As I look back on it now, it amazes me how much my world had shrunk and how absorbed I was in myself. It happened, and I didn't even notice, but I'm sure others did. I know Denise did, but she kept holding out a hand to pull me out or to shock me into an awareness of where I was.
One day, she arranged for us to go bowling with lifelong friends Carl and Betsy Hassler to a place called Colonial Acres on Route 222 just outside Shillington. I would stand at the foul line and, without any steps, roll the ball down the alley. We used to like to bowl together, but this was no fun at all. I was thirty-four years old and had been a decent athlete. And here I was, standing at the foul line, struggling to roll the ball from there: not exactly the image of self I'd had in mind for the rest of my life. I got the message.
It was that Christmas that I reached the bottom.
It was up to me.
VALLEY FORGE GENERAL HOSPITAL JANUARY 1971
'Doctor, I've made the choice. I want you to amputate my leg.'
The surgery took place later in January, the morning after the Super Bowl. I watched the game from my bed in Ward 3B the night before. The morning of the surgery, just for the hell of it, with my cane, I struggled on the leg I was about to have amputated down the hall to the common latrine to shave. Then I came back and they wheeled me to surgery. I would not look back.
It was my choice. I had to win this battle and get on with my life. I had to be thankful for what I had rather than what I did not have, to focus on that and drive on. Life would not be the same. It never is.
Following surgery, Denise was waiting for me in my room. She said nothing, but she squeezed my hand. We both knew what was going on inside. Looking down the length of the bed and seeing only one peak at the end in the sheet was a shock. It was gone. No looking back. No second-guessing. Time to get on with my life, one day at a time.
And that is what it was. One day at a time.
Within days, I started to feel better. My appetite returned. The pain was still there, but it was a different pain, the consequence of the open end of my leg. Changing the dressing was not my favorite time of day. We had a female Army medic who called herself 'Charlie'; Charlie had such gentle hands that we all asked for her for those dressing changes.
Due to the gross infection, they had to leave the end of my leg open until they were sure there was no residual bone infection. When I asked how long that might take, they told me it could take months. It turned out to take nine. They initially had me in traction to keep the skin flap pulled down over the end of my stump. Later, when I went home on convalescent leave, Denise and I hooked the contraption up to the bedroom doorknob to give the necessary tension. I had to stay in that for three or four hours a day for the first six weeks. I also had the usual phantom pains amputees get — the sensations that my foot was still there. They never completely go away.
A few weeks after surgery, they fitted me with a pylon — a temporary plaster of Paris prosthesis made to go over my stump to lessen swelling and to get me vertical and bearing weight. I was anxious to walk and start moving again. I wanted to get on with my life. I was feeling better physically and now had a goal: to get moving. I could get on top of this, maybe even stay in the Army.
As I looked back on it, the difference in my thinking before and after the operation was that of night and day. It's okay, I was able to say to myself. I've got to go on now. I'm going to get well physically. I've got a mission in life. I've got to pass from here. I've been like a fool with my family. I've got to focus, get back up off the deck swinging. I've been down long enough. It felt good to be able to fight back.
Valley Forge itself had long traditions for our country, of course, and the courage and sacrifices of the patriots of the Continental Army, who in 1778 had rebuilt themselves into a tough army, were not lost on me. Nor were the battles my fellow soldiers in the hospital were going through. I drew strength from them. It is hard to overstate the courage of the young Americans there in the amputee ward, people such as Angel Cruz, Jim Dehlin, 'Big' John, Mike Stekoviak, and Dave, who went back to being a ski instructor as a below-the-knee amputee. They were all heroes, and they inspired me.
We all go through Valley Forge experiences in our lives. At that time, I thought Denise and I might have to rebuild the relationship that had so dramatically changed during the two years from July 1969 until March 1971. Denise had been doing everything, running the home and raising our daughter on her own. We had to get back to doing that together, to rebuild our life based on where we were, not where we had been. We began to make that happen.
I also talked to others. One whose influence was great was retired Colonel Red Reeder, an old friend and former assistant baseball coach at West Point. Wounded five days after D-Day on Utah Beach commanding the 12th Infantry Regiment in the 4th Infantry Division, he had had his leg amputated below the knee. At that time, he could not remain on active duty. Among the things Red told me was how Mrs. Anna Rosenberg, Assistant Secretary of Defense in the 1950s under George Marshall, had changed U.S. military regulations to permit amputees and others with disabilities to remain on active duty. Red actively encouraged me to stay in the Army, and he gave me a book to read,
Colonel Jimmie Leach, one of my 11th ACR commanders in Vietnam, came by one day, and so did John 'Mac' MacClennon, who had been an Air Force forward air controller in Vietnam (and is now in the Connecticut National Guard). His call sign was Niles 06. One day in Vietnam, Mac had gone out and flown with me, and I damned near got him killed. Most days I was in the OH-6 talking to him on the radio while he flew in his FAC fixed-wing aircraft. One day, though, I put him in the backseat in my helicopter while I was directing an air strike; I wanted him to see firsthand what we did. Did he ever! Despite that, though, Mac and I still exchange correspondence (he came all the way down to Fort Myer for my retirement in November 1994). Jim Sutherland, my assistant S-3 in Vietnam, also came to see me. One day he was riding in my helicopter when we got hit on one of our rotor blades by ground fire. He had been asking to go along, so the day I said OK was the day I damned near got him killed, too! And Grail Brookshire came with his whole family. The brotherhood of combat.
And one day there was a letter from General Omar Bradley. Though I did not know him at all, he'd been told about my case by Red Reeder. The day the letter came, I had been away from the house. When I drove up to the curb and got out of the car, Margie ran up and said, 'Daddy, you got a letter with five stars on it!'
'You've got to be mistaken,' I said.
'No,' she said. 'See, here it is.' That was Bradley's letter.
As I began to put on weight and grow stronger, my opportunities for convalescent leave increased, and I was able to spend more time at home. At first I could not walk on my leg because of the open wound. That period lasted the better part of two months. I would wear the pylon for short periods of time. The rest of the time I'd use the metal 'Canadian walker' crutches with my pant leg pinned up. Soon, at a civilian prosthetic place on Thirty-third Street in Philadelphia, where the Army had contracted for that work, I was fitted with my first prosthesis. It was a strange experience standing up in that plastic leg for the first time and taking a few steps. I had to learn how to walk all over again.
We had physical therapy twice a day. Depending on where we were in rehabilitation, we would go through various range-of-motion and strength exercises. After my leg was amputated, it was for me a matter of hip- strengthening exercises, upper-leg strengthening, and upper-body exercises. But mainly it was a matter of walking, of learning how to do that all over again.
The PT ward was an open hospital bay, roughly thirty by seventy feet. In there was the usual array of PT gear for orthopedic patients. There were also excellent PT specialists, men and women soldiers trained to help their fellow soldiers. The chief was Lieutenant Colonel Mary Matthews, who happened to be the sister of our neighbor at Fort Benning, Jack Matthews, whom I had met when Jack and I had been students at the Infantry Officer Advanced Course from 1963 to 1964. Not that that got me any favors with Mary, or Colonel Matthews, as I called her then. She was another case of tough compassion, and a skilled leader.
For amputees to practice walking, two vertical mirrors, each about six feet by two feet, were placed facing each other at a distance of maybe thirty feet. Each mirror had a string running vertically down the middle. The drill
