Trying to make a life
After a battlefield injury, endless challenges
By the time Recio got to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., doctors thought they could save his left leg, but they had doubts about the other one. The doctors gave him a choice--amputate the leg or fight to save it. Recio, a runner, cyclist, and scuba diver, wasn't ready to give up on the leg.
Mateo wound up in Walter Reed's psych ward, where doctors diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. "I lost my humanity in Iraq," says Mateo, who had to pull a headless Iraqi shot by American soldiers from a truck. "I didn't come back the same." His wounds include hearing loss, shrapnel in his head and shoulder, five bulging disks on his neck, and a herniated disk in his back. But of greater concern are his anger and anxiety and his feeling that he is still pumped up for battle. "It's like you are on kill mode," he says. "You come back from an intense environment, but people expect you to be normal like nothing ever happened."
It wasn't until Mayorga reached the hospital in Fort Gordon, Ga., that the gravity of his wounds hit him. He had lost 2 1/2 fingers on his left hand. Then he contracted a serious staph infection and was put in a small isolation unit for nearly a month. He felt depressed, and soured on the daily routine at the base. All soldiers with "medical holdover" status had to report for formation at dawn and walk long distances, even if they took pain medication. They also received work assignments, considered a key to recuperation. "They asked too much of us there," he says.
Baar, the humvee driver, stayed in Iraq. Two days after the attack, a surgeon pulled the shrapnel from his neck. Today, he is recuperating after back surgery in Texas. The former sky diver is beginning to walk again and is eager to return to a full life. He wants to stay in the military but says, "I don't know what's going to happen."
"We broke it." After the attack on the humvee, the men of Charlie Company still in Iraq lost much of their swagger, increasingly on guard as attacks increased. On August 29, Adams and Spc. Will Riddle, 21, of Titusville, Fla., who made pizzas at Domino's before he was deployed, were patrolling in front of Ramadi's main mosque when a homemade explosive went off. Smoke was everywhere. Riddle, bleeding, his eyes filled with dirt, heard soldiers calling, "Sergeant Adams, wake up!" Adams had brain matter spilling out of his head. Bissett, who had joked that the unit would be gone only six months and see no combat, tried to push it back in with his thumb.
Back home, Summer Adams got a call from the state National Guard. "John's convoy got hit," a lieutenant said. "It's a serious injury, but we don't know how serious." She worked the phones and eventually tracked him down at the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. The news was shattering: A quarter-size piece of shrapnel was embedded in his cerebellum. More shrapnel went into his right frontal lobe. A small chunk of his ear was missing. Part of his right palm was gone, too. Later, a doctor called her from Landstuhl: "I'm going to be blunt with you. John flat-lined on me. The swelling on his brain was too intense."
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