XPost: rec.sport.boxing   
   From: lmnp@global.net   
      
   BOSTON - It was the Fourth of July in Baghdad, a day off for Army Sgt. James   
   Lathan Jr   
      
   The Omaha soldier had six hours to kill before the online chat scheduled   
   with his wife. Their excitement was building about his return from Iraq -   
   already once delayed, but now, finally, only eight days away.   
      
   Bored, the helicopter mechanic and another soldier from his unit headed to   
   the recreation tent for a movie.   
      
   The mortar round that would forever change Lathan's life was the only one   
   the insurgents fired into camp that day. The haphazardly fired projectiles   
   usually never hit much of anything.   
      
   This one pounded into the earth directly behind Lathan, the blast sending   
   him sprawling.   
      
   In the foggy aftermath, Lathan remembers the other soldier screaming for   
   help. Lathan tried to call, too, but his voice was mute. He felt nothing, a   
   strange weightlessness gripping his entire body.   
      
   "I just knew I couldn't breathe or move," Lathan would say later from his   
   bed in a Boston veterans hospital. "You just don't think at the time that   
   you've been injured so bad, so bad that it can't ever be fixed."   
      
   Life-altering injury   
      
   Lathan's is a face on a statistic that doesn't get much attention - American   
   soldiers wounded in the Iraq war.   
      
   The Pentagon releases the names of the war dead - a figure that topped the   
   1,000 mark last week. Those soldiers are remembered as heroes in their   
   hometowns, buried with military ceremony and rifle-shot salutes.   
      
   But defense officials release only cold statistics for those wounded or   
   injured, now approaching 7,000 and mounting almost daily. There were almost   
   1,100 in August alone, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month   
   since the war began.   
      
   Defense officials release no special tally for soldiers who suffer   
   devastating, life-altering injuries - soldiers like James Lathan Jr.   
      
   As he was urgently shuttled to military hospitals in Baghdad, Germany and   
   Washington, D.C., in the days after the mortar attack, Lathan would learn   
   the harsh realities.   
      
      
   The shrapnel that struck him at the base of the skull had left him paralyzed   
   from the neck down.   
      
   He almost surely would never walk again. Might never breathe on his own   
   again. Probably never wrap his arms around his wife or 4-year-old son again.   
      
   Today, the former Central High ROTC cadet is spending his 27th birthday in   
   the Boston VA hospital, a place where he's coming to terms with the   
   paralysis that grips his young, wiry body. He calls it "learning to live   
   with what I've got."   
      
   He once climbed mountains. He once ran marathons. Now he hopes someday to be   
   able to lift a spoon.   
      
   Almost every day there are small victories and firsts. Re-learning how to   
   swallow. A tinge of feeling in his right arm. But doctors are careful not to   
   encourage false hopes.   
      
   The gravity of Lathan's injuries has left his family with mixed feelings   
   about a controversial war that polls now indicate half the country thinks   
   was a mistake.   
      
   His stepmother, Emma, a teacher at Omaha's Kellom Elementary, sees no end to   
   the "potshots" U.S. soldiers are receiving and thinks it's time to get them   
   out.   
      
   Lathan's father, James Sr., even as he prepares to send another son,   
   18-year-old Jonathan, to Iraq, thinks the U.S. soldiers are making a   
   difference.   
      
   For his part, Lathan pays little attention to the nation's debate and has   
   accepted his lot with the cool head and brave face of a soldier. He   
   expresses no regrets over his service in Iraq or the extreme price he paid.   
      
      
      
   "Would it help to sit around and pity myself all day?" he said over the   
   ever-present hum of a bedside respirator. "What else can you do but go on?"   
      
      
      
   Army a good fit   
      
   James Lathan Jr. was born in a military hospital in Germany, but he really   
   wasn't a born soldier.   
      
   He joined the Army, following in the booted footsteps of his father, because   
   he said he didn't have any better prospects coming out of high school.   
      
   But Lathan came to enjoy the rigor and regimen of Army life.   
      
   At his first duty stop he met his wife, Amy, a soldier's daughter who has   
   never known life off a military base.   
      
   His Army job, fixing hydraulic systems on Apache helicopters, was a natural.   
   As a kid he had been fascinated by how things worked, once taking apart his   
   new birthday watch to see what made the hands go around.   
      
   He and Amy saw the world, became parents of James III, and were able to save   
   some money. Lathan's ultimate dream was to return to Omaha and start his own   
   business.   
      
   In April 2003, he first set foot on the sands of Iraq.   
      
   The ground war was winding down, and his outpost - the Baghdad airport once   
   named for Saddam Hussein - was considered one of the most secure places to   
   be.   
      
   But the insurgency that followed made peace elusive and kept Lathan busy   
   patching helicopters. So busy that when he was due to leave the country last   
   April, his tour of duty was extended another three months.   
      
   "I'm a soldier," he would later say of what became a tragic delay. "I go   
   where I've got to go and do what I've got to do."   
      
   Unable to speak   
      
   All Lathan remembers of the first days after the mortar attack was the   
   helicopter ride that began his arduous journey toward recovery.   
      
   Days later he was flown by plane to a military hospital in Germany, near his   
   former duty station, where there was a heart-breaking reunion with his   
   family. At first, Lathan's son wouldn't touch his dad, afraid he might hurt   
   him more.   
      
   Then Amy was told she had just hours to pack. She and "Little James" would   
   be flying with him to the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington,   
   D.C.   
      
   The long plane ride to the States gave Amy her first sobering picture of the   
   devastating toll on U.S. soldiers. Gurneys of gravely injured soldiers were   
   bunked three high and two wide, extending about 10 rows from front to back.   
      
   At one point Little James called out, "I want my Daddy," and the eyes of   
   soldiers lying nearby glistened with tears.   
      
   The focus at Walter Reed was on stabilizing Lathan. Nothing was severed or   
   broken, but the swelling and bruising around his spinal cord made the   
   prognosis uncertain. They could only wait.   
      
   Lathan couldn't speak, the tube in his neck through which he was breathing   
   keeping any air from reaching his mouth. He and Amy learned to communicate.   
   First she pointed to letters on a board and he blinked to indicate when she   
   hit the right one. She later learned to read his lips.   
      
   "G-O-O-D G-R-I-E-F," he once spelled when she was gone too long. "I   
   M-I-S-S-E-D Y-O-U."   
      
   Once when Amy asked him whether he wanted her to turn on the TV, he mouthed,   
   "I'll just look at you."   
      
   He had a proud moment when a general came to his bedside and pinned a Purple   
   Heart medal to his blue hospital gown.   
      
   But he also often expressed helplessness, at one point telling his wife he   
   felt like a baby.   
      
   "Honey, it's just the beginning," she said. "You'll get better."   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)