RECREATION

From the battlefield to a bike

Wounded Warrior Project gets soldiers moving again after they've had serious injuries.

By Pamela LeBLanc
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, March 23, 2009

When Maj. David Underwood rides a bike, he snaps the end of a rainbow-colored prosthetic arm onto a specially adapted set of handlebars and pumps the pedals with legs splotched with scars.

Underwood was wounded in January 2008, halfway through his second deployment to Iraq. This month, he joined about 30 other injured veterans in cycling about 15 miles around Austin during the Wounded Warrior Soldier Ride's Lone Star Challenge. The three-day event, which included rides in San Antonio and Corpus Christi, was designed to show veterans they can resume an active life even after they've lost limbs, suffered brain trauma or other injuries. It also raises money for veterans' aid efforts.

The group gathered at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop before rolling out on a cold, wet morning. Along with family members and local cyclists, the veterans pedaled up Congress Avenue, through the University of Texas and on to Camp Mabry. Passing motorists honked their horns and people on the street waved their support. In front of the Toy Joy store on Guadalupe Street, two women waved long ribbons.

It was Underwood's fifth Soldier Ride, but he still remembers the boost he got from the first one, just three months after he was injured.

"It's the first physical thing you've gotten to do," the 38-year-old says. "It's a big deal — it's a chance to show yourself you can still do something physical, you're not that messed up."

Underwood, a 20-year Army veteran, was hit by an explosive while commanding an artillery mission to clear abandoned houses south of Baghdad. Because three of his soldiers had been injured early in the assignment and insurgents had placed a bounty on his head, Underwood had long figured he wouldn't make it out alive.

"I came to peace with myself that I probably wasn't going to live through the deployment," Underwood says. "Honestly, I was surprised it took them so long to hit me."

At 2 p.m. Jan. 16, 2008, Underwood stepped on a board that triggered an explosion in a window of a nearby house. The blast hit his watch, ripped through his wrist, punched into his vest and stopped at the steel body-armor plate against his chest. It blew off part of his left arm and tore chunks from both legs.

His radio was shattered; there was no morphine for pain. He asked another soldier who pulled him into his lap to take the wedding ring off his left hand and put it on his right hand. In 14 minutes, a helicopter arrived to whisk him to a hospital in Baghdad. Surgeons removed his hand, which was attached only by a thin strip, an hour later.

Despite losing his arm at the elbow, Underwood says he's coped well. "I was hit and I was alive and my head was OK. I didn't worry about my arm because I didn't want to lose my legs," he says.

Within four days he was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the United States, where members of the nonprofit Wounded Warrior Project handed him a backpack filled with basics such as a T-shirt and shaving gear.

He stayed at the hospital for nearly seven weeks, undergoing more than 25 surgeries and tedious hours of physical therapy. That's when the Wounded Warriors invited him to join a Soldier Ride. He signed on, eager to get out and get physical.

"After a month or two, you're just fried and want to get out," says Underwood, who lives in San Antonio. "I hadn't been on a bike in 25 years."

Typically, participants ride 75 miles in three days. Underwood's wife, Malissa, and two children, Thomas, 7, and Alexandra, 5, joined him for the Austin ride.

The Wounded Warrior Project, founded in 2004, helps veterans transition from the military back to college or the working world, provides counseling and pushes advocacy initiatives to aid wounded soldiers. The group smooths the transition home both physically and mentally.

"They're there the minute you get to the hospital," Underwood says.

Many Marines and soldiers, like Underwood, have lots of adjustments to make. "I had 500 people working for me when I got hit. That changed instantly. All the sudden you're in the hospital all by yourself," he says.

In the past year, he's adapted to life without his left arm. He says he wouldn't trade the experience of the past two years for anything, despite "the challenge of living in a two-handed world with one hand. Opening a Ziploc bag is (tough). I use scissors for a lot of things."

The Soldier Rides, which were started five years ago, are a way to unite wounded veterans. Trek supplies specially adapted bicycles for the vets to borrow. Those who stick with cycling long-term, like Underwood, get to keep them. The program is funded through individual donations and corporate sponsors such as U-Haul.

"We're also showing the American public we're in two wars now and there's a heavy price to be paid," says Nick Kraus, spokesman for the Wounded Warrior Project. "These guys paid a huge cost. They're not asking anyone to take care of them. They're just asking for support so they can help themselves.

"I've watched guys start a ride and come out of their shells by the end of it in terms of morale and spirit. It's amazing, given four or five days, what a trip like this can do for someone who's been through so much."

pleblanc@statesman.com; 445-3994