Aggie Foster was bracing herself for the year to come, when two of her sons were due to be deployed to Afghanistan. And that was worry enough.

She had little reason to worry about what could happen to them before they deployed.

But Foster's son, Joey, was among dozens wounded in a Thursday melee at Fort Hood, Texas. The 21-year-old private first class from Ogden was shot in the hip, but is expected to make a full recovery.

Aggie Foster, who said she was "terrified" when she first heard the news from her daughter-in-law, broke into tears as she spoke of the 13 people known to have been killed in the frenzied firefight, including fellow Utahn Aaron Nemelka.

"My heart just goes out to them," she said.

Foster said she had a phone conversation with her son in which he was able to relay some of the details of the attack at the fort's Soldier Readiness Center.

"He was standing in line when a man stood up and started yelling in Arabic," Foster said. "He was only about 20 feet from the guy when he started shooting. And then, at some point, he got hit."

Foster said her daughter-in-law, Mandy Foster, told her that her son had helped drag some of the wounded to safety.

"I'm proud," she said. "But of course I wish this had never happened."

Mandy Foster told the Standard-Examiner that she first received a call from a friend around 1:30 p.m. Thursday that shots had been fired at Fort Hood. Joey called about an hour later to tell her he had been shot, but would be all right.

"He said he doesn't even know when he got hit," she told the Ogden newspaper. He just knows that he grabbed as many people as he could that were being shot by [the gunman] and ran to the back around the corner," she added. "Then he realized that he'd been shot, 20 minutes after sitting behind a wall."

Joey Foster is scheduled for surgery today, Mandy Foster said.