Reply #1: this poor kid.... [View All]

[leftchick]

Sergeant Brian Fountaine, 24, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington this week, was injured in June while on patrol near Baghdad. (Jay Premack for the Boston Globe)

<snip>

That sacrifice has been profound, excruciatingly exacted from Fountaine's body by two large bombs on a dusty road a dozen miles north of Baghdad.

The pain has been both physical and psychic. On June 30, while visiting the Marine Corps War Memorial in a wheelchair he was still learning to use, Fountaine lost control and fell over. Nothing he experienced in the explosion outside Taji -- not the searing burn, not the loss of blood, not the experience of binding his own mangled legs with tourniquets -- equaled the humiliation of that moment.

``It was like a hammer to the face," Fountaine said this week as he sat on his hospital bed. ``I just sat there for about 5 minutes, and I said, `How does one go from being a combat-hardened tank commander to being a poor wretch on the ground?' "


:cry: