As amputee ranks grow, wounded warriors bond

As amputee ranks grow, wounded warriors bond
STILL FIGHTING: Afghanistan, Iraq war vets face new enemy -- broken bodies
THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 2010


WASHINGTON POST

Aug. 11, 2009, Afghanistan:
After the blast, something didn't feel right, so 1st Lt. Joe Guyton looked down. Through the swirling dust, he glimpsed the white of his left shinbone. His right leg was gone, instantly vaporized, his uniform abruptly ending at the knee.

The pain would hit at any moment. He knew that. But for now, just after a bomb rocked his convoy while on patrol in Kandahar province, he was so amped up on adrenaline that he felt nothing more than an odd discomfort.

Don't look down, he told himself. Don't think about it.

Guyton, a recently married 28-year-old with soft blue eyes and red hair, had to hurry before he would be overwhelmed with agony. He shouted to his fellow soldiers to keep moving through the danger zone, to keep an eye out for the enemy, to report their wounds — as he finally did himself. Soon, two soldiers were wrapping his legs in tourniquets.

He woke up in a military hospital in Germany.

Guyton, from Burke, Va., became one of nearly 1,000 service members who have suffered amputations in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — wars that, thanks to advances in battlefield medicine, are measured as much by wheelchairs and prosthetics as tombstones.

In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, 967 American service members have lost at least one limb, as of March 1. Of them, 229 have lost more than one. The number of amputees mounted steadily as the U.S. military stormed into Afghanistan in late 2001, then focused on Iraq — with an invasion in 2003 and a "surge" in 2007. More recently, the number has edged up again as the Obama administration has pumped more troops into Afghanistan.
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As amputee ranks grow wounded warriors bond