Word: legging
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...tomorrows," says Major Arthur Jackson, chief of the unit's Baghdad squad. But many will face grim times. "People say, 'Well, he didn't die,'" says Captain Todd Farrell, a 159th helicopter pilot. "But a lot of these guys have an arm blown off or their leg blown off below the femur. Their lives are still going to suck...
Early-morning light spills into the physical-therapy room at Walter Reed, as wounded soldiers sweat and grimace aboard stationary bicycles. Each man is steadily grinding out the miles with a single leg, his crutches leaning against a nearby wall. This morning happy-go-lucky PFC Wyatt meets with Joseph Miller, the hospital's chief prosthetist, who makes wounded soldiers close to whole again with man-made arms and legs. The types of wounds coming back from Iraq--blast and shrapnel injuries--make his job tougher. "Those kinds of injuries mean more infections and multiple surgeries," he says. Wyatt nods...
...bucolic Walter Reed, which has been treating wounded U.S. soldiers since World War I. The men--and a few women--coming off the Iraqi battlefields in stretchers tend to be young: Castro is 23, Meinen 24, and Wyatt, from Franktown, Colo., turned 21 two weeks before losing his leg. Many enlisted as a way to earn money for college and get in shape, but now they're wheelchair bound. Contrary to the old Army recruiting motto, they're not fighting to be all they can be anymore. They're fighting to be as close to normal as they...
...doesn't much care for those who think Bush fudged the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. "That makes you feel like you fought for nothing or you fought for a liar," he says. "They're telling me I went out there and I got my leg blown off for a liar, and I know that's just not true." Wyatt says he would stay in the Army if he could remain in a combat unit, but he knows that's unlikely. So he's considering college...
Castro says he just did what he signed up to do. "Someone has to do the job, and we did it," he says. "The price was my leg." He plans to return to college--his four-year hitch was up a week after he lost his leg--and marry his fiance Elizabeth Gonzalez, who quit her California job and moved to Washington to help him recover. Later this month, if all the paperwork comes through, Castro should reach another milestone: becoming a U.S. citizen...