soldier's story: Broken body, unbroken spirit (10/28/04)

A soldier's story: Broken body, unbroken spirit

Jonathan Bartlett stretches his back and takes the weight off his lower body in his room at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington before going off to physical therapy. VICKI CRONIS PHOTOS/THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT.


By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© October 28, 2004

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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