Original story from The Oregonian here.
Someone once told Staff Sgt. Michael Kacer that the whistle of a rocket in war sounds different when you know it will strike you.
On June 18, 2008, as he played cards in an outpost in eastern Afghanistan, the whirring was unlike anything he'd ever heard.
Though he survived the attack, he lost his left arm, and had about 15 surgeries to repair a severed jaw, injuries from shrapnel shards lodged in his thigh and collapsed lungs, three broken ribs and more than 20 facial fractures. Surgeons couldn't fix his traumatic brain injury, which causes memory loss and alters his equilibrium.
While recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the Pennsylvania native vowed that once his broken body mended, he would push it to new heights.
That opportunity is this morning as he and 11 other soldiers from across the country compete in the two-day Hood to Coast Relay as one of 1,000 running and walking teams. "Team Warfighter Sports" is made up of service members severely injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The team includes former and active duty members -- one is a woman -- who are amputees, blind or who have traumatic brain and severe muscle injuries.
The group, which first met in Portland earlier this week, will navigate the 197-mile course from Mount Hood to Seaside. The relay draws participants from around the world.
Many team members share a similar recovery path with Kacer. Inspired by their medical team, family and friends or others dealing with similar injuries, they turned to running, hiking or other outdoor activities as therapy.
"Everybody has their way of dealing with everything, and coping and making it seem like it's OK," says Kacer, 28, who has since retired from the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. "I've been doing that through running."
Two national organizations, Disabled Sports USA and the Challenged Athletes Foundation, brought the athletes together. Standard Insurance Company sponsors the team.
Kirk Bauer, executive director of Disabled Sports USA, says the nonprofit keeps in touch with more than 2,700 severely wounded service members and invites them to excursions or races year-round. The organization, along with the Wounded Warrior Project, coordinates the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project, which began in 2003, to encourage service members to use sports as motivation to heal.
Nearly 32,000 U.S. military have been wounded in action in Iraq and more than 7,600 in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
When Capt. Ivan Castro runs the longest distance of his team's relay —19 miles — the 43-year-old will do it connected by a shoelace to a running partner who will serve as his eyes.
Castro lost his sight in September 2006 when a mortar round landed near the platoon leader as he stood on a rooftop in Youssifiyah, Iraq, southwest of Baghdad. The blast drove the frame of his protective eyewear into his face, and fractured facial bones, broke his arm and collapsed his lungs. In and out of the hospital, he had more than 36 surgeries and lost about 50 pounds of muscle after six weeks in an induced coma. Castro, from New Jersey, spent six months in rehabilitation learning how to live without one of his senses.
"I just made it my goal to come back faster and stronger than before," Castro says. He has since participated in 12 marathons, several triathlons and climbed Grays Peak in Colorado.
He now serves as a recruiting coordinator and assistant operations officer for the Army Special Forces Special Operations Recruiting Battalion. He is believed to be one of three blind active duty officers serving in the Army.
Castro also mentors other injured service members.
"I walk into their room and say, 'Look bud, I was there. I was in that bed. I know what you're going through. I know what it feels like to feel anger, to feel depression, to have survivor's guilt. I know what it feels like to wish you were dead,'" Castro says.
Army Sgt. Daniel Casara, who lives in Chicago, understands that the path to recovery is long and challenging.
It took Casara eight months to learn how to walk again after a tank he was in hit a mine in Baghdad in 2005. He fractured his right tibia and fibula, shattered his left tibia, heel and ankle bones. His right hip doesn't rotate normally and neither do his feet, because he has bones fused together. Instead of running, the 36-year-old will use a handcycle.
As the team takes on the relay today, members hope they can inspire both civilians and fellow service members. Casara has learned that veterans can motivate each other.
"I'll go to a sports camp or go to a marathon and I'll see a guy that is paralyzed on half of his body, and I'll see him doing something that he's never done before," Casara says. "If this guy can do it with half a body, and even though I don't have total usage of all my limbs, I should be able to do it."
-- Melissa Navas
