Iraq veteran lets the games, and healing, begin

Los Angeles Times / latimes.com ^ | July 18, 2009 | By Kim Murphy

[thecodont]

Reporting from Spokane, Wash. -- Cpl. Anthony Alegre's unit knew the Humvees they drove through the streets of Ramadi, Iraq, were woefully under-armored.

They stuffed sandbags in the doors, but when roadside bombs turned the sand into shrapnel, they began wedging pieces of metal and wood around their seats. No use. The car bomb that hit Alegre's patrol on May 29, 2004, killed three of his fellow Marines and left four pieces of metal in his brain.

No one expected the 20-year-old infantryman to survive. The doctor in the Baghdad hospital, unequipped to reattach a piece of his skull that had blown off, lodged it in Alegre's abdomen for safekeeping, wrapped a bandage over his brain and put him on a plane to Germany.

The young Marine lay in a coma for three months, then spent the next year learning to talk, sit up and feed himself.

Still in a wheelchair much of the time, the now-25-year-old veteran picked up a pellet rifle this week and fired 60 precise rounds into a target across a long room -- testimony to three years of weapons training and five years of audacious will.

"Not bad for the first time," Alegre said quietly as he laid down the gun and stretched his neck in a wide circle to ease the strain.

Later in the week, he bowled a 119, hurled a shot put and javelin, and batted a softball, all competitions in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games, which have become the largest such sporting event in the world.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have filled the ranks of the 29th annual games, which this year drew more than 500 competitors in events such as table tennis, swimming, basketball and the no-holds-barred game of quad rugby once called murderball.

[thecodont]

Mental and physical comeback for wounded veterans.

[thecodont]

[Radagast the Fool]

Semper fi,and then some!!!!