Twenty-one soldiers who had been severely wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars left the Wood River Valley last week feeling less burdened by their injuries.
Accompanied by family members, the soldiers spent five days with the Wood River Ability Program and with Sun Valley Adaptive Sports learning to ski on Bald Mountain. They were taught by WRAP President Marc Mast and about a dozen instructors from the Sun Valley Ski and Snowboard School.
Seven of the 14 soldiers in WRAP's program were either paralyzed below the waist or had had one or both legs amputated. One was missing an arm, and six had been badly burned. Some, primarily the burn victims, were able to ski standing up, while others used sit skis or mono skis and outriggers.
The soldiers had only recently been treated at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and for many, the ski trip was their first big physical challenge since they had been wounded.
"At first some of these guys were withdrawn and nervous," Mast said. "They weren't sure they could do anything like skiing again. All of a sudden you'd see them open up and smiling. It opened up a part of their lives that they thought was gone. You could see it in their faces."
Army Cpl. Richard Elliott, 22, wasn't wounded, but joined the trip to reunite with some of the men he had served with in the 173rd Airborne. One of them was Cpl. Tyler Wilson, also 22, who had been shot three times when he and Elliott had been surrounded by Taliban fighters on a ridge near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan. One of the shots hit Wilson in the spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. He still carries the bullet in his back. Last week was the first time the two men had seen each other since Wilson had been evacuated from the ridge. Elliott called the ski trip "a huge confidence builder" for his friends.
"It's got to be so hard for them to fit back into society," he said. "But as soon as you're out on the slopes, you're equal to everybody else."
Retired Air Force Capt. Ginger Burns, 35, had provided air support from a fighter plane for some of the injured men when they were all serving in Iraq, and helped raise money for the event. Since they began skiing here, Burns, said, "guys have been coming out of their shells."
"I have noticed night-and-day evolution in confidence and feelings of being accepted," she said. "It's the skiing, but it's also the fact that we're here as a group."
Burns said the soldiers and their wives had been hitting local night spots together. One evening one of the men got overheated on the dance floor, removed his prosthetic leg and just tossed it aside. She said she guesses he'll now be more likely to make that kind of move when he's out on his own.
Instructor Steven Booth Songstad said he was motivated to participate in the ski school's adaptive sports program partly by the fact that his uncle had lost his leg during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and had started a center for disabled veterans in Portland, Ore.
"Everyone in the family is involved in one way or another," Songstad said.
Even so, he said, "it was an eye-opener for me to work with these guys, in the sense that it brings the horror of the war here. It puts it right in your lap."
Every one of the soldiers had a grisly story to relate. Army Specialist Charles Dominguez, 33, told of the fireball that engulfed the courtyard of the building where he was training police recruits in Ramadi, Iraq, after a suicide bomber drove in and exploded a 5-ton propane tank truck. The explosion killed seven people and injured many more.
"They hadn't taught the recruits how to duck and roll," Dominguez said. "There was a guy maybe 10 feet away from me. He just stood there and burned."
In the ensuing gun battle, Dominguez said, "I reached for my pistol and realized that my hands had melted away. They looked like melted cheese. There's nothing worse than having people screaming and bullets flying and you can't do anything because you can't pick up a weapon."
Two days later, Dominguez was being treated in San Antonio, where he spent almost a month in the hospital. The skin had been burned off his face, his back, his hands, a knee and his elbows.
"They had to scrape and tear the dead skin off," he said. "It was a very painful experience."
For the next year, he will need to wear special gloves for 23 hours of every day to let the skin grafts on his hands heal.
As ghastly as the soldiers' stories are, equally impressive to an observer is the matter-of-fact way in which they are related—no anger, no remorse, no self-pity. The soldiers view their injuries simply as one more obstacle in a long chain of obstacles they have already faced. Wilson said the infantry's unofficial motto is "Adapt and Overcome."
"That was my attitude before," he said, "figure out how to get through it and come out the other side. Make the best of what I've got and move on from there. Airborne infantry is a pretty dangerous job. It comes with the territory. I don't have any regrets."
Army Staff Sgt. Dan Barnes, 29, lost both legs after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the vehicle in which he was riding through Baghdad last September.
"The majority of soldiers who were injured feel they were just doing their jobs," he said. "They'd go back in a heartbeat."
But at first, this reporter suggested, he must have felt severely depressed.
"No," Barnes answered, "I was never really depressed. I looked at it like 'I'm still alive, and I'll be able to walk (with prosthetics) eventually.'"
However, Barnes' disability did change his career plans.
"I was going to do 20," he said. "But the unfortunate injury, in a way, told me to spend more time with my family."
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Spanky Gibson, 35, lost his left leg above the knee fighting in East Ramadi.
"In the Marine Corps we constantly train for injuries," he said. "You focus your training on 'I'm going to live and not die.' If you get through it, you count your blessings and carry on."
All three men returned to physical activities as soon as they could.
"I'm not the type of person to just sit around and let people tell me that I can't do things," Barnes said. "I'll at least try it."
He began with wheelchair basketball, then moved to rope climbing, swimming and paintball. Since his injury, Gibson has participated in the La Joya half triathlon, which includes a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride and a 13-mile run, both of which he did on a hand bike. However, he said, he never thought he'd be skiing again. But on the last day of his trip here, he was skiing the moguls on Arnold's Run on a mono ski using outriggers.
Wilson, who grew up in Durango, Colo., had skied since he was four. The trip to Sun Valley, he said, showed him he can still do something he used to love.
"Regardless of your political views, you could not help but admire these guys," Songstad said. "You admire their commitment and their tenacity and their drive to enjoy life."
One of Songstad's three students was Sgt. John Botts, 23, who had lost his left leg above the knee. He had skied twice in his life before his injury, but skiing on a sit ski was all new to him. On his third day here, he rode the chairlift to the top of Baldy.
"Going down College, he was just yelling and screaming, he was having so much fun," Songstad said. "He was going fast."
Songstad said he was surprised by how fast the disabled soldiers learned—faster, in many cases than fully mobile students.
"They were willing to try more," he said. "They were just ready to go."
He said that the day after the soldiers left, he taught a normal ski lesson and felt like telling his students, "Those other guys got it so quick. How come you're not?"
On the soldiers' last evening in town, the Ketchum Chapter of the American Legion hosted a dinner for them. In interviews, the soldiers expressed tremendous appreciation for the support they had received from the local community. Sun Valley Co. had provided free lift tickets, Pete Lane's had provided ski equipment, the Pioneer Saloon had wined and dined them, the Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood had hosted a dinner, the American Legion had provided transportation, The ski Tour had handed out concert tickets and local resident Larry Bosley had bought them a dinner at Bistro 44.
The trip had been made possible by a national coalition of non-profit organizations that included the Wounded Warrior Disabled Sports Project, which raised money, and Operation Comfort in San Antonio, which organized it. Mast said the same coalition will put together two whitewater raft trips in Idaho this summer. He said that some of the soldiers who, at the beginning of their week here, had been wondering if they could ever learn to ski were already getting psyched about taking up rafting.
"The ability to go skiing has given them a new freedom," Capt. Burns said. "It's opened the door to allow them to do other experiences that they didn't think they could accomplish."
Sun Valley Adaptive Sports photo
Marine Lance Cpl. Joe Lowe plows through the snow of Baldy?s Lower River Run, with the assistance of Jen Smith, a Sun Valley ski instructor and board driver for Sun Valley Adaptive Sports.
