Appalachian State player receives Purple Heart

Special teams star Stokes was injured in Iraq before helping win I-AA title

He wanted to be known more for serving as the wedge-buster on Appalachian State’s I-AA national championship team than being a veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq. Still, it was hard not to notice that U.S. Marine Corps patch on his Mountaineers’ jersey this season.

Now he stands out in another way: he recently received his Purple Heart for injuries received in a roadside bomb attack in 2004.

Stokes, 27, is proud of his time in the military and talks openly about his war experiences. But he sounds more eager to talk about being a student-athlete in this small college town nestled in the North Carolina mountains.

“I didn’t want to be an advertising campaign,” he said. “I wanted to play football again. That was my dream.”

Stokes played in 14 of 15 games for the Mountaineers, who beat Northern Iowa 21-16 in December for their first title, and finished with five tackles while playing on special teams and as a reserve tight end. His Purple Heart was officially issued in early December — the day before the national semifinals — and arrived last month at his mother’s home in Gibsonville.

It’s just the latest highlight in a rewarding few months for Stokes, who also appeared on “The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson” on CBS days after the title game.

Many nights while serving overseas, Stokes would imagine playing football again.

“Of course, it’s way more than everything I hoped it could be,” he said.

Stokes was a sergeant in the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines Division out of Camp Lejeune on his second tour in Iraq when he was injured. The device went off as his armored vehicle led a squad near Lutayfiah, leaving him with shrapnel wounds in his right arm and hearing damage in his right ear — a condition that grew worse as his squad was involved in firefights and encountered about 30 other exploding roadside bombs.

“It’s a weird feeling,” he said of the explosion. “That’s why for a couple of seconds I was like, ’What just happened?’ You just feel the most extreme pressure on all parts of your body. ... It’s like everything was crushing in on every side of you, then all of a sudden, it was released and it felt like a vacuum after that.”

By the time he returned to the United States later that year, Stokes had taken part in more than 200 combat missions. And once he was back, he turned his attention toward football.

Stokes began as a walk-on at East Carolina in 1997, but left at the end of the semester due to an injury.

He then went to Elon, but his habit of partying too much followed him there and he flunked out of school after one semester, ultimately leading to his decision to join the Marines two years later.

Appalachian State had recruited Stokes out of high school, but his grades weren’t good enough. So his mother and grandfather visited coach Jerry Moore and admissions officials about Stokes enrolling after returning home, bringing Moore a letter from Stokes and showing a photo of him carrying a machine gun in front of an armored vehicle.

He was granted two years of eligibility by the NCAA and quickly earned the respect of the players. They greeted Stokes and fellow Marine Wayne Norman, who also served in Iraq, with applause when Moore introduced them at an offseason meeting in early 2005.

“It was a big moment for everybody,” said Moore, who completed his 17th season. “I felt chill bumps. It was for real, there wasn’t anything phony about it. These kids know it’s for real. They see something every day about Iraq.”

From there, Stokes tried to fit in. He talked about his military experiences when asked, but didn’t volunteer them. He concentrated on proving himself as a player to his teammates.

The most obvious way to tell Stokes was different was the Marines patch he and Norman wore at the behest of Moore. And in the season opener at Eastern Kentucky, Stokes assisted on a tackle on the opening kickoff.

“People can say ’We’re going to war on the field,”’ said Matt Isenhour, a junior offensive lineman. “You ain’t going to war. That guy’s been to war. When you think that we have a guy on our team who did two tours in Iraq, that is something special.”

Stokes, meanwhile, talks of his teammates like a surrogate family that fills the void after leaving the Marines. And he’s still adjusting to life at home, from dealing with occasional nightmares to attending the funeral of a Marine from his unit who was killed after Stokes left Iraq.

Days after returning home, Stokes had to leave a mall because he felt “paranoid” being around so many people without carrying a weapon for the first time. He admits to still swerving away from abandoned cars on the side of the road, a favorite place for insurgents to hide explosives in Iraq.

But with each day that passes, Stokes hopes he’s becoming known more as a football player.

“You can’t just take the respect you earned from something long ago and say, ’Well, that will carry me the rest of my life,”’ he said. “To me, it’s all great and everything, but that’s not what I’m here to do now.”