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thedrifter
03-20-06, 08:05 AM
Putting a face on wounded veterans
BY MICHAEL CLANCY
amNEWYORK CITY EDITOR

March 20, 2006

In many parts of America, returning soldiers and Marines are well known in their small community. In the anonymity of a big city like New York, the returning GI might be the woman on line at the coffee shop or the guy sitting across the subway aisle.

This is the story of two New Yorkers -- one from the Midwest, and another from Brooklyn by way of Belarus -- who fought in Iraq and are among the 17,124 who have been wounded in the war that began three years ago Monday.

His mother and father are both Marines, so Garth Stewart chalks up his decision to enlist in the Army as an act of rebelliousness. The 23-year-old from the "pretty little river town" of Stillwater, Minn. was also drawn by romantic notions of being a soldier and defending his country.

Stewart looks back fondly on basic training, the months spent in Kuwait during the buildup to the war and even the 16 days he was in Iraq before he stepped on a landmine.

During basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia, he built a rep as a guy who's good with his hands. In Kuwait, he played baseball in the desert with a rolled-up ball of tape. And when his battalion took artillery on the route to Baghdad, he snapped a quick picture of his buddy, saying "Wait. Pause for a cool guy picture in case you die."

His friend made it that day. A few days later, on April 5, 2003, just outside of Baghdad, Stewart and a few buddies from the 1-15 Infantry were going to check out an Iraqi bunker, when he stepped on improvised landmine.

"I saw my foot and it looked like a rose," Stewart said. "It was blown open."

An infection and a few operations later, Stewart's leg was amputated below the knee. Stewart recovered, rejoined his unit for 17 months and is now a freshman at Columbia University studying history and political science.

So far, Stewart has wrecked more than a dozen prosthetic devices because his boundless energy remains as does his enthusiasm for working out and martial arts. He's considering becoming a lobbyist, and dreams of becoming a senator, or even the president of the United States.

When it comes to losing his leg, Stewart downplays the sacrifice.

"Whether you had a good experience in Iraq is not whether you got wounded or not," said Stewart. "That's sissy (stuff.) I mean, c'mon, that's old hat. It doesn't matter if you get wounded. What matters is if you did something you regret, like killed a civilian or another U.S. soldier. That's the stuff that sticks with you."

At age 16, Alex Presman moved to Sheepshead Bay from the city of Minsk in Belarus. He joined the Marine Corps Reserves at age 19 after graduating from Edward R. Murrow High School. He didn't think twice about enlisting even though he didn't even have a green card yet.

"I always wanted to be in the military," said Presman, 28. "A man has to be in the military."

In December 2002, he was days from getting out of the service when his unit was activated. Presman volunteered to go. "That's why I joined the military," he said. "Maybe that sounds nuts, but I hope it doesn't. That is what you train for. Plus, all of my buddies were going."

Once in Iraq, he volunteered again to be a sawgunner on a convoy delivering medical supplies to Baghdad. During the mission, Presman and four other Marines stepped off the Humvee for a cigarette and bathroom break. The area was supposed to be safe, but Pressman stepped on an explosive device as he walked alongside his buddies. He lost his foot in the blast.

"I was having bad thoughts," said Pressman of his time at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. "I was thinking I'm going to be disabled for the rest of my life."

Pressman was visited by vets who had even worse amputations -- entire legs, both arms up to the shoulders -- and he realized that he could get by without his foot.

"In the summer it sweats and in the winter it gets cold and I get numb," Presman said.

Presman knew he was doing better when it was his turn to visit new amputees at the hospital.

He lives in Sheepshead Bay, has taken business classes at Pace University, is getting married next month and looks forward to having a few kids one day.

"To provide my family with a good life," he said. "That's my ambition ... I wish it didn't happen, but it did. Life took a different swing after that. Everything is God's will."

mclancy [at] am-ny.com

How to help These organizations offer programs to that help wounded veterans:

The Wounded Warrior Project
www.woundedwarriorproject.org
540-342-0032

The Armed Forces Foundation
www.armedforcesfoundation.org
202-547-4713

Homes for Our Troops
www.homesforourtroops.org
866-7-TROOPS

Ellie