* Camaraderie of team sports cited as key for amputees’
recovery
* Nearly 1,500 Americans have lost limbs in combat during
past decade
By Gary A. Cameron
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y., May 28 (Reuters) – When Saul Bosquez, a
27-year-old U.S. Army veteran who lost part of his left leg in
Iraq, stepped up to the plate during a softball game this
Memorial Day weekend, he knew he needed a big hit.
Bosquez, who plays with the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball
Team and wears a prosthetic leg below his left knee, said the
hot weather on Sunday in Cooperstown – home to the Baseball Hall
of Fame – was making it harder than usual for him to run the
bases.
Luckily, the ball soared over the outfielders’ heads, and
Bosquez made it safely to third.
“They were playing pretty shallow, and I was able to get it
between both of them,” Bosquez said. “Usually I’m a pretty
decent runner for a guy with one leg.”
The Wounded Warriors ended up beating the Cooperstown First
Responders, a local team of firefighters and police, 21-9.
“We all pretty much have the same story,” Bosquez said of
his teammates, participants in the kind of athletic pastime that
experts say can be a key factor in the successful rehabilitation
of wounded war veterans.
Bosquez, who is from Seattle, was wounded in Baghdad in
August 2007 when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive
device.
The Wounded Warriors, consisting of 15 men who lost limbs in
the decade of U.S. warfare following the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, is the creation of David van Sleet, a prosthetics manager
for the U.S. Veterans Affairs Southwest Health Care Network and
the team’s head coach.
“With a lot of these guys, they didn’t think they are going
to live. Then they didn’t think they were going to walk, and all
along they certainly didn’t think they were going to play a
high-level sport, or any sport, again,” van Sleet said. “The
camaraderie on this team is absolutely unbelievable.”
The team, launched last March, has won 20 of its first 38
games.
“We’re a good team. We’re not a great team,” their coach
said.
RECOVERING AS A TEAM
Nearly 1,500 American service members have lost limbs in
military action over the past decade, with leg and foot injuries
making up the bulk of cases, according to the U.S. Department of
Defense.
Kendra Calhoun, head of the Amputee Coalition, a national
advocacy group, said the recovery and readjustment process of
someone who loses a limb is closely linked to the person’s
network of social and family support.
“These soldiers train in groups, they go to war in groups,
and (in the case of amputees) they recover together. And then
they go home to their individual civilian lives, and they’re
alone,” Calhoun said. “These team sports really provide them
that camaraderie that they have become so accustomed to. And I
think it’s critical for their recovery and readjustment.”
Nick Clark, 31, an Army veteran from New Hampshire who lost
part of his left leg in Afghanistan in an attack involving a
rocket-propelled grenade, said the Wounded Warriors team means
everything to him.
“I didn’t have anybody I could talk with or who I could
relate to,” said Clark, who lives in Seattle. “It really helped
me out with my mental recovery.
“It’s like I’m part of a brotherhood again,” he said.
(Additional reporting and writing by Edith Honan; Editing by
Steve Gorman and Eric Beech)
