Double amputee feels generosity of a California town

Double amputee feels generosity of a California town
Group gives 4-year scholarship to soldier who lost his legs in Iraq

By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, August 21, 2005

ARLINGTON, Va. — When Sgt. Manuel Mendoza hopped into the M113 armored personnel carrier on Oct. 3, 2004, he thought he was in for a quick delivery trip to Baghdad’s Sadr City.

What he didn’t know was that he was on the edge of a new journey.

Mendoza was serving his fifth year in the Army as an engineer with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment’s 58th Combat Engineering Co. when he made that trip. Thirty days later, he woke up at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to learn that an insurgent’s roadside bomb had taken both his legs.


continue reading>>