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A U.S. Marine from Mountain Top was injured last week during behind-enemy-lines action in Afghanistan, but his family says he received immediate care and is expected to have a complete recovery.

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Shanley

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Sgt. Kyle Shanley, 25, was thrown from the turret of his unit’s transport vehicle when it triggered an improvised explosive device Friday while attempting to evacuate previously injured Marines in Helmand Province, his mother, Carin, said Thursday.

“He was in the best position, up in the turret,” she said, as far from the explosion as he could be.

“His jawbone was fractured, and his cheekbone was crushed. I guess right now he has a black eye, of course. They say he looks like the one side of his face is shrunken in. But right now, you know what, I am so grateful.”

The 2002 Crestwood High School graduate received immediate care in the field to stitch up a cut from his nose down to his lip, his mother said, and was airlifted to a hospital in Germany by Sunday.

“Two grains of sand can get into a wound in Afghanistan, and it can cause a really serious infection,” she said. “It’s a dirty country.”

He is being flown today to the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland, where his family will meet him and doctors will discuss the reconstructive surgery he will receive.

“Actually, it has been amazing just for the fact that the Marines have called us and told us what was going to happen every step of the way, which I was surprised. The more that we knew what was happening, the better we felt,” Carin said.

She had been out of the house when Marines representatives attempted to call, but she was home when her son called from a medical station. “I think one of the worst fears of a mother is to see the U.S. military show up on your phone caller ID or show up in a car at your house. … The fact that we talked to him first and then they called us, it was much easier to take,” she said.

Shanley had been part of a six-vehicle convoy attempting to rescue a reconnaissance battalion that had sustained several casualties. Four of the six Marines in Shanley’s vehicle were injured, Carin said.

The two-week operation, called “Strike of the Sword,” had airlifted 4,000 Marines into enemy territory to ruin the poppy harvest that is the main funding source for the insurgency, she said.

In Germany, Shanley has been able to connect with several local people, including a family friend who is an Air Force nurse and a White Haven priest who is serving as a chaplain there.

“They’re a very connected group,” Carin said. “People have been calling like crazy (the family’s home), which is good.”

Shanley was in his second tour of overseas fighting, having seen action in Iraq in 2008, his mother said. After he recovers, the scout/sniper will spend the rest of his active-duty commitment training recruits before beginning his new assignment in January in San Diego. There, he will be a recon instructor, she said.

“I’ve learned a lot in this last year,” she said. “It’s amazing; I never thought I’d know all this stuff.”