SHAPLEIGH (AP) – A U.S. Army reservist wounded in Iraq when his Humvee hit an explosive was expected to arrive at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. on Monday, his wife said.

Sgt. Curtis Mills, 29, of Shapleigh, was on patrol in Ramadi, about 50 miles east of Baghdad, when the Humvee hit the explosive last week, according to his wife, Penny Mills. He is with the Saco-based 1st Detachment, 94th Military Police Company.

Mills’ suffered a compound fracture to his right arm and multiple shrapnel wounds along his right side and was taken to a military hospital in Germany where he has undergone several surgeries, she said.

A second reservist from Maine, Spc. Christopher Kotch, 22, of Brunswick, was also wounded in the explosion, according to the unit commander of the 94th Military Police Company.

Penny Mills said her husband told her that the explosion occurred at about 11:30 p.m. last Monday.

“After the explosion, they were ambushed,” she said. “They had to drive on a flat tire. He reached for his radio and said, ‘We’ve been hit.’ He had to pick up his gun and start shooting.”

Platoon leader Sgt. Reggie Littlefield, who is home on leave in Oxford, said Mills was part of a team patrolling supply lines when they hit the explosive and then took gunfire.

Littlefield said the soldiers were injured by the explosion, not by gunfire, and that Mills and Kotch were the most seriously injured.

The 94th Military Police left Saco last November and was stationed in Fort Polk, La., before leaving for Iraq in April. Mills, a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Sanford, joined the reserve unit in 1997.

Penny Mills said Monday that her husband was put on a plane Monday morning for the nine-hour flight to the Walter Reed hopsital.

“It will be a long road (to recovery),” she said. “But we have a lot of support. And my prayers are with the guys still there.”

AP-ES-09-29-03 1000EDT

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