moffitt/Eyewitness News
Lebanon, Dec. 26 - It's a long road from Iraq to the Grimes family home in Lebanon, Indiana. But so far this year it's a journey both of Bill and Wanda Grimes' two children have taken.
Most recently their daughter, 26-year-old Specialist Billie Grimes who arrived home from Iraq just in time for Christmas.
Grimes, called Doc by the members of her platoon, is an army medic who graduated from Western Boone High School. " I'm still in awe right now of being home. I'm looking at it like, is this really real?"
The reality of what Grimes and other servicemen and women are doing arrived on magazine racks across the country this week. Grimes, along with two other soldiers from her unit, are on the cover of Time Magazine representing the 1.4 million American soldiers as person of the year.
She and her family are honored.
Bill Grimes says, "I think it makes everybody proud when somebody is recognized from your area."
With the recognition comes the realization of how much danger and death surround their daughter daily. Just hours after the Time photo was taken Grimes was shot at as she worked to save the lives of two Time staff members after a grenade was thrown into their open Humvee.
In November, she tended to her lieutenant after a different explosion, hours later he died from his injuries. When she wakes up in the morning she knows her life is in danger every single day. "Oh yea, pretty much, kind of wondering, is this the day that it may happen to us, or is this the day that nothing will happen?"
She reminds all Americans to keep thinking of their soldiers and, more importantly, supporting them. "I got letters from total strangers thanking me for doing that. But that lifts us up. That makes us believe that we are over there for a reason."
Grimes was granted a 15-day leave just last week because her brother Christopher is about to head out to Iraq.
She says she is happy to be home, but eager to finish what she helped start.
Specialist Grimes heads back to Iraq January 8.
