The double amputee who kept fighting

Dan Luckett lost his feet in Iraq, but not his will to fight, said Todd Pitman in the Associated Press. Two years ago, the Army captain was on patrol outside Baghdad when his Humvee struck a roadside bomb; the blast sent slugs of molten copper hurtling through his cab. Asked via radio if he was okay, Luckett responded: “Negative. My feet are gone.” His left foot had been blown completely off, while his mangled right foot no longer had toes. “That’s it,” he remembers thinking. “No more Army for you.”

At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Luckett was fitted with a carbon fiber plate for his missing toes and a lightweight prosthetic for his left leg. The very first time he tried on the prosthetic leg, he attempted to walk out the door. “They were like, ‘You gotta give the leg back!’” he recalls. But he began practicing with it right away for many hours a day. Just months later, he earned his Expert Infantryman Badge, which required him to run 12 miles with a 35-pound pack strapped to his back, and shortly thereafter he was reassigned to combat at a rugged outpost in Ashoqeh, Afghanistan. There, he’s earned the respect, and a nickname, from the other members of his platoon. “They call me the one-legged warrior of Ashoqeh.”

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