How I Lost My Hand But Found Myself

(6 of 6)
On July 3, Rebekah and I flew to Rancho Mirage, Calif., to celebrate my stepfather's 90th birthday. My mother hosted a party in the main ballroom of a swank hotel, the Lodge, for more than 60 family members and friends. Inevitably, when the subject of my accident came up and led to admiring comments, I felt a familiar twinge of guilt and embarrassment. I still couldn't embrace the notion of my so-called heroism.

Lying awake that night, I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with Hal Wain, a psychologist at Walter Reed. I had sought him out a few months earlier to discuss why I had grabbed the grenade. Wain said I had one overriding objective: self-preservation. "That's what all heroes are made of," he said. "I have learned from guys coming back that the instinct to survive, the instinct to take care of oneself or others, is incredibly potent. I really don't care if you did it for your needs or for others; you did it. The end result would have been the same—you saved people's lives."

Wain defined heroism as quick response to a changing environment, like a driver who swerves into another lane for the purpose of avoiding an oncoming car and, in the process, saves the life of his passenger. "That wasn't his intent," he said. "But being flexible and shifting is a higher level of intelligence. The people who can't change die."

I expressed my frustration that such a major ordeal had seemed to have so little effect on me—I was still the same impatient, competitive and self-critical person I'd always been. If I had acted so nobly, why didn't I feel more content? Wain's response struck me at the time as somewhat facile: the good deed, he said, had left me angry at myself. "You're thinking you could have done the same thing and didn't have to lose the hand. You love a perfect win and didn't get that perfect victory that you wanted and maybe deserved."

As I tossed and turned in the early hours of Independence Day, the simple truth of the psychologist's words hit me. It was true: I was mad at myself for failing to pull off a clean sweep. And it was that anger that was preventing me from savoring the achievement of a lifetime: saving my own skin and that of three others. My failure to get rid of the grenade before it exploded was only the first in a long list of wrongs I would have to pardon before I could finally put the ordeal behind me.

I had gone to Iraq for adventure and glory, discounting the interests of family and friends.

I had blithely ridden into danger with little to gain journalistically.

I had focused more on the loss of my hand than on the higher importance of preserving life.

The shortcomings were tough to swallow. But I was resolved to begin the process, keeping in mind Hal Wain's definition of heroism: self-preservation. By that standard, I had scored a perfect win after all.

The prize was the rest of my life.

From the forthcoming book BLOOD BROTHERS: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57, by Michael Weisskopf. (copyright) 2006 by Michael Weisskopf. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt and Co.