Vet Walks On New Legs, With A Little Help From Mom

Vet Walks On New Legs, With A Little Help From Mom
by QUIL LAWRENCE
NPR

David Gilkey/NPR
Nick Staback, who lost both of his legs to a bomb in Afghanistan, talks with his mother, Maria Staback, in Scranton, Pa. Maria Staback took a leave of absence from her job to move in with her son while he was recuperating at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C.

October 24, 2012

On furlough from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this summer, 21-year-old Nick Staback lounges on his parents' back porch in Scranton, Pa., taking potshots at sparrows with a replica sniper rifle. The long plastic gun fires pellets that mostly just scare the birds away.

It's been a tough year for Staback since his last foot patrol in Afghanistan.

"We [were] just channeling down a beaten trail, of course, you just don't know what's on it," he says. "We had the mine sweepers out front and everything like that."

The area was littered with homemade bombs and everyone knew it.

"I was kind of looking where I was going to step, make sure I was going to step in my buddy's footprint kind of thing," he says. "But I guess it was just the wrong time, the wrong place."

The bomb threw Staback high in the air; he landed on his back in a state of shock.
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