Operation Iraqi Freedom, Fallen Heroes, Iraq War 03/19/03

Artem Lazukin - www.OurWarHeroes.org

Artem Lazukin

Portland, Oregon

April ?, 2015

Age Military Rank Unit/Location
26 Marine L/Cpl

1st Battalion, 5th Marines

 LCpl Lazukin enlisted in the Marines Corps in Dec, 2009, he served with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. In June, 2011, while on patrol on his first deployment, he stepped on an IED and suffered numerous traumatic injuries. In Nov, 2013 he was medically retired by the Marine Corps but remained active in the Marine community.

Artem Lazukin - www.OurWarHeroes.org

Returning Home, Click photo below:

Artem Lazukin - www.OurWarHeroes.org

April 11, 2015

For some funeral service snapshots, click photo below:

Artem Lazukin - www.OurWarHeroes.org

April 14, 2015

From Marine Corps Association & Foundation mca-marines.org 05/14/13:

Marines Shoot For Success During 2013 Warrior Games
By LCpl Corey Dabney
May 14, 2013

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The 2013 Warrior Games Marine shooting team has been on fire four years in a row, living up to their motto, every Marine a rifleman.

The Marines won 13 of the 24 medals awarded during the shooting competition, bringing the team one step closer to wining the Chairman's Cup during the Warrior Games aboard the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. , May 13, 2013.

"I’m happy because so many of the Marines motivated each other to medal," said Marine veteran MSgt Dionisios H. Nicholas, from Mililani Town, Hawaii. "That's what its all about, winning side-by-side with our brothers and sisters."

The competition was close, especially for Marine veterans GySgt Pedro Aquino and Cpl Angel Gomez, who competed against each other in a shoot out. Aquino, from Hawthorne, Calif., won by 0.1 over his teammate in the upper body disability prone air rifle shoot out to take the gold. He also won a bronze medal in the upper body disability standing air rifle competition. Gomez, 28, from Visalia, Calif., placed second, winning silver in the upper body disability prone air rifle competition and silver in the upper body disability standing air rifle competition.

Maj John T. Schwent Jr., the head shooting coach of the Marine team said a shooting victory is significant to his team because the Marines trained hard, and the medals prove it.

LCpl Richard "Jake" Stalder, with WWBn.-West, won a gold medal in the upper body disability standing air rifle competition.

Nicholas won gold a gold medal in lower body disability air rifle and a silver medal in the lower disability air pistol competition.

Marine veteran Sgt Brian Riley, from Oshkosh, Wis., won a bronze medal in the lower body disability air rifle competition.

LCpl Artem Lazukin, from Portland, Ore., and with WWBn-West won a silver medal in the lower body disability standing air rifle competition.

Marine veteran Sgt Joey Smith, from Shelby, N.C., won a bronze medal in the lower body disability standing air rifle competition.

SSgt Phillip Shockley, from Augusta, Ga., and with WWBn-East, won a gold medal in the open air pistol competition.

Sgt Clayton McDaniel, from Molalla, Ore., and with WWBn-West, won a bronze medal in the open air rifle competition.

Marine veteran Cpl Luke Prentice, from Chicago, won a silver medal in the open air rifle competition.
From The Orange County Register ocregister.com 03/07/13:

Wounded Warrior games reignite 'Marine spirit'
March 7, 2013 Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

CAMP PENDLETON – In a split second, Pfc. Artem Lazukin used his left arm to heave his torso toward the ball and then just as quickly he hurled his arms up and spiked it back across the net, winning a point for the Wounded Warrior Battalion West.

Just minutes later, his team would secure gold in the floor volleyball finals Wednesday at the Paige Field House on the Marine Corps base.

"It's like eating a 10-pound bag of sugar," said Lazukin, a double amputee injured in Sanguin, Afghanistan, where he served as a rifleman point man with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. "The adrenaline, it's just insane."

Lazukin, 24, was among more than 250 wounded, ill and injured Marines who competed in the third annual Marine Corps Trials. At least 100 service members from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom also competed.

Athletes competed in four teams: Wounded Warrior Battalion East, Wounded Warrior Battalion West, International Military and Veterans. There were seven sports, and medals were awarded in each.

Fifty Marines from the trials will represent the Marines at the 2013 Warrior Games at the Olympic Training Center and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., May 11-17.

"The focus is on ability not the disability," said Lt. Col Jim Fullwood, commanding officer of the Wounded Warrior Battalion West. "It's about reigniting the Marine Corps spirit. It gives them an opportunity to find that spirit and achieve something great."

Marines competing in the event ranged from amputees to those with cancer to those with post-traumatic stress disorder. Fullwood said at least 65 percent of the Marines now in the Wounded Warrior Battalion have some mental health issues.

"The care and awareness has improved over the last 10 years," he said. "In the last five years we've seen a surge of mental health providers."

Athletes arrived at Camp Pendleton about two weeks ago and trained for seven days with world-class coaches.

For Cpl. Kyle Reid, the dedication, hard work and training that week paid off hugely. Six medals hanging around his neck clanked together as he took the stage again during the swimming finals, collecting two more.

Reid, representing the Wounded Warrior West Battalion, led his team to gold in the final 200-meter freestyle relay. Reid suffers from PTSD and non-epileptic seizures following a deployment to Afghanistan with the Combat Logistics Battalion. He was responsible for moving the bodies of Marines from storage lockers to the landing zone.

After three months of doing that at least several times a week, Reid said, he began having hallucinations.

"I would see the bodies I had to carry and they'd talk to me, saying things like 'Why didn't you help me?'" he said. "It was more or less survivor's guilt all those didn't make it and I did."

Reid, originally from Chinook, Mont., said it took him nearly two years to seek help. When he began having hallucinations, he pushed them away by volunteering. Even if it was to sweep a hall or dig a hole, he'd go for it. He did all he could to keep his mind busy.
From The Oregonian oregonlive.com 09/23/11:

Artem Lazukin's long, hard road to recovery
By Mike Francis | The Oregonian/OregonLive 

First, Artem Lazukin's ears started ringing.
Then, he was disoriented for a couple of seconds.

Next came pain.

The bomb had blown off both his ankles, shredded his legs, sent shrapnel burrowing into his flesh and deafened him.

That was three months ago Thursday. Lazukin, a Marine Lance Corporal and a 2006 graduate of Clackamas High School, has spent the days since in military hospitals in Germany, Maryland and California. On the three-month anniversary of the blast that cost him his legs, he was fitted with his new prosthetic legs at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, where sailors and Marines are sent to heal.

He is one of the casualties of war not routinely written about: Those with crippling injuries and the long, lonely months spent trying to recover the ability to walk, hear and think. The Defense Department issues brief statements identifying each service member killed in the wars, but it doesn't for the wounded. In its casualty statistics, it says 46,288 U.S. service members had been wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some advocacy groups say the number is more than twice that.

Because of medical advances and improved military capabilities, troops today can survive wounds that would have killed their predecessors in earlier wars. But the result is that more severely damaged people are working to return to something like a normal life.

Lazukin is luckier than many. His mother, Tatyana, is with him in San Diego, where he may spend up to two years re-learning how to walk. In an email, she said, "My son is my hero. I want my fellow citizens to know what Artem has done for his country."

Other relatives and friends have visited as well. One of his close Marine friends, Isaac Blunt, was blown up in another blast about 10 days before Lazukin. Now they live in the same outpatient barracks in San Diego.

Artem Lazukin was 22 when he was blown up; he's 23 now. He was on his first deployment, where he and his fellow Marines in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Division were patrolling in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. The bomb exploded when he entered a small, damaged compound where Afghans had lived. He entered a room after it had been swept for explosives, but the sweeper evidently didn't check the direct route through the door. The explosion, Lazukin says, "was clearly avoidable."

He was unconscious for the flight from Afghanistan to Germany, but doctors told him later his heart stopped beating twice. "I believe I came back for my mom," he said. "My mom would have been crushed. My whole family would be crushed."

Tatyana and Artem and his brother emigrated to the Portland area from their native Ukraine in 2000 and became citizens. He took up Taekwondo and earned a black belt from U.S. West Coast Taekwondo. He hoped to become a Taekwondo coach when he got out of the Marines. Then he hoped to become a Portland cop.

Suzi Jones of Northeast Portland got to know Artem through Taekwondo, which she and her husband also practice. She and her family recently visited Artem and Tatyana in San Diego. She is an oncology nurse who said she was "shocked" by the extent of the injuries she saw there.

Artem, she said, "was not given anything in his life." But he worked hard and joined the Marines as a way to get an education, a paying career and help his mom with her expenses. He is "brilliantly resilient," Jones said.

It's too soon for Lazukin to chart his future. But he speaks Russian and the Marines pay him for his language skills. He said he hopes to go to the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, Calif.

What message does he want to deliver to Oregonians? He paused for 30 seconds.

"I would want people to treat us as they treat themselves. Not look down on us because we're injured.

"When I've been around people, I've seen them look away.

"Like I'm not there."

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