James Stuck
After two years at Fort Campbell, Ky, James was deployed to Iraq in October 2005. His unit was doing operations and convoys in and around Kirkuk, and basically saw no action before Dec. 20, 2005, the day they were assigned to escort a team of Army engineers who were going out to do road repair.
“You wouldn’t believe the holes in the roads due to bomb damage,” said Jim. “You could drop a VW beetle in them upside down, they were that big.”
James was driving an up-armored Humvee that hit an improved explosive device (IED). There was an explosion, and the next thing he remembers is waking up at the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. James had been in-country two months and 23 days when he was injured.
He suffered amputation of his right foot, as well as injuries to his left foot and elbow.
As of this interview (12/8/06), James was slated to be medically discharged from the Army on December 20, 2006, exactly one year following his injury. On that day, he planned to be with the people he loved and “celebrate being alive.”
Recuperation: James had four surgeries in all. “In the beginning, rehab is really hard,” he said, “But if you beat the mental game, you’ve got it. You need to think of what you can do, not about what you lost.”
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