Soldier finds new meaning in Thanksgiving (11/23/04)

Soldier finds new meaning in Thanksgiving
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Army Staff Sgt. Robbie Doughty has no complaints. Not about missing Thanksgivings with his family for most of the last decade. Not about spending half a year in the hospital.

Staff Sgt. Robbie Doughty continues his recovery at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
James Kegley for USA TODAY

And not about losing his legs after an ambush in July in Iraq.

"I'm just thankful for my family, my friends, and that my recovery has gone so well," says Doughty, 29, of Paducah, Ky. "When I think about Thanksgiving this year, I'm just so grateful that I've received such excellent care from so many people. Everybody's so well taken care of here."

Here is the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Doughty sits in a model apartment in the hospital's occupational therapy ward and reflects on what Thanksgiving means to him. Patients, many who lost arms and legs, use the rooms to learn again how to open a door, take a shower or pop a pizza in the microwave.

"It used to be that I'd numb myself to Thanksgiving and holidays," Doughty says. "You got so used to missing them. It's different now because of the injury. Everything's different."

It's different as well for many of the 9,326 U.S. troops that the Defense Department says have been wounded since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. At Walter Reed, more than 3,600 soldiers have been treated — 881 with battle-related wounds. The facility is currently caring for 47 hospitalized soldiers, plus 200 others as outpatients.

Since Doughty was in junior high school, he remembers wanting to be in the Army, in part to satisfy a taste for adventure.

He found it.

Doughty joined the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in New York, served on a peacekeeping mission in Haiti in 1994 and became an Army recruiter. One of the young soldiers he brought in was his brother John, now a military policeman.

"Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and I kind of felt on the sidelines" as a recruiter, he says. "I was ready to get back into it."

As a member of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, Doughty arrived in Iraq in May. He was based in the Sunni Triangle, the hotbed of the insurgency.

His unit's top goal was training the Iraqi national guard. But as an intelligence specialist he also helped track bombmakers and terrorists. They caught some, and Doughty felt his unit was making a difference.

"The vast majority of Iraqis we met want to get on with everyday life, get jobs and an income," he says. "Just a small percentage are terrorists. It was kind of slow going at first. It takes time to build up reliable contacts."

Victim of an ambush

On July 8, Doughty rode in the passenger seat of the lead Humvee in a three-vehicle convoy. The vehicles had no armor or doors so soldiers could quickly get out during a mission. The troops left early, hoping to beat the 120-degree midday heat and deliver laptop computers and a vehicle about 50 miles south of Samarra.

"We were on the Samarra bypass when we were ambushed," he says. "A 155mm-mortar round hit us, just behind where I was sitting. I knew my legs were hurt bad, but I avoided looking at them."

Doughty remained conscious. He recalls medics applying tourniquets to his legs, dressing gaping wounds, injecting him with morphine and intravenous fluids.

"Special forces medics are like doctors on a battlefield," he says. "I had every confidence in them to fix me up."

A helicopter whisked him to a combat surgical hospital in Balad, Iraq. Hours later the phone rang at his parents home in Calvert City, Ky.

A captain told his mother, Diane Doughty, that Robbie had been badly hurt. A half-hour later the captain called back and asked if he could come to their house.

"That sent up a red flag," she says. "When he showed up with another man who turned out to be a chaplain, I thought we'd lost him. We found out God had spared Robbie's life, but he had lost both his legs."

Lt. Col. Tim Williams, Doughty's commander, visited Doughty at the hospital in Balad, three hours after his legs had been amputated — his right leg above the knee, and his left just below.

"He's coming around for the first time, and his demeanor was still so positive after such a catastrophic injury," Williams says. "We're all so proud of him. He's the kind of guy we want serving our country. He has the kind of attitude I only wish more people could have."

That attitude has served him well through months of rehabilitation. Doughty remembers "a lot of pain" the first month. Determination, he says, saw him stand again "two months to the day of the ambush."

Within days of his amputations, Diane Doughty moved to Washington to help her son. His father spent a month here as well.

"We moved as quickly as possible to start the journey of learning to walk again," she says. "I'm so thankful that God spared his life, and he can spend Thanksgiving with us. I think that God has a plan for Robbie. We don't know just what yet. But we are so, so thankful for that."

Doughty attributes his relatively smooth recovery to his parents, his doctors and nurses and therapists.

The occupational therapy ward bustles with a dozen or more soldiers — some missing arms, others legs — testing out prostheses. All the while therapists offer guidance, smiles and encouragement.

That upbeat atmosphere, can-do attitude is especially important to maintain as Thanksgiving approaches. The hospital is planning a traditional holiday dinner for the patients and their families.

Help comes from unexpected places, too. Like the 50-member Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5811 from Lake Geneva, Wis. They've adopted Doughty's Special Forces battalion.

"I wanted to select a unit that encountered high risk, a front-line unit," says Larry Kutschma, the post's commander who was attached to the battalion in Vietnam.

Last week, Kutschma delivered 20, 18-pound Thanksgiving turkeys to families in the battalion based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. And they've reached out to Doughty, too. They've given him a life membership in the VFW.

"It's really an honor and a privilege," Kutschma says. "It's just a pleasure to get to know him."

Draws strength from others

Doughty also points to the examples of other wounded soldiers and veterans. Doughty works out daily in the gym at Walter Reed, along with many other amputees. It shows. He's fit and solidly built.


James Kegley for USA TODAY
Staff Sgt. Robbie Doughty is thankful for his his family and friends and that his recovery from his wounds in Iraq is going well.


For the moment he's resting in a wheelchair. But he's lashed crutches to the back of his wheelchair and prefers to use them to steady himself as he grows accustomed to walking on his high-tech prosthetic legs.

"What helps me most is being here and knowing that it didn't just happen to me," Doughty says. "There are others who got wounded, some less, some worse than me. You see other people working on their recovery in the gym and it drives you to succeed. I think it's good for new patients to see me there.

"We've also had amputees from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. You see that they've lived long, full lives and you know you can do it, too."

The next chapter begins soon.

He'll spend Thanksgiving with his girlfriend and at a friend's house in the Washington area.

Then he'll head back to Kentucky. He'll begin a month of convalescent leave, and then he'll retire from the Army after 11 years of active duty and two in the reserves. Doughty had intended on a career in the military but the injury ended that.

More college is a possibility, he says. He already has an associate degree and could picture himself working in health care.

Doughty and his family are just thankful that he is alive and can conquer obstacles — like learning to walk again.

"I'll try to figure out what my new life will be," he says. "The Army is the only job I've ever done. I'll miss it. But I like a challenge too."

Doughty, for one, is not complaining.