Positive attitude helps soldier who lost both legs in Iraq (10/27/04)

Positive attitude helps soldier who lost both legs in Iraq
By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© October 27, 2004 | Last updated 2:07 PM Oct. 28


WASHINGTON — Over the course of a few hours, a string of emotions rolls across Jonathan Bartlett’s face.

Amazement. Anxiety. Pain.

Anger, though, isn’t one of them. Neither is defeat.

The 19-year-old soldier admits to crying sometimes at night -– mostly because of the pain, partly because he feels so alone.

A month after an improvised explosive device ripped apart the Humvee he was driving in Iraq and changed his world forever, one mood dominates the room of this teenage double amputee: frustration.

Bartlett is frustrated by his lack of mobility, his confinement, the year he will spend in and out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, learning how to walk and live again.

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