Wounded Soldiers Cast Off Burdens as They Fish on the Bay

Wounded Soldiers Cast Off Burdens as They Fish on the Bay

By Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 9, 2009

The worst thing you can do when you're recovering from war is stay in your room, said Sgt. 1st Class Carlos Martinez, who served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"You get in your head, it becomes like a movie," said Martinez, 50, who was injured during his last tour and medically evacuated for traumatic brain injury, shrapnel in his knee and post-traumatic stress disorder. "I can't handle being alone."

On Saturday, a band of Calvert County volunteers gave Martinez and more than 50 other wounded soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center a chance to get out of their rooms -- and their heads -- and into a boat on the Chesapeake Bay.

Under a just-past-dawn sky quilted in clouds, a school bus escorted by the Red Knights, a motorcycle club for firefighters, pulled into the parking lot of the Rod 'N' Reel restaurant and marina in Chesapeake Beach. The soldiers, some with braces and casts, stepped down from the bus to a cheering crowd of locals waving American flags.
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Wounded Soldiers Cast Off Burdens as They Fish on the Bay