for amputees was to walk in between these mirrors, lining yourself up so you split the mirror, using the string as a guide. To get your gait right, there was a piano metronome. So you would walk and walk and walk by the hour in between these two mirrors to the ticktock of the metronome. With enough practice, you would walk straight and with an even gait without even thinking about it. It was drill, pure and simple. With most amputees, if they discipline themselves to get it right when they first learn to walk, they will continue to do well later. I was determined to get it right. I knew drill and the importance of technique from playing a lot of sports. There were also stairs for us to go up and down. First we used a railing, and then we did without. We used to joke that when we could walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time, we were ready to go on convalescent leave. That was not far from the truth.
Dr. Phil Deffer, the chief of orthopedics (he went on to retire as a brigadier general), was a great blend of tough compassion and skilled doctoring. He was well aware that there was not only a physical but a mental and emotional part to the healing. He knew that there were stages, and that in one of those stages, the patient had to stop feeling sorry for himself and learn to do things for himself. So he pushed us to help one another out, and he made sure that the staff did not do everything for us. In other words: open the doors for yourself, even on crutches. You had to go to physical training every day, to dress your own wounds after nurses showed you how to do it, to walk and stay out of wheelchairs, to get out on your own two feet or prosthesis and get around. And in that hospital, with its long connected passageways, it was a long way from one place to the other. I'm sure there were elevators, but I never remember using one.
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention Jim Herndon, the doctor I came to know best, who performed my amputation and final stump revision. He also did my medical board, and it was he who recommended I be retained on active duty. I owe him a great deal. He was a favorite with the troops.
As time went on, I was permitted more and more convalescent leave to go home, which was good for both body and soul. When I was out of the hospital, I had to get around on my own, even though the bottom of my stump was still open and not ready for long, steady use. So on leave I managed that, sometimes on crutches, sometimes with one crutch or a cane, and sometimes solo.
Our goal at home was to restore some normalcy to our lives. We would do things together as a family, either around the house or in the local area. Margie and I continued our story writing together, and I helped her with schoolwork, a practice Denise had been taking care of alone during most of the past two years. We also got together with our close friends, the Hasslers, for family activities, and we even managed a short vacation to the Jersey shore.
But 1971 was not a great year for our family. We learned Denise was pregnant, and though this was a moment of great joy and hope for us, we had concerns, too. Since Denise had given birth to our second child prematurely in 1966 and he had died shortly after birth, we went to a local civilian doctor in West Reading for advice. He advised some procedures to ensure Denise could carry the baby to full term, and he also advised her to have a cesarean section. In August 1971, he judged she had reached full term, so he admitted her to the Reading Hospital and performed the C-section procedure. Meanwhile, Denise, Margie, and I had completely prepared my old bedroom at 2408 Cleveland Avenue for our new baby.
It was not to be.
Our baby was born on 25 August 1971. We named him Frederick Carl (after Carl Hassler). Denise saw Frederick Carl once right after he was born. He weighed a little less than six pounds. Almost immediately after his birth, we both were told he was having trouble breathing. Not long after that, they had him in an incubator. He had the same condition the Kennedys' baby had died of, they told us, hyaline membrane disease, and the next three days would be critically important. If Frederick could make it past three days, he would be OK. They never again brought our son to Denise. Because she was not permitted out of bed, she had to hear news and descriptions of our son from Margie and me.
For two long days and nights, we prayed together.
Early in the morning of 27 August at around 0500, I got a call that I should come to the hospital right away. Margie had been staying at Denise's parents' home in West Lawn. I drove the three miles to the hospital down a largely deserted Penn Avenue. All I managed to think about was Denise and our son and to keep praying, 'Please, God, spare our son. Your will be done.'
I went to newborn emergency care. Our son was fighting for his life in the incubator, unable to take in enough oxygen to sustain his life. Denise knew what was happening; she wanted desperately to see her son. It was not to be. Frederick Carl died that morning, three days after he was born. It had been Denise's fourth pregnancy.
The loss was devastating.
I did not know what to do for Denise, except to be with her, as she had with me. Margie took it hard, too. There were a lot of tears; she kept asking why, and kept wanting to be with Denise.
We took apart the bedroom at 2408 Cleveland Avenue. I had seen courage on the battlefield. Now, at home, I was to see it in my wife, in another way. We decided to bury Frederick with his brother in the cemetery at West Point; we held a graveside ceremony there. My dad went with me, as did Pastor Bill Fryer from our Lutheran church in West Lawn, the same church where Denise and I had been confirmed.
Now we had two sons at West Point, both in the cemetery.
Later, in 1972, Denise would undergo an operation to remove fibroid tumors at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Because the doctor suspected cancer, they performed a total hysterectomy. There was no cancer, and there would be no more children. She was thirty-six at the time.
You gain wisdom and strength through enduring pain, or else you die as a person. No one seeks out pain, but it finds most of us. That year, the one before, and the one to follow, it found us often. But we would fight back. It is not getting knocked down, but the getting back up and going on that counts. So Denise, Margie, and I resolved to fight our way out of this dark time, to reach inside and grab hold of the steel we knew was there and go on. We would be thankful for what we had and not what we did not have. We would not look back. We would live life every day. We would not mortgage the present for the future.
We would learn these things, and later would try to help others learn them. But that was later. At the time, we were just fighting back with all we had, and barely making it.
THE HOT BLUE FLAME
More happened to me than just the personal recovery. There was a change inside as well as outside, and the change inside proved to me far more important and lasting. The physical recovery, it turned out, was the easy part. I was also slowly undergoing a change in my outlook on life, and that was much harder. Much of that change came out of what my family and I were going through. But much of it also had to do with my other family — the soldiers who were the Army.
I was beginning to see my fellow soldiers at Valley Forge and Vietnam in a way I had not been able to before my leg was amputated.
Now that I was able to go on convalescent leave and get around on my own, I took a volunteer job in the hospital. I began to teach soldiers, preparing them to take their high school GEDs or helping them with other schoolwork. During this time, I began to notice some things going on at Valley Forge that affected me deeply.
The soldiers at Valley Forge did their best to encourage each other. That support had been there for me before the amputation as much as it was still there afterward. There was a lot of chatter and banter and good- natured kidding. Most of the other wounded soldiers were considerably younger than I was. They called me the 'Major.' 'Hey, Major,' they'd call out, 'you old guys heal slow. You're gonna be around here a lot longer than we are.' I was one of them. We were a family there.
There was amputee humor, too, which helped. Stories of guys hollering 'shark' when they came out of the surf, of presents of foot powder to double amputees, of drinking beer out of prosthesis sockets, of wheelchair races and contests. And there were also the endless critiques of our walking during PT.
But there was pain as well. An amputee died in an apartment fire in Phoenixville; he was alone and could not get to his legs fast enough. Another died in a single-car accident while he was on convalescent leave. Mostly the
