Amputee soldier re-enlists in Afghanistan

Five years after being wounded in one war, amputee soldier re-enlists in another
By MATT MILLHAM
Stars and Stripes
Published: November 14, 2011
FORWARD OPERATING BASE FRONTENAC, Afghanistan — When people ask Staff Sgt. Brian Beem why he stayed in the Army after a bomb blast took part of his right leg, he usually answers with a joke.

“I was on a lot of drugs when I made that decision.”

On Wednesday, a little more than five years after the blast, Beem was lucid and upright on a prosthetic limb as he re-enlisted at a remote base in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, extending his contract with the military.

The decision was easy, he said.

Even as he lay doped up on painkillers in a hospital bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2006, “I knew I was going to stay in for the full 20,” he said. “I’ve always known that.”

His patrol was returning to base Oct. 11, 2006, rolling a block south of the notorious Baghdad slum Sadr City when an explosively formed penetrator sliced through the hull of his Stryker combat vehicle. Beem, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., was knocked off his feet, but didn’t know why.
read more here