The Walter Reed Complex was much larger than I had thought. I guess I envisioned a hospital with some barracks next to it, but it was definitely much more than that. It was a campus really of multiple buildings spread out all over the place. There were roads that went around all the buildings with many intersections. It truly did remind me of a college campus of some type.

Owen, Garry and I were riding over there in The Milkshake Man’s car and chatting the whole time about a variety of topics, to include what the day was like so far. As we were driving on the WR campus, The Milkshake Man (MM) recognized one of the patients he visits heading down the sidewalk in an electric wheelchair. MM stopped, rolled down the window and yelled “HEY!”. The young man stopped and looked over confused and you can tell someone startled. MM then called out “You better slow down and quit speeding around here”. As soon as the wounded warrior saw who it was, his face lit up and a smile stretched from ear to ear.

Soon we were in the new Amputee Center that was dedicated last year by GEN Schoomaker. Well it was originally called the Amputee Center, but the name was later changed to the Military Advanced Training Center (MATC), because it is used to recuperate more than just amputees. There are many patients suffering from TBI and other non-amputee ailments that utilizing the center. It is a phenomenal facility that truly incorporates all the latest technologies and advances in medicine in order to restore as much normalcy into these warriorÂ’s lives as possible. We were given a complete tour of the facility and all the technologies that were there. They have all the standard devices that you would expect in a normal physical therapy type of setting. However they also have what amounts to a full private gymnasium with the amount of equipment that they have. There is just about every type of universal and free-weight workout device you would see in a gym. One interesting thing that the gentlemen who was giving us a tour pointed out was that they have heavier than normal weights of what you would see in a rehab clinic. Typically the weights are 2-15 lbs for someone rehabilitating from an injury, but the dumbbells here went up to 100 lbs. The reason is because many of these guys have been and still are work-out enthusiasts. Before they were wounded, many of them are used to lifting a large amount of weight so to give them a 20 lbs dumbbell when they are used to curling something like 65 lbs would not do anything for them.

There is also a full sized, self-belay climbing wall and what is called a treadwall. A treadwall is like a treadmill in that it moves as the person climbs and just rolls around some rollers so there is never a top to climb to. The person on it can climb for hours if they would like to. The guide we had told us about a young man with only one leg that must have been an avid climber before. With only one leg, and that one was barefooted, he raced to the top of the full-sized climbing wall in a matter of seconds. As a climber myself of both real rock and climbing walls, I can tell you that takes a heck of a lot of concentration, balance and upper body strength. To be able to climb and keep balance by compensating for nothing on one half of the lower extremities is pretty amazing. To climb up that fast, in that condition is almost un-human. Regardless, it is another example of the extreme fitness both physically and mentally that these wounded warriors show all the time. One device that they also have is the only one like it in the world. It is a hydraulically lifted walkway with a handrail system. They can incline it up to 30 degrees so warriors training on prosthetic legs can see what it is like to walk up and down an incline without the ability to bend an ankle or a knee. There are even stairs that connect to the device which the rehabilitating warriors can use to train with on how to climb and come down stairs. The Milkshake Man even tried it out and after all of these years I could see it is still a challenge to him, much less someone trying to learn how to walk all over again. There is a picture of this device in the Book Tour Album on my website.

One of the other things we checked out was a new FATS system. FATS stands for Firearms Training Simulator. It is one of the many simulators we have in the military and is essentially the simulator for the ground troops like the flight simulators are for the pilots. It presents weapon range scenarios, shoot/no-shoot crown scenarios and many offensive and defensive operation scenarios for the individual soldier to go through. I have been using FATS since about 1997 and have always liked it except for the tether that is connected to it, which provides the weapons with power, smells, and recoil. The tether is a large series of cables that carries out all the functions I mentioned. When going through scenarios where you have to hold the weapon at the ready for a long period of time, it makes the weapon heavier than normal and will eventually cause the soldier to wear out quicker or at least not be disciplined in holding the weapon up at the ready. Well the FATS system at the MATC is tether less and it relies on Bluetooth technology in order to transmit and receive data. The kickback is provided by a gas system which is loaded into the magazines of the weapons and can be re-filled within seconds by a quick charge base station connected to a tank. They also have tethered weapons for certain situations, but for the most part I think they use the Bluetooth enabled devices more often. In the Pictures album on my website, there is a picture of Garry Trudeau shooting one of the Bluetooth enabled M4s. The reason they have this technology in the MATC is because many soldiers can eventually return to active duty and by doing so it means they will need to fire a weapon again.

This leads to an interesting fact that our guide shared with us. He asked us if we knew how many service-members have been made into amputees as a result of the two war fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I think all of us guessed into the thousands, based on the news reports we see and other facts that are presented about the dead and wounded. We were very surprised to hear the number is around 750. Yes that is it, less than 800 at the present time. Of that 750 or so, about 100 are still on active duty and of that 100, about 12 are back in theatre and fighting in one of the two war zones today. If you think about that, all those number are truly amazing. To have 100 people still serving today, even with missing at least one limb and to have about a dozen of them back in the fight serves as a true testament to the great fighting men and women we have serving our country today. They may be the PS2, ipod, and virtual reality generation, but they are great in their own right. The Men and Women of todayÂ’s fighting force are truly a Band of Brothers, 2.0.

Once we were done with checking out the FATS system we moved over to check out another system which I donÂ’t remember the name of. It is one of only eight in the world that exist. It combines a two story room which has a moveable treadmill type surface mounted on a hydraulic platform and a 120 degree virtual-reality screen. The person using it, has sensors placed on their body and they are watched and monitored by Infrared cameras all around them. It is very similar to the technology you see in Hollywood or with athletes that measures and watches how they move. An operator watches the stick figure representation of the user of the system as they move. It shows how they walk, run, limp, or whatever. It helps the therapist with identifying what part of the body they need to work on. The 120 degree screen shows a virtual reality representation of something as simple as walking through the woods. As the ground rises or dips, the hydraulics move the platform up and down, so to the user it combines all the senses to make the mind feed like the user is truly walking through the woods. Like I said, this is only one of eight of these in the world, and it is an awesome demonstration of technology helping the wounded. The center is also building a huge room that is near completion which is circled in the IR cameras and has a treadmill surface in the center with weight detection. There are pictures of these cameras in the Book Tour Album in the pictures section of my website. This entire room is dedicated to just finding the smallest deficiencies in the movement of warriors recovering. They cover the body in the sensors and see how everything moves. They can detect things that the human eye cannot. Another great awe-inspiring view of how the Army is putting the latest technologies to use in order to try and give these guys and gals their old lives back.

After checking out the technology we were on our way to the prosthetic room when we walked by one with a young man in it trying to put a huge Star Wars battleship together made out of Legos. Now putting one together is not that tough for the average person, but it is much more different when someone is doing it with a prosthetic arm. Imagine trying to pick up something like a pen without any feel. These prosthetics can transfer pressure to the remaining limb, but they cannot tell the brain when a fingertip touches something. So trying to pick up and snap together Legos takes on a much newer meaning, and is much more of a challenge. Owen and I talked to this one soldier for a while as he was putting one together with a new completely robotic left arm. His “new” arm went all the way above the elbow and it was controlled by the soldier flexing the muscles in this biceps and triceps. There are sensors on the inside that will open and close the hand and even turn it around in a full 360 degree. All of this is possible by him flexing the right muscles in his upper arm which activate the sensors. The lower part of the prosthetic from the elbow to the wrist was clear and we could see the motors and wires. The soldier explained this was the first of many he would wear and the purpose of this one was to train him on how to use it. It is actually heaving than the final one he will receive, but just like everything in the military, we train harder than we fight. So if they have him learn how to use one that is heavier then what he will use the rest of his life, he will have no problem with the final one.

We eventually moved to the prosthetic room where we saw bionic knees, varying prosthetic legs and motorized and non-motorized arms. The bionics knees themselves costs around $18,000 a piece and can run for 3-5 hours of constant use before needing recharging. The prosthetic arms and hands come in all types of sizes, styles and colors. They actually color and paint the “gloves”, which is the outer part of the hand that looks real, to match the user’s other hand. In fact they paint them from the inside out, so the paint does not wear off and they sculpt in fingerprints, palm lines, and everything. The designers do all they can in order to make it look just like the other hand. I held one that felt and looked like a real hand, had it not been for the electrode connector in the wrist area. The hands also come in a variety of styles based on what the wounded person needs. They have some which are shaped and configured to hold tools, fishing rods, etc. etc. Whatever ones the user wants, they get.

From that point we were pretty well finished with the tour of the new MATC center and I think we were all thoroughly impressed and happy to see so much care go into trying to make life as normal as possible for these heroes of the battlefield. We bid our goodbyes to the staff of the center and thanked them again for their time. As we walked out to head over to the local Fisher House, we ran into another blogger from the book. He has been a patient at WR for about two years and despite his injuries, he like many other brave young men we would later meet, keeps his sense of humor going. He made one comment to me that cracked me up. He said, “the one good thing about having TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) is that you meet new people every day”. After getting a chuckle from this one he then went on to say you can also hear the same joke over and over and it is always funny. We spent a few moments talking to this young man about his time there, how he was injured and what he has seen come through Walter Reed over the last two years. Being there as long as he was, he has soon a lot of the good and the bad. I think his blogging of some of the bad has been what has gotten him in trouble a few times, so I will continue to keep his identity secret.

Upon leaving the MATC area and walking over to the Fisher House for few hours of meeting people, dinner, and signing books I had a good feeling about the day to this point. I felt more educated in the ways and happenings of what our wounded men and women are going through. Walter Reed is doing many great things for our service members, but like any bureaucracy it has its faults. There are piles or paperwork, stressed-out caregivers, and sometimes people that fall through the cracks. However for the most part if appears that all the rights things are being done and the treatment is being given to these great men and women, by fabulous men and women. Little did I know that the best part of the trip was still to come.

Well I just got word from my good friend and Sandbox Duty Officer, David Stanford, that the publisher (AMU) has had to order a 2nd printing of the book because the first 15,000 copies were not enough and the demand is out there. That is a great thing as it means that more and more people are getting the truth from the frontlines and The Fisher House is benefiting with each sale.

Thank you to all who have purchased the book and please keep spreading the word.

If you get the Pentagon Channel at your home or navigate over to www.pentagonchannel.mil/ you can see a short video snippet about our book signing at the Pentagon. If you go to the website, go to the 19 October 2007 edition of “This week in the Pentagon” and the snippet is at about 9:37 into the 30 minute broadcast.

They interviewed us too, so I am not sure if that all hit the editing room floor or if they are going to show those at a later time.

After getting up and having some breakfast the first morning, we all linked up to head out and start the day. Our first stop was a very popular bookstore in Downtown DC called Politics and Prose. We moved into the backroom and met the owners and managers of the bookstore. They had a stack of books for us to start signing and we got into it. The books were stacked and it was very evident that Garry was the expert at this, while Owen and I were novices. He was signing them so fast, Owen and I could not even come close to keeping up. This started the first of many times of Garry messing with us and Owen and I messing with him. After finishing up the signing of the books, we sat and chatted for a few minutes over coffee. Earlier while Owen and I were finishing up the books Garry bought up two copies of his last two books that he created. They were The Long Road Home and The War Within. So Garry bought two copies of each book and then autographed them and gave them to Owen and I as a gift. I was blown away by this and never expected it.

From the bookstore we went onto the VA headquarters in downtown DC. I am not sure what was happening there, but when we got there, the road between the two VA buildings was blocked off by Federal Security and DC cops. We had to be dropped off in the intersection by the buildings as the police would not let us get any closer. We sat on the corner for a few minutes with our contact from the VA before he came up with the idea of going into another entrance and taking the tunnel under the street and into the building where the cafeteria was. This would be the location that we would be signing books in.

After we got up to the cafeteria, we moved past the signing table into the back where they had a table setup just for us to relax at. We sat there until Shelly said it was time to move up to the signing table. There was already a line of people waiting to get their books signed by the three of us, but of course they really wanted Garry’s and we all knew that. Before the book signing started, VA TV Channel interviewed all three of us. Once the interview was over, we sat down and the crowd started coming. The book signing was steady and continued for about an hour and a half. Once the crowd died down, we moved to the back table to have some lunch. During lunch, an old friend of Garry’s showed up who goes by the nickname “The Milkshake Man.” After lunch we moved back to the front and signed a few more books for people, and then the VA brought us all the books that they had in stock for the store and we signed all of those. That took about another hour to get through all of those. While we were signing those books, the Milkshake Man hung out with us and I could see the guy was a true comedian. He was funny from the moment I met him and was always cracking jokes. I guess the Milkshake Man had retired from the VA, so everyone knew him and he was pretty popular there.

I leaned over to ask David Stanford what the deal was with him, and he told me that the Milkshake Man had lost both legs in Vietnam. While working at the VA, he started going over to Walter Reed visiting the wounded troops. He takes them trays of McDonaldÂ’s milkshakes. He befriends them over several weeks and visits and jokes around and gets to know them. Once they get comfortable with him and open up to him, he then pulls up his pants and shows them that he is a double-amputee himself. He does this as an inspiration to them so they can see that despite their injuries, they can lead normal lives. After the signings were done, I pulled out my copy of The Long Road Home and asked the Milkshake Man to autograph the comic strip in the book that Garry wrote where he mentions The Milkshake Man. It was a true honor to meet someone who does what he does out of the true caring and compassion that he possesses for these wounded warriors.