Wounded U.S. soldiers travel many tough paths to recovery
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Knight Ridder
By Neela Banerjee
THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON - Every hour of every day for the last four months, Spc. Robert
Acosta has thought of the moment when the grenade slipped from his

On the early evening of July 13, Acosta, of the Army's 1st Armored

was riding in the passenger seat of a Humvee toward the gates of the
Baghdad airport. Something entered through his window, flew by his face
trailing a ribbon of smoke, hit the windshield and landed next to the
driver.

Acosta grabbed the grenade with his right hand, but as he turned to throw

out the window, he dropped it between his legs. He picked it up again.
Somewhere between his ankles and knees, the grenade exploded in his hand.
"It was gone, it just disintegrated," he said of his hand.

The driver of the Humvee was unhurt. Not only did the blast destroy

hand, it also shattered his legs, the left one now mended with a steel
plate and skin grafts and the hole in his heel almost closed. In place of
his right hand and part of his forearm, he wears a prosthesis that ends in
a two-pronged claw.

"I think I should be dead right now," Acosta, 20, said one recent

resting from doing pull-ups in physical therapy at the Walter Reed Army
Medical Center here. "But I feel like I failed myself. If I hadn't dropped
it, I would still have my hand."

Reminded that he had saved his friend's life, Acosta stared straight ahead
and remained silent.

(The Defense Department said on Friday that the number of American
casualties in Iraq had passed 9,000, United Press International reported.
From March 19 to Oct. 30, the Surgeon General's office said, more than 400
service members died, 1,967 were wounded and 6,861 were evacuated for
medical conditions unrelated to combat.)

Dozens of amputees

Some of the most seriously wounded come through Walter Reed. Already, 58
amputees have been treated at Walter Reed, 47 with major single-limb
removals and 11 with multiple-limb amputations.

For all the numbing similarity of the ambushes with rocket-propelled
grenades and roadside bombs that wounded the soldiers now at Walter Reed,
each has begun to piece his life back together in a different way, into a
shape he never expected.

There is Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly, a reservist from Abilene, Texas, who is
determined to become a firefighter as he had planned. There is Spc. Edward
Platt of Harrisburg, Pa., who focuses his hope and unremitting anger on

use of a prosthetic leg he has just received. And there is Acosta of Santa
Ana, Calif., who remains haunted by regret.

Quick evacuation

When soldiers are ambushed in Iraq, they are rapidly evacuated, their
vehicles quickly towed and their plight boiled down into the day's tally

dead and wounded. "When we get injured, all it says is 'one soldier
wounded,' " Acosta said, echoing others at Walter Reed. "Not that a

has lost an arm or a leg, or how hard that is."

The wounded stay at first in the main hospital building at Walter Reed,
about eight miles north of downtown Washington. Once the threat of
infection and the need for serious surgeries have passed, they go home for
several weeks before returning to the hospital campus.

The wounded are comforted to find others who knew towns like Hilla, Ramadi
and Tikrit and who lost a part of themselves on some identical, stunningly
hot Iraqi day.

"I hate this place so much, but all these guys, we form a bond," Acosta
said. "Talking to Vietnam vets, that's cool. But it's not like talking to
someone who's been through Iraq."

http://www.dailystar.com/star/today/31116NIRAQ-WOUNDED.html