Near Tikrit, April 7, 2004. As the lead driver of a three-vehicle convoy, Staff Sgt. Eugene Simpson slowly steered his Humvee down the dusty road, heading back to base, looking forward to steak and potatoes for supper after another hot day of training Iraqi soldiers. Alongside him in the passenger seat was his first sergeant. Behind them was a pickup full of Iraqi soldiers. Bringing up the rear was another Humvee of soldiers from Simpson’s unit — all part of the convoy.

“We’d always go out in convoys and try to take alternate routes so no one could learn our pattern,” says Simpson. “We’d decided to drive through this little town just to show our presence, let everybody know we’re there if they want our help.”

As Simpson got to the edge of town, he noticed in his rearview mirror that the pickup carrying Iraqi soldiers had stopped down the block, also causing the rear Humvee to stop. Simpson turned around to see what was going on and to wave them along. When he turned back, he noticed an Iraqi standing in an alleyway between two buildings with a car key remote. There were no cars in the area.

“I knew right then that something was wrong, so I tried to raise my gun up to shoot back at him,” he says. “Simultaneously, my instinct was to jump to the rear seat where there were doors that would protect me.”

Humvees used on base camps tend to be unarmored — soft-sided — without front doors and with a plastic tarp roof. Simpson says there just aren’t enough armored cars to go around — they’re used for fighting in the field. He was wearing his armored vest and helmet for safety.

The bomb went off just as he was turning around to jump into the back seat, exposing his lower spine to shrapnel and scrap metal. The explosion threw him out of the vehicle. Simpson says it was all in slow motion, like in the movie, The Matrix.

“When I yelled out from the pain, everything was muffled and really in slow motion for about 10 seconds,” he says. “After all that occurred, I couldn’t feel my legs — and I didn’t want to look back and see that I didn’t have any.”

His protective equipment saved his life, but because his armored vest only covered his torso — front and back — and pelvis, the shrapnel damaged his spine and caused severe pain.

Immediately, his first sergeant, who received minor cuts and a concussion, dragged Simpson back into the vehicle and drove to the safety of base camp — 50 feet away. Within hours, Simpson was flown to a base hospital in Baghdad where he was heavily sedated, then flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein Air Base in Germany. There he underwent an 11-hour surgery to remove scrap metal from his spine. After two more surgeries and time for recovery, he was flown stateside to Walter Reed Hospital, where he underwent eight more surgeries. He was paralyzed at the T12 level, and they still hadn’t removed all the metal.

“I was just happy to be alive,” he says.

Past and Future Connect
Simpson did well at Walter Reed despite his serious injuries. “It was the support I had,” he says. “Family and friends.”

One of those friends was Aaron Morton, from the Woodbridge-Dale City area in Virginia, where Simpson spent his high school days. “His dad called me and gave me the news about the second day after it happened,” says Morton. “I didn’t take it well — it put me down for a while. I kept in touch when he was in Germany, then went to see him at Walter Reed every other day. I was taking him things, just keeping him in good spirits. I was surprised he was in better spirits than anybody else. He said he’d take his condition over anything else because he’d seen the things that happened to other people over there.” At the time of his injury, Simpson was 27, married with four young boys and thinking of the Army as a career, like his dad, Eugene Simpson Sr., who put in 20 years in the Army.

In high school Simpson and Morton had been active in sports together. “He was a real good athlete,” says Morton. “I mean real good.”

“I was pretty good, I guess,” says Simpson, a modest man of few words.

Simpson and Morton had planned to go to college together, but things didn’t work out that way. “I went to Virginia State,” says Morton, “and he ended up going to junior college, then straight into the military. We were supposed to go play sports together, but some things happened and he went his way and I went my way. I wasn’t too pleased about him going into the military. But we took different paths.”

Ultimately, the path that Simpson took led to the Landstuhl Medical Center, where over 10,000 service members have been evacuated for medical care from the first day of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003 until December 2005, according to Army figures. Of those, about 3,000 were severely wounded. Other estimates vary widely. New Mobility talked with several injured veterans for this story, and each one recited the details and circumstances surrounding his injury. Most skipped over their hospital stays and rehab experiences in favor of describing their journeys back to a more normal life. They talked of receiving financial, emotional and networking help from the military, Veterans Affairs and several nonprofit organizations that are focusing on helping the severely wounded. All of those we talked to said that at one point in their recovery, they received guidance — in some cases just a few wise words — from an injured veteran from a previous war or conflict that helped them begin rebuilding their lives.

Who is the Enemy?
Many severely injured service members have little recollection of being at Landstuhl. They are heavily sedated for air transport to Germany, where they are checked out at the medical center, then sedated again for the flight stateside. But the most severely wounded, like Simpson, may stay at Landstuhl for a month or more.

Landstuhl has been busy for the past two years as the percentage of injuries versus casualties is higher than ever. During the Gulf War, from the time a service member was injured to surgery at Walter Reed was nine days. Now it’s generally four days or less and sometimes just hours. If they keep a severely wounded service member longer at Landstuhl, they are probably fighting for his life the whole time.

It is usually those who are more critically injured whose parents, spouses or other loved ones get a call to come to Landstuhl. One mother, Audrey Lewis of Milwaukee, Wis., got that call in late 2003.

Lewis describes how her son, Alan, lost both his legs and was nearly blinded when shrapnel from a roadside bomb lodged inside his eye. She says that after he came home, she gave him a lot of tough love and told him “what’s gone is gone.” She says that now when Alan drops her off at work, her new coworkers who didn’t know him prior to his injury are surprised to hear that he is missing both legs. She calls Alan her inspiration. “He’s got a couple issues he’s still working on, though,” she admits.

Lewis says she was in a daze the whole time she was at Landstuhl. “My God, to see your kid lying there half dead, half alive, and you talk to all these injured soldiers … it’s heartbreaking.” Her son was at Landstuhl for three weeks before his medical team could ready him for flight to Walter Reed. But while Alan was recuperating, Lewis was “being a mom” to all the others with severe injuries. They still call and write her. “When you can talk to a young person, they can talk to you as an older person,” she explains. “They can confide in you, tell you how they feel and get a lot of stuff out from inside that they can’t say to another soldier or to a doctor or nurse. I talked to so many wounded soldiers at Landstuhl. They were even trying to give me money because I had to pay my own way to get there. It was real, real moving. Some of it I’d love to forget, but listening to them made me feel kind of good.”

The VA has since reimbursed Lewis’s expenses. But when we called her son for our scheduled interview, he said, “Not now, it’s not a good time. Maybe in six months, maybe then I’ll be able to talk.”

Alan Lewis wasn’t the only veteran who told us this. We had interviews lined up with a number of severely wounded men and women — a few with quadriplegia — and within days of initial contact, they told us not now, they weren’t in a good place. Dealing with physical loss and emotional upheaval is one thing, but many returning injured vets also have to deal with the threat of losing what has taken a lifetime to build — a sense of trust.

“You’re in a place where you don’t know if the person approaching you is a suicide bomber, you don’t know if that little toy on the side of the street is a roadside bomb,” says David Uchic, spokesperson for Paralyzed Veterans of America in Washington, D.C.

Simpson still feels that those he was trying to help may have turned against him. He believes that the Iraqi men he was training for battle conspired against him to kill him: He is sure that the pickup full of the Iraqi soldiers following him had set him up.

“You couldn’t ever really trust them 100 percent,” he says. “There were two types of soldiers we were trying to train. Soldiers that were in Saddam’s former army, and then there were just the local people who wanted things to change there. Two types of people. For the most part Saddam’s followers were the ones we didn’t trust, but at the same time it was hard to distinguish who was who.”

But wasn’t it possible that the Iraqi soldiers may have seen what Simpson saw, a man with a remote device in his hands, and then stopped? “No,” he says. “It was impossible for them to see what I saw.”

Betrayal and PTSD
Simpson isn’t the only one who feels he was betrayed. Nicholas Orchowski, corporal E4 Army, medically discharged, also knows the shattering of trust. Though injured in late 2004 and home and now working, he still gets anxious when he’s in a crowd, like when he and his wife, Jamie, recently went to a movie.

“People are all around you, it gets dark in there, there’s just an anxiety knowing that people are all around you,” he says. “You start to worry about what they’re thinking, about what they’re doing. Are they going to shoot me? What’s going to happen?” Morton has seen Simpson’s anxiety as well. “We’ve been out a couple times, and the guy can’t go out to loud places because of noise. I’ve actually seen Eugene jump, like literally jump a little bit and duck his head and things like that. He just gets startled from loud noises.”

Both Simpson’s exaggerated startle reflex and Orchowski’s fear of crowds are common symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, an anxiety disorder that affects many severely wounded veterans. Orchowski’s psychologist has told him it will take time for him to get used to being in crowds. Fortunately, treatment of PTSD is making positive strides, but the most effective treatment of all may be the passing of time and keeping company with friends you can trust.

Orchowski, a Colorado Springs, Colo., native, was deployed to Iraq in a military police unit. One of his unit’s jobs was to train Iraqi police to the standards of American police officers. The Iraqis were taught how to deal with crime, how to shoot and what to do in certain conflicts or situations.

“We trained them all day and got to know them pretty well. We became friends with some of them,” he said. “We knew how they lived their lives, and we even gave them extra training to help them get on their feet quicker.”

Some nights enemy fire would erupt from the cover of darkness, and Orchowski’s unit would return fire. When the firing ended, his unit would go out and clean up the mess. He said it was common to see two or three of the Iraqis that his unit had been training during the day lying there dead.

“It’s pretty hard to see guys that you’ve trained, guys you’ve gotten attached to, and they’re the ones who’re shooting at you,” he says. “We were the ones who had to put them in a body bag and write a report, then go back the next day and train again. I was 19, and had to grow up real fast.

“Not all of them are like that,” he explains. “Just the younger males age 16 to 24. The insurgents easily influence them,” he says. “The older gentlemen we taught seemed to want to learn. They want to change Iraq.”

One in a Million Shot
Like Simpson, Orchowski was injured by an explosive device, the deadliest weapon the insurgents deploy. That was just two months after arriving in Iraq, when an Iraqi truck with a grille covered in explosives slammed into his Humvee. As the gunner in the lead vehicle of an eight-vehicle convoy, Orchowski was standing out of the Humvee hatch. His job was to clear the road so the ammunition convoy behind him could move through without stopping. He had an interceptor body armor vest on, which had two ceramic plates to withstand a 7.76 millimeter round — the equivalent of an AK47 round. The “dump truck” plowed into Orchowski’s Humvee and created a huge explosion, which ejected him from the hatch. He landed on his right side, which pushed his shoulder into his spinal column and planted him head first on the ground in a fetal position.

In a matter of minutes, his squad was radioing medics. The rest of the Humvees in the convoy took a 360 degree stance around Orchowski and the ammunition trucks in order to protect them.

Within an hour, a Blackhawk evacuation chopper arrived and flew Orchowski to a local unit where a surgeon cut through the front of his neck and attached a titanium plate to hold his fractured spine in place. By that evening, Orchowski was in Landstuhl. He woke up just long enough to realize he was on a respirator and a feeding tube.

“The day after that I woke up at Walter Reed to see my wife, my mom and dad and my sister standing there. That’s when I understood something bad had happened.”

It was up to his 22-year-old wife — who was six months pregnant — to tell Orchowski about his injuries. His right elbow was shattered, the tendon in his right knee was ripped and he was a C1-4-5-6 quad, incomplete. The doctors were 80 percent sure he would live the rest of his life on a respirator and feeding tube. He had no feeling from his neck down and he couldn’t move any limbs or fingers or toes.

More surgeries at Walter Reed added another plate to his spine, fusing C4, 5, and 6, and repaired his elbow and knee. He began rehab, then received one last surgery to relieve pressure on C1-2.

After he awoke from the last surgery, Orchowski’s surgeon came in to explain how everything went. While she was talking, Orchowski spontaneously picked up his left leg. “She dropped her clipboard, then asked me to do it again, and I did,” he says. “I wiggled my toes and slowly bent my legs. I moved my thumb and index finger on my left hand just enough to notice. She said it was a one-in-a-million shot.”

Doctors believe Orchowski’s ability to move again came from relieving the pressure on the vertebrae, having blood available in the field and the practice of starting surgery as far forward as possible — in Orchowski’s case, one hour post-injury. Eventually he was transferred to the VA hospital in Albuquerque, N.M. “I tried to walk a couple times [with braces] at the hospital but the [staff’s] motivational level wasn’t there,” he says. “They just wanted me to learn how to live in a wheelchair, saying ÔThis is how you’re going to live now, learn how to use it properly.'”

His father purchased an extended-stay at a local hotel where he and Orchowski’s mom and wife could live. Every day they took Orchowski to their hotel room where they carried on their own rehab program.

Orchowski’s father, a retired first sergeant, would pull him out of his wheelchair, his mom would help move his feet and legs, and his wife would monitor him so he didn’t pass out. He’d get on the hotel’s stationary bike, and eventually he was able to stand for five to 10 minutes before his body reacted. After seeing results, Orchowski’s occupational therapist started working to help him walk. He now can drive a car using his left leg and left arm and is able to walk short distances using a cane.

Help is All Around
Simpson said that while he was at Walter Reed, other paralyzed soldiers — in their 50s and 60s, wheelchair users for 30 years or more, having been wounded in the Vietnam War — mentored him and other service members. Not only did the vets explain the healthcare system and tell him what to expect once he’s back home, they shared their experiences, convincing him that life can be as full now as it was before injury. “They were just as happy now as when they could walk,” says Simpson. “I fed off them, they talked to me a lot. You are actually assigned counselors who use wheelchairs.”

As a paralyzed Vietnam veteran and deputy executive director of PVA, John Bollinger knows firsthand what it’s like to lie in a hospital ward those first days after injury. “When I was in the SCI ward at the VA in Cleveland back in 1969, there were many more veterans coming back with SCIs than there are now, so the wards were full,” Bollinger says. “Just from an emotional, psychological point of view, it’s very beneficial to be in the midst of other people who share those kinds of injuries, who talk and joke and tell their own stories. I think it’s more difficult these days unless these guys are able to get involved in organizations to share camaraderie. It was such an important part of my therapy.”

Today’s wounded service members are visited by several organizations such as PVA and the Wounded Warriors Project, to name a few. In fact, even before they wake up, they’ve probably received a backpack from Wounded Warriors Project.

John Mela, a veteran wounded from the Somalia conflict, started the WWP backpack project in his basement. Each backpack holds pajamas, sweatpants, toiletries, a book and anything else to make a wounded service member feel like a person again — most of the injured arrive from Landstuhl with just the hospital gown on their back.

“We use that backpack as a way of building a relationship with service members and their families,” says Jeremy Chwat, national policy director with WWP. “We Ôhold their hands’ from the point of injury until they go home, and beyond. We want to fill any need they have in terms of reintegrating back into civilian life with a disability.” One warrior who received a backpack and also met Mela was Heath Calhoun, retired staff sergeant, now outreach coordinator with WWP.

In November 2003, Calhoun was sitting in the bed of a soft-sided Humvee after switching out squads guarding a bank. The convoy was headed to the Mosul Airport. Out of nowhere, an RPG hit the rear of the truck. It blew off both of Calhoun’s legs just below the knees; he was taken to a local base hospital and readied for flight to Landstuhl.

Early in the flight, Calhoun bled out, so the pilot detoured to a hospital in Kuwait where his blood supply was replenished. He finally made it to Landstuhl but only remembers meeting the German Defense manager, and having one of his buddies — also injured in the blast — give him a shave. He was flown to Walter Reed a few days later where he met up with his 20-year-old wife, Tiffany, and family. During the week at Walter Reed, Calhoun’s legs were amputated above the knees.

“At first it’s pretty easy, simply because you don’t know what it’s going to be like having prosthetics,” the 24-year-old says. “They tell you about these great new prosthetics and how you’ll be up in no time. But there’s no amount of prosthetics in the world that can give your legs back, and it’s never the same.”

Re-entering Society
To be eligible for service-related disability, the service member must be deemed between 10 and 100 percent disabled, with a higher percentage of disability linked to increased benefits. In addition, those with dependents and whose level of disability is higher than 30 percent are eligible to apply for extra pay, which sounds like a fair deal. But Ray Clifford, vice president of Salute America’s Heroes in Ossining, N.Y., says the above-30-percent group often have the most financial hardships.

“We found there were quite a few gaps in the benefits being provided to them from the time of injury to the time benefits kicked in,” Clifford says. “Because their spouse or a parent had to leave their employment to be at their bedside, it cuts income in half. There’s a glitch in the system where there’s a gap between the time of injury and when they get certification and start to receive money,” he explains. “It can be anywhere from three to 12 months. We try to catch them in between.”

SAH offers several programs, including Wounded Hero Emergency Financial Relief and Homes for Heroes. Clifford tells the story of a soldier in Walter Reed who wanted to go home after recovery but because of his injuries was unable to fly. SAH rented a van so his family could drive him home, then gave him a substantial down payment on his own accessible van. They also paid for a rental while he shopped around for the new van.

Clifford estimates there are 1,500 service members with a disability rating of 30 percent or greater. To date, his organization has paid out $1.1 million in financial aid, provided $500 gift checks to 1,102 service members and has committed to building six accessible homes.

Homes for Heroes is not the only organization looking to provide wounded vets with accessible housing. Homes for Our Troops was started by John Gonsalves in January 2004, after he saw a news report on injured veterans. Gonsalves, a 39-year-old ex- building superintendent, created the nonprofit organization and completed all the paperwork needed to solicit money in different states. Now, through networking, he finds local builders, plumbers, electricians and companies to donate labor and materials. With community involvement, he has raised $3 million, built six homes and has seven more homes planned.

Gonsalves’ timing was perfect for Eugene Simpson. While Simpson was still in Walter Reed, a representative from PVA was there to help him with paperwork to be sure he received all the benefits provided. The PVA hooked him up with Gonsalves and Homes for Our Troops. But Simpson would have to wait to get his accessible home. In the Dale City-Woodbridge area, where Simpson’s parents’ live, real estate prices are high, and land is nearly impossible to find. Simpson had to move into the basement of his parents’ home after being discharged from Walter Reed. The rest of the house is inaccessible. It was a month before the VA paid to build a lift onto the front porch and a ramp to the back of his parents’ house.

Gonsalves eventually found a one-level home in the Dale City area for Simpson that could be renovated and made accessible. The first wall for renovation was torn down the day we talked to Simpson. He and his wife, Shirley, and their four boys are due to move in to their newly remodeled home sometime in mid-April, if all goes according to schedule.

While living in his parents’ basement with his family, Simpson has gone about the difficult business of re-entering society and rebuilding his life. He credits the older vets back at Walter Reed for helping him get back to socializing and guiding him through a new way of life.

“Everything I know I learned from those guys,” he says. “Now I’m real meticulous about everything. If I go somewhere, like a restaurant, I won’t just go and pull up and park. Now I may circle the lot one or two times to see where the ramps are or where I’ll be comfortable inside and not too crowded. I map everything out. It takes a lot of energy to push this wheelchair.”

Simpson’s interest in sports is still intact. “We still go to games and stuff, been to a couple of Redskin games, says Simpson’s friend, Morton, “but he’s not doing any sports now.” Simpson says that he plans to get into wheelchair basketball sometime after settling in his new home.

“He’s still Eugene,” says Morton. “That hasn’t changed. I noticed that he’s taking life a little bit more seriously. There’s a lot of things we used to do in the past, outrageous stuff, and we look back and can’t believe we used to do that stuff. He’s more calm and collected now, doesn’t take anything for granted.”

Simpson has visited a couple of schools to speak to students and tell them about his experience in Iraq. “I did a couple speeches, at a high school about overcoming obstacles, one at an elementary school about soldiers coming back injured. With high school kids you can go into depth, explain and use your own words. Elementary kids they look up to you. You gotta be a lot calmer and settled. A lot of these kids do have parents in the military, even in Iraq.”

Simpson says after his family moves into their new home he definitely will be going back to work. “Staying at home is too boring,” he says. He is thinking of buying and managing a barbershop, something that’s not too stressful, and maybe making a few investments. He estimates his new home, once remodeled, will be worth about $450,000. The equity will belong to him and his family, free and clear.

As for Orchowski, he recently recorded a public service announcement about PVA and soon will be working with the organization as a National Service Officer spokesperson. “I’d lost touch with them after I got back home. Then one day the local chapter called,” he says. “They wanted to know how I was doing and wanted me to come and see them. They got me back into socializing.”

PVA invited Orchowski and his wife to their Veterans’ Day celebration at Arlington. He says it was a wonderful experience to take part and it helped to be around other young men and women in wheelchairs. He started doing more with PVA and says now he wants everybody to know about the organization, what they’ve done for him and he hopes to mentor other young, wounded soldiers.

“Without PVA, I’d still be locked up in the house,” he says. “Now I know that disability is not the end of the world, it’s just a different way of living.”

Living a Normal Life
Simpson is excited about moving into his own accessible home and having a place to play with his boys. As a kid, since his dad was in the service for 20 years, he always lived in military housing. “Behind our building there was a pretty big yard, plenty of room to play with other kids, but this house is the first one that’s mine. It’s going to be fully adapted,” he says. “They’re building a ramp out front, a master suite, they’ll widen doorways, re-do the whole kitchen and lower the cabinets and make the whole house totally accessible for me. I’ll be having a roll-in shower. Roll-in showers are outstanding. But the best part, I’ll be able to play in a backyard with my kids.” “He has a better relationship with his kids now because he gets to spend more time with them,” says Morton. “He doesn’t have to worry about the job hassle or being in the military where he has to worry about is he coming home or things like that. But the new house and backyard will give him an opportunity to just hang out with them. He loves his boys to death.”

Raekwon is 9, Dashan 7, Kaya 4, and Shimon 3. Simpson looks forward to getting out and tossing a ball around with his boys. “Oh yes. I definitely can still do all those things,” he says, joking that the five of them could make up a basketball team. Are the boys hard to handle? “They’re really not that difficult,” he says. “They’re pretty well disciplined.” But that doesn’t mean Simpson is a distant, authoritative father. “One of them always has to be riding in my lap. Either Kaya or Shimon. They always want a ride. When I’m out of the chair, they always want to get in it. But I don’t let them push it around that much. They just sit there and maybe roll back and forth a little bit.” How do his wife and kids feel about moving into their new home? “They’re all excited,” he says. “All excited.”

Of course Simpson is excited, too, especially since, when they are all settled, it will be the end of one journey and the beginning of another. It will be a return to normality. “I just want to raise my kids and live a normal life like everybody else.”

Supporting Our Troops
Homes for Our Troops, 866/787-6677; www.homesforourtroops.org.
Military OneSource, 800/342-9647; www.militaryonesource.com.
Paralyzed Veterans of America, 202/416-7667; www.pva.org.
Salute America’s Heroes, 914/432-5400; www.saluteheroes.org.
U.S. Wounded Warrior Program, 800/833-6622 www.aw2.army.mil.
Wounded Warrior Project, 540/342-0032; www.woundedwarriorproject.org.