The Homecoming

[David]

Few drawn to the military ever envision ending their tours at Andrews Air Force base - where three nights a week, with no honor guard or fanfare or publicity, the wounded come home, an often forgotten cost of war.

So far, more than 2,100 soldiers have been injured ? 1,500 since the president declared the end of major combat. Correspondent Susan Spencer has the story of three of those young men - Robert Acosta, Alan Lewis and Dave Pettigrew - whose lives were torn by war and rescued from the battlefield.
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?Growing up, I was kind of in a lot of trouble, and messing around a lot. I would always party,? says Robert Acosta, 20, from Southern California. ?I don?t know where I?d be if I didn?t join the Army. The Army did a lot for me. I?d probably be in jail or maybe even dead.?

?He wasn?t the worst kid ever, but, I mean, it gave him a purpose,? says Acosta?s mother, Patricia. ?It made him proud of himself. He was proud of what he did. He was proud of the way his life was, and he loved it.?

Alan Lewis, 23, grew up in Chicago?s projects: ?I always knew I was gonna serve my country and do my share. Growing up in that environment, it lets you see things. Like a drug addict, you may see an alcoholic, you may see a person and you might say, 'Well, he?s made this mistake in his life.' I don?t want to make that same mistake.?

?He's always been, like, a leader, you know, never a follower,? says Lewis? mother, Audrey. ?I knew whatever he did, he was gonna be good at it. Alan's thing is, be the best at whatever you do.?

Texan David Pettigrew, 26, met his wife Ann while stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado. When they married two years ago, war seemed only a vague possibility. ?My wife swore she would never marry a military person, because her dad was military and bounced around all the time,? says Pettigrew.

?Everything was fine. The country was at peace. I didn?t see this [war]coming at all,? adds Pettigrew?s wife, Ann.
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When the war began in March, Lewis? unit, part of the Third Infantry, led the way. At last, Lewis said he realized his dream of becoming a real soldier: ?When they dropped the ramp and we dismounted, I just felt a surge of adrenaline pumping through me, and it was no fear whatsoever.?

Acosta, a munitions specialist with the 1st Armored Division, also felt he was ready to go. He showed Spencer a photo of his mother?s visit to Germany before he was deployed to Iraq.

Pettigrew, a gunner with the Fourth Infantry, was soon on his way to Kuwait. ?There was a little bit of excitement there, ?Hey, we finally get to do our jobs,?? recalls Pettigrew. ?All you do is train for the eventuality of a war with someone.?

But his wife says she dreaded what might lie ahead: ?I wrote him almost every day, and what I said was that he had to come home. He could be missing parts, he could be out of his mind, he could be crazy and deranged, but he had to come home.?

In mid-April, Baghdad fell and a second wave of American troops entered the country ? including Pettigrew and Acosta.

?The drive from Kuwait to Baghdad, there was some towns where the people loved us. They?d cry and say how much they loved us and thank you and what not,? recalls Acosta. ?And then other towns would throw rocks at us, and you?re like, ?Just down the road they loved us, what???

?There?d be shootings every night. You?d see tracers flying over. Every once in a while you?d hear an explosion,? says Pettigrew. ?But no one ever actually attacked us. We never actually got in a real firefight.?

At home, Patricia Acosta kept anxious watch on the news from Iraq. ?You get up in the morning. You watch the news and see. And if it said soldier injured or killed, I would pray, ?Please don?t let it be my son,?? says Patricia. ?And if nobody called or knocked by the end of the day, it would be a good day, and I would feel bad for the other families.?

On July 13, on his day off, Acosta donned his body armor and hopped in a Humvee with a buddy. They were going on a quick trip to get some ice.

?We were driving down and there really weren?t any American vehicles, so that made me nervous. So I told him, ?I don?t like this, let?s go back,? and as soon as we made a U-turn, a grenade just flew into my window and it landed between me and my buddy,? recalls Acosta.

?I grabbed it and everything but when I went to throw it out, it fell between my legs. I reached down to grab it again. I had it in my hand. I was gonna throw it out and it went off in my hand.?

Three days later, Lewis was on routine patrol with his lieutenant when their truck hit a landmine. ?It just feels like you?re sinking into your seat and at the same time you?re rising out of your seat ? and it feels like your soul jumps out of you,? says Lewis.

?I realize that I?m on the ground and it?s like, all right, I need to get out of here and move away from here because I could smell the explosion. I started crawling away from there and then I realize I?m not crawling too fast.?

It was just a regular night patrol south of Kirkuk when Pettigrew got into trouble. Three months to the day he?d arrived in Iraq, an armor-piercing, rocket-propelled grenade hit Pettigrew?s Bradley.

?I knew I was badly hurt. I?ve got to get myself out of this vehicle if there?s any chance of these guys getting me out,? recalls Pettigrew.

?So I pulled myself out and laid on top of the tow launcher. I blacked out for a little bit and woke up on the ground. They were putting a tourniquet on my leg. You put a tourniquet on something because it?s bleeding so bad they?re going to die from it.?
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In the blink of an eye, the lives of three young Americans were changed forever.

It all happened in just one second, but it was a moment Robert Acosta recalls with complete clarity: ?I was totally conscious. I saw everything. I mean, I saw my hand gone.?

He also realizes that he owes his life to the soldier who was riding with him: ?He picked me up and he carried me ? I owe him everything.?

Dave Pettigrew also has no doubt that his life was saved by those who were with him at the time of the attack. ?Great big huge boom,? he recalls. ?Woke up on the ground and my guys were putting tourniquets on me.?

Looking at the wreck of his Humvee, it?s amazing that Alan Lewis got out alive. ?I just thought my arm was just messed up. I didn?t even realize my legs were gone,? says Lewis. ?I started yelling out for help and my team leader comes up and he picks me up and then carries me to our Humvee. From there, they took me to a helicopter.?



Robert Acosta, Alan Lewis and David Pettigrew credit the medical care they received in Iraq in those first few hours with saving their lives.

At the combat support hospital in Baghdad, the largest of four such facilities, they say the key to that success is speed.

?We rarely get more than 30 seconds, 60 seconds, heads up on a patient coming in,? says Dr. Ben Gonzalez, a world away from his peacetime job as deputy chief of emergency medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

The trauma room, which is now the main trauma center for all of Iraq, is certainly busier than in the days when it was Saddam?s personal clinic. And for the past eight months, Gonzalez has lived within shouting distance of the ER. The work is intense and constant ? there are routine 12-hour shifts - and so far, more than 9,000 patients have come through the center.

?I think I?ve seen pretty much a lifetime of trauma in the past few months,? says Gonzalez.

Most days, the bad seems to outnumber the good. ?You get to a point where in a case you know someone?s going to die despite what you do,? says Gonzalez. ?People die, despite what we do. Young people. It?s hard to see that all the time.?

On Nov. 2, 16 Americans died when a Chinook helicopter was shot down. The injured were rushed to the center.

?That was a rough day. You still get these emotions of knowing that there?s a lot of people out there that are going to get hurt, and that was a rough day for everybody,? recalls Gonzalez. ?Thirty plus soldiers in a Chinook, flying off to go see their loved ones, flying off for their leave, to go home, get shot down. We received more than half that here.?

Doctors here dismiss their own heroics as routine. They simply save lives, and there?s plenty of work these days - roughly seven soldiers are wounded for every one killed in action in Iraq today.
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At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, these young soldiers have discovered challenges that can be as great as combat itself.

Spc. Robert Acosta takes the first painful steps to his new life. His lower arm is gone and one foot is mangled. ?This is the hardest thing I?ve ever done. Ever in my life,? he says.

Alan Lewis is battle-scarred but there are no tears, no anger and no regrets -- even though his arm was shattered in six places, and he?s lost both legs below the knee. ?You?ll never see me cry,? he says. ?I?d rather not have my legs and be alive than not have my legs and be dead. I?m thankful just for being here.?

And somehow, David Pettigrew is also able to stay positive, despite the loss of his entire leg: ?I?m not dead. I will be fine, eventually. Everything that makes me who I am is still here.?

Within just days of being injured, the three men were brought to the center, which prides itself on providing top-flight services for amputees. More than 350 soldiers wounded in action have passed through there since the war began ? dozens of them missing limbs. So at Walter Reed, the war?s true costs can be measured in plastic and titanium, in computerized arms and legs.

It?s part boot camp, part tough love at the center, says physical therapist Isatta Kanu: ?I want them to feel like nothing has changed much. Acceptance is success to me. When they learn to accept themselves for who they are and what they can accomplish and be proud of themselves.?

Acosta finds it hard to believe he?s making any progress, since he?s in so much pain.

And the reality of losing a leg is finally beginning to sink in for Pettigrew. ?Everything they?re making you do is stuff that you need to do, stuff that?s good for you, ultimately things that will make you stronger, make you better able to be yourself again,? he says. ?I?ve always been a very independent person and able to do most near anything, and now it?s humbling, to say the least."
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But there are challenges for everyone involved. ?There?s been two or three times that I?ve broken down crying because it?s just been too much to deal with,? says Pettigrew?s wife, Ann, whose law practice waits in Colorado.

Lewis? inspiration is his daughter, Destiny, who was born while he was in Iraq. ?That?s why I want to get home so fast. I want to be with my daughter,? he says, admitting that this experience has made him a stronger person. ?Nothing can come close to this, so I have changed. I?m a more mature, more mature man.?

Today, Lewis is being fitted for two new legs. Technicians custom make his legs at the hospital, and remarkably, just 48 hours later, Lewis stands up for the first time in two months. ?This is the first step to a new beginning,? he says.

Meanwhile, Acosta is getting used to his new, artificial arm, but he hates needing it. Like every other soldier here, Acosta has one immediate goal: ?I?m really trying to get outta here. I?m sick of this place. I just want to see my family and be able to spend time with them.?

Finally, after eight weeks, Acosta goes home to California. He?s decided to surprise his dad, so his mother picks him up at the airport. It?s after midnight when they arrive at home. His father hasn?t seen him since he got hurt. ?It?s good to see you,? says his father, Robert Sr., crying. ?So glad to see you.?

?We worried about him every single day he was over there,? says Acosta?s mother, Patricia. ?Every time we heard a soldier got hurt, we worried about him. It isn?t just him; it impacts the whole family. It changed him forever; it changed us forever.?




Six weeks after leaving Iraq, David Pettigrew finally comes home to Colorado Springs.

?It just kind of hit me out of nowhere. You?ve got no leg, nothing you ever do the rest of your life will ever be a normal process,? he says. ?But it?s not something I dwell on. I do not doubt that I can do whatever I want to do. I am grossly overconfident in myself.?

At the airport, Pettigrew is greeted by his wife, Ann, and, to his surprise, a contingent of soldiers and wives from Fort Carson. ?The one thing I was afraid of was how he was going to cope psychologically with what had happened,? says Ann.

To ease the transition, Ann sold their two-story townhouse and bought a new place with everything on one floor. But is this what Ann signed up for when she married David?

?I looked a long time to find my husband. I have 35 ex-boyfriends, I?ve looked under every rock, in every crevice, down every bar,? says Ann. ?It didn?t matter if he had one leg, both legs, no legs. Dave was the right person for me.?

?There was never, ?Hey, goodbye, I realize you lost your leg, and now you lost your wife. Later,?? adds Pettigrew. ?That would have been very hard. I don?t know how I would have dealt with that. And I?m glad I didn?t have to.?
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But to Robert Acosta, now back with his parents, it all seems unreal.

?I was in the desert one day and in the hospital the next day, and now I?m here. Everything?s going so fast,? says Acosta, putting down his crutches and sitting down. ?God, I feel like an old man.?

?It?s hard to accept, 'cause you know he left good,? says Acosta?s father, Robert Sr. ?You?d think he?d come back the same way you let him go.?

He received a hero?s welcome from the city of Santa Ana, Calif., but things have changed. ?I just feel different, like something?s wrong, almost,? says Acosta. ?Sometimes I?m really rude. Sometimes people stare and I say, ?Yeah, it?s a hand gone, what are you staring at?? I really don?t know how to deal with it sometimes.?

Acosta says he replays the tragic incident every day: ?People don?t see it, like, what their family has to go through. On TV, you see two soldiers wounded. It doesn?t say, ?One guy?s lost both legs, one won?t make it through the night, and the other guy is missing his eyesight.??

?Nobody wants to know what wounded means. The people who are willing to deal with the fact that this is what we pay for what we do, they?ll find out, and the people who don?t want to know will ignore it anyway,? adds Pettigrew. ?War has very personal costs. And if you?re not directly affected by them, you don?t know.?
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Despite what this war cost him, Acosta is seriously thinking about staying in the Army, even if it means limited duty. ?I wish I was still there. I miss my buddies a lot,? he says.

For Pettigrew, however, the Army was never more than a detour: ?I just wanted to do my time and finish it up, kind of like a jail sentence, I guess,? he says.

He and Ann had planned to start a family, and he thinks someday he?d like to teach high school. But for now, he?s focused on regaining his independence. ?Right now, there?s a lot of things that I just cannot do, and it?s hard for me to accept that,? he says. ?So the things that I can do, I like to do.?

He?s also learned to drive again, in a new black pick-up, specially modified with help from the V.A. hospital. ?It?s a big step for me, that whole independence thing that I wanted. This is part of it,? he says.

But there?s another piece of equipment even more key to his independence: a C-Leg, the latest $100,000 computer-controlled artificial leg. It continuously makes minute-adjustments for balance and speed.

?I want the leg. I really want the leg and I want to use it,? says Pettigrew. ?Because if I can walk on legs without crutches, then I?ve got my arms and my hands and all the rest of my body to do stuff again.?

Today, he?s being fitted for a special molded form that attaches to the leg. ?It takes a tremendous amount of energy to learn how to walk with it,? he says. ?If I can get around great with it, fine. If I can?t, I?ll sort it out. I?ll work from there.?

Acosta, meanwhile, is about to shed his crutches. His foot is slowly healing, but he?s not exactly taken to his new arm yet. ?One of them I broke when I was crushing cans,? he says, laughing. ?And the other one I think I was mad and I threw it against the wall or something.?

He says he feels more comfortable without the prosthesis. But after a month?s leave, he?s returning to Walter Reed for more physical therapy.

After nearly four months at Walter Reed, Alan Lewis says he?s more than ready to move on: ?This is not going to stop me from doing what I want to do.?

Back in Milwaukee, his mother, Audrey, is preparing her apartment and herself, to take care of her injured son. But Lewis says he doesn?t want to be treated like someone who needs a wheelchair: ?It?s all become second nature now, walking regular, just don?t think about it any more. First, it was like concentrating on the right foot, concentrating on the left foot. Now, it?s just walking.?

?We?ll take it one step at a time, one day at a time,? says Audrey. ?I don?t know what?s going to happen when he comes home. I can only pray that everything works out.?
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At the V.A. Medical Center in Denver, David Pettigrew is taking one step closer to walking again with his new computerized leg.

The first steps are a bit awkward, but with an hour?s practice, he?s on his way. ?It?s a strange way to learn how to walk,? he says. ?I wish I could remember what it was like when I did it the first time.?

He?s confident that he?ll no longer need his crutches by Christmas. ?I believe that God still has stuff for me to do. What that stuff is I don?t know and I don?t question,? he says. ?But that there is still something there for me, yeah, I believe that. I believe that entirely.?

?I have no regrets at all. I?d do it all over again if I could,? says Acosta, who has come to terms with his artificial arm, and now uses it like a pro. But he says he?s decided not to stay in the Army: ?I just can?t do the things like I used to.?

As the guest of honor at a recruiting event, he?s donned his dress blues for perhaps the last time. But he doesn?t consider himself a hero. ?Why am I a hero? What did I do that any other soldier would have done,? says Acosta. ?I know if my buddy was put in my position, he would have grabbed that grenade also. Or any soldier would have grabbed that grenade.?

?I don?t think of myself as a hero,? adds Pettigrew. ?The guys who are over there, who are still doing it, are more heroes than me.?