Kurt Hopson, a U.S. Army sergeant first class, spent one year in northern Iraq searching the desert almost every day for land mines.

“It was pretty dangerous. We’d find a lot of them. They’d blow up on us sometimes, but most of the time we’d identify them and call someone in to disarm them,” he said

Hopson was deployed to Iraq from February 2004, and he returned one year later. He missed none of his active duty after he was knocked unconscious when a device exploded on his convoy in November 2004.

Hopson, a 1989 graduate of Eudora High School, spent the past two weeks in the area with his parents, Rick and Delores Hopson, and other family members. He also talked to residents of Pioneer Ridge Health Center in Lawrence Thursday.

On the morning that he was wounded, Hopson’s platoon searched for land mines when an explosion suddenly hit the vehicles at the front of his convoy. He got out of his vehicle to try to direct all of the vehicles away from the trouble when a 500-pound device exploded and sent shrapnel flying, Hopson said.

First Sgt. Kurt Hopson of the U.S. Army spent one year in northern Iraq near Balad and Samarra as platoon commander with the First Battalion, 18th Infantry Division. While his platoon searched for land mines, he was wounded in action. He was awarded a Purple Heart. Hopson graduated from Eudora High School in 1989.

The blow knocked him unconscious, and six of his men were wounded. But they eventually made it safely out of the area.

“It was a close call, but I was lucky,” he said. “It wasn’t anything heroic. I just did what I had to do.”

While in Iraq, no one in his platoon was killed in action, Hopson said. For his efforts, he was awarded a Purple Heart. He’s still waiting on a Bronze Star, he said.

During most of his time there, Hopson said he witnessed the Iraqi army improve and most of the citizens he worked with warmed to the American soldiers.

“I saw a huge change in Iraq from the time I got there to the time I left,” Hopson said. “It started to be a lot safer.”

One lasting image was the sight of a mass grave, he said.

“When you see that stuff firsthand, it makes you realize why we went there,” he said.

Hopson is stationed in Germany along with his wife, Patricia, and two children, Dylan, 8, and Morgan, 6. This week at Fort Benning, Ga., he begins Ranger School, he said.

Hopson expects to return for another stint in Iraq at some point and he’s somewhat apprehensive.

“If that’s what my country asks me to do, I’ll do it,” he said.