Natalie Sudman didn't want to open her eyes.

The Corps of Engineers employee had been napping in the back of an armored Toyota Landcruiser as her convoy returned to the Tallil military base in southern Iraq after a long day of project inspections.

Hearing a loud 'pop,' Sudman felt the vehicle veer sharply off the road. She remembers not wanting to face the reality of what that sound meant.

"I knew exactly what happened. I knew immediately we'd been hit and I remember thinking, 'I don't want to open my eyes and deal with this,' " she said.

When she did, she found the inside of the vehicle bloodied and blackened.

A fellow Corps employee in the seat beside her, Jarrod Bonnick, was badly wounded with a severed femoral artery. Two personal security escorts were in the front seat. The driver had shrapnel wounds to the head; the other man in the passenger seat in front of Sudman was already dead, nearly decapitated by an explosive penetrative device - a super-IED capable of penetrating armor - that had detonated under the right front wheel well.

Sudman, 49, would eventually learn that the roadside bomb that detonated beneath her on Nov. 24, 2007, had broken her heel and shattered her right wrist and forearm. Its blunt force trauma fractured her skull and broke every bone on the right side of her face, including her eye socket. Shrapnel from the explosion is still working its way out of her body 15 months later.

Still, the former Rapid City resident says the injuries she suffered in Iraq are minor compared to the experiences and perspectives gained there.

"I loved working in Iraq, even when I hated it," Sudman said.

Sudman spent a year and a half in Iraq working as a civilian employee with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As a project engineer on numerous infrastructure projects, Sudman oversaw contracts to build electric power stations, water treatment plants, highways, health care centers and more.

"Because of my job, I went out a lot more into the field than other people did," she said of her fellow Corps employees. Working among the civilian population, she always took the possibility of an IED or sniper attack seriously.

"I always knew it was a possibility. And I was surprised to find out once I was over there that most Corps employees didn't take it seriously. I really did. Each time I went out, I went over in my mind - if this happened, what would I need to do? I went over a checklist in my mind."

She was trained on how to respond in the event of an attack and, despite her extensive injuries and the shock that set in immediately after the explosion, that training took over.

* Check to see if anyone is bleeding out. Oddly, nobody in the car was bleeding profusely from their many wounds. "When you go into shock, the body shuts down," she said.

* Check for a transponder device and activate it. A transponder notifies military communication centers across Iraq of the vehicle's location, but her vehicle didn't contain one.

* Check for the medical kit. Given her injuries, Sudman couldn't reach the kit in her vehicle.

* Finally, get hold of a gun. "That's in case the bad guys get there before the good guys do."

The first person to get to the scene was an Iraqi police escort who had been traveling with the convoy, keeping about a quarter of a mile between vehicles.

"He looked through the window and his eyes were like saucers. He just looked at me for a second and yelled, 'Help!' Then he disappeared."

Sudman suspects she was knocked unconscious for the first few seconds after the explosion and that the 'pop' she remembers hearing was her coming back to consciousness. Curiously, she didn't feel anything.

"I had no pain whatsoever. I think it was probably shock," she said.

Within 72 hours, she had been transported to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., by way of Landstuhl, Germany. Because she was a government employee injured in a war zone, she was entitled to the same medical care from the U.S. military as any wounded soldier.

More than a year later, Sudman still hasn't returned to work. Metal plates hold her wrist together and the nerve damage that caused intense pain during recovery is getting better. Holes in her skull have been covered with titanium mesh and eye surgeons have reattached her tattered retina and removed a lens, leaving her vision both crooked and blurred. She is legally blind in her right eye, but doctors are still hopeful for some improvement. More than a year later, tiny pieces of shrapnel continue to work their way through her skin.

Bonnick survived his injuries, too, something Sudman attributes to the fast action of the Aegis guards in the convoy. She and Bonnick were the first Corps employees to be seriously injured in Iraq since the war began in 2003. Six weeks after the attack, both of them received the Defense of Freedom Medal, the equivalent of a Purple Heart for civilian Corps staff.

Sudman made no secret of her opposition to the invasion of Iraq or her dislike of Bush administration policies. But when she got the opportunity to leave her job with the Bureau of Land Management's archeology and anthropology divisions and join the Corps of Engineers in Iraq, she volunteered to go.

"I thought if the only people who are going to go over to Iraq are the people who want to take advantage of that situation - or people who are Republican ideologues who are over there advancing their political issues - then some of us who didn't agree with the war in the first place would have to take some responsibility for not trying to change that," she said.

What she didn't expect was to love the work, the country and its people so much.

"I would love to go back, but I don't think I can do that to my family," she said. "The first time was really, really hard on my mother. It might kill her."

Sudman's parents are Gail and Duane Sudman, former residents of Rapid City who have moved to Minnesota. Her late grandparents, Clarence and Marion Johnson, were Sturgis-area ranchers.

"My first reaction to Natalie's decision to go to Iraq was disbelief," says her mother. "I couldn't understand why she would want to be involved in what so many us - including Natalie, as far as I knew - considered an illegal war."

Despite their misgivings, Gail and Duane came to admire their daughter's courage and commitment and even understand her desire to go back to a place that could kill her. Her mother shed some tears and lost some sleep and admits she would be apprehensive if her daughter wanted to return to Iraq.

"But I trust her reasoning and I know each person has to find her own way rather than adhering to what anyone else thinks appropriate," Gail said.

As the Obama administration shifts its focus in the fight against terrorism to Afghanistan, Natalie Sudman is left with a tangle of conflicting feelings about American policy in the Middle East. And she doesn't have any answers.

"As if being in the middle of a tar baby bestows some rare insight or wisdom on how to make tar un-sticky," she said. "I don't think I ever came to a conclusion about the war. I just don't know."

"I do understand if we pull out of Iraq too soon, the whole Middle East could turn into a fireball," she said. "If there's a power vacuum in Iraq, there are plenty of countries that are willing and ready to jump right in. If we think we've got a mess over there now, it could be worse."

She does point out that the gratitude of the average Iraqi is often missing from media reports.

"For one thing, a lot of Iraqi are so grateful. They thank you for getting rid of Saddam. The man on the street is very grateful for what we're doing."

She admits the experience changed her.

"I was much more cynical before I went there," she said. "Yes, we are over there for the oil, but I also think that doesn't mean that we can't do good at the same time."

For Sudman, the IED that ended her work in Iraq is just one part of a much larger story.

"I spent 1 1/2 years over there, and most all of my memories of Iraq are good ones, interesting ones," she said. "Being hit with an IED is just one in a long string of memories."

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com