Iraq Veteran with PTSD heals on wheels

Jeff Jardine: Iraq War vet offering four-wheeling for wounded
Modesto Bee
BY JEFF JARDINE
July 30, 2014

Adam Britton, wounded three times in four months in Iraq in 2004, is considered 100 percent disabled by the Veterans Affairs system. He discovered that by getting out four-wheeling, is has helped him cope with the physical and mental scars he brought back from Iraq and that prevent him from working today. So last year, he began offering to take other wounded veterans four-wheeling. He pays the way. and hopes others will go along to experience JEFF JARDINE

“After returning home, I dealt with a lot of issues, including depression and survivor’s guilt, as well as PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury). I understand how hard it is to recover from these injuries and how it can make you feel all alone.”

Like too many others, Adam Britton went to war a confident young man and returned damaged, both physically and mentally.

Doctors and time try their best, but cannot cure what ails him. What does help? What form of therapy works best for him?

Four-wheeling. Off-road adventures that take him to remote places and provide challenges. He’s found it to be so beneficial that he wants to take others with disabilities along for the ride.

First, his back story:

The 43-year-old Denair resident and Army veteran joined the Army National Guard as an emancipated minor in 1987. He later re-upped with the regular Army and became an air assault infantryman. Sent to Arizona in 2001, he spent 17 months doing anti-drug and anti-terrorism duty.

He volunteered for duty in Iraq in 2004, and went to a base south of Baghdad. He suffered wounds and injuries in three incidents in a little more than four months. He tore the meniscus in his right knee when boxes of ammo and grenades slammed into his leg during a vehicle accident one night.

Then, as he rode atop a Humvee as the driver’s side gunner, an insurgent’s vehicle rammed his head-on. He went flying, landing on his shoulder and separating it and causing nerve damage in his right arm.

And finally, while recuperating, he went into a post exchange, bought a couple of items and then headed for the door. Just as he stepped outside, an enemy mortar struck the building. The concussion of the explosion left him with a brain injury, a smashed nose, a sliced hand, chipped teeth and more nerve damage. Hence, a flight to Germany and the first of many surgeries.

Two years later, he received a medical discharge. And in the decade since he was wounded, he’s had numerous surgeries and seemingly endless rehabilitation. He uses a cane to walk, and while he has good range of motion in his right hand, he has no feeling in it. Veterans Affairs rates his disability at 100 percent, he said. He has post-traumatic stress disorder, which also factors in.
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