Wounded warrior's rehab heroic, too

Wounded warrior's rehab heroic, too
Jonathan Gurwitz
Express-News columnist
Saturday, May 26, 2012

On New Year's Eve 2010, Lt. Larkin O'Hern was leading an infantry platoon of the 101st Airborne Division, clearing a Taliban compound in southern Afghanistan when a cache of explosives detonated.

The blast blew off O'Hern's left leg completely and shredded his right leg and arm. As darkness fell over the village of Howz-e-Madad, the only question appeared to be whether O'Hern — bleeding profusely — would be the final U.S. death in Afghanistan of 2010, or the first of 2011.
In fact, O'Hern would survive — a tribute to the advances in American military medicine, to the skill of medics and medevac teams, and to his own fortitude. When I met him last May, the triple amputee had just stood up for the first time on prosthetic limbs after more than four months of surgeries at Brooke Army Medical Center and grueling rehabilitation at the Center for the Intrepid.

At the time, the West Point graduate had set a goal of flying to Fort Campbell, Ky., to greet his returning battalion — standing. Twelve months later, I visited with O'Hern again. He was walking — with a cane, but nonetheless walking, and carrying a backpack. Did he make it to Fort Campbell?
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