“I said, ‘Okay, we’ll see how this goes,’ ” he said. “ ‘I have an Army [therapist]. This is going to be stupid.’ ”
They sized each other up.
Bernardo had been a jump master in the 82nd Airborne, a leader who has responsibility for, and directs, the jump of paratroopers on an airborne mission. He was a veteran of 30 parachute jumps.
Johnson figured that Bernardo saw the airborne insignia on his uniform and guessed the officer was a “five-jump chump.”
“That’s what we call people who went to airborne school, and that’s all [the jumps] they’ve done,” Johnson said. He was, indeed, a five-jump chump.
What Bernardo couldn’t see were the extensive burn and skin graft scars on Johnson’s arms, sides and legs beneath his uniform.
The burns were from a deadly incident in Johnson’s early days in the Army.
It was Aug. 12, 1997. Stationed in Germany, Johnson, then a private, was driving his car on the autobahn accompanied by a sergeant.
Johnson was driving 95 mph, as he said many motorists do on that roadway, when he blew a tire. The car flipped over, landed on its roof and exploded. Johnson and his buddy were trapped and engulfed in flames.
“There was fire everywhere,” he said in a recent interview in his office. He remembers seeing a burning picture of his girlfriend. Then he noticed that the rear window had broken out and managed to crawl to safety that way.
“I get up and start to walk away,” he said. Then he noticed the skin on one arm hanging, and “my entire right arm is just a giant blister.”
He was also burned on both legs and his face. “I looked at my hands, and . . . the skin was removed from them,” he said. “Some of my skin was dripping.” He looked back. The car was a fireball, and the sergeant was still inside.
Just then, another group of soldiers happened by and helped the sergeant escape.
The men were taken to two different burn centers in Germany.
Johnson was bandaged head to toe. He had suffered second- and third-degree burns over 25 percent of his body. At one point, he dreamed that he died.
It was decided that both men would be transferred to an Army burn center in San Antonio. Johnson survived the trip. But his sergeant, who was burned more severely, died en route.
In San Antonio, Johnson underwent skin grafts and began to get physical and occupational therapy. It was excruciating and frustrating. His burned skin was shrinking and had to be painfully stretched.
Before the accident, he had been an excellent baseball player. He hit .500 one year in high school. Now, he believed he would never play again.
“My right hand was so mutilated,” he said, “I was not going to be able to hold a bat.”
But as the tortuous occupational therapy progressed, he said he suddenly realized that he might be able to play again — that this was the reason for the agonizing exercises he was forced to do.
“The light went on,” he said. “It was a very profound moment.”
He knew this was what he wanted to do in the Army. He wanted to do for other soldiers what had been done for him.
A camaraderie forms
Most mornings, Johnson and Bernardo would meet in the training center at 9 a.m. The captain, a certified occupational therapist, would make the sergeant use his prosthetic left hand to work with blocks, tiny metal pegs and washers. Bernardo used tools to assemble things.
They traded good-natured insults. Humor, Johnson said, can be crucial. As part of the therapy, they went to the supermarket together and prepared meals in the center’s occupational therapy kitchen.
There were some problems.
“It was frustrating when we started because that prosthetic [hand] wouldn’t work,” Bernardo said in a recent interview in his apartment. “I wanted to throw it out that window.”
The prosthetic hands resemble natural hands and are fitted over the stump of an arm like a long glove. The thumb and fingers, which can open and close, are activated by movements of muscles in the forearm that stimulate sensors.
“The hand never, ever worked for more than five to 10 minutes,” Bernardo said.
As he spoke, the verbal jousting with Johnson went on. Good-
natured barbs flew, along with jokes about idiot officers, and wicked jokes about amputees. Through the cloud of insults, it was clear the two men are fond of each other.
“This guy is one of the most phenomenal people that I know, period,” Johnson said in a serious moment.
Bernardo said: “He’s actually been pretty much one of the best occupational therapists that I’ve seen around here.”
“For other people, it’s a job,” he told Johnson. “It's more than that to you.”
Earlier this month the two men, accompanied by Bernardo’s sister and his girlfriend, Amanda Simmons, went Christmas shopping at Target. Once Bernardo had rested his leg, they headed for the wrapping paper department.
Rounding a corner they ran into a group of handicapped schoolchildren chaperoned by their teacher and other adults. The children spotted his legs.
“Oh my gosh!” one child said.
“You want to touch them, dude?” Bernardo said. “They’re just robot legs, man. I’ve got a robot hand, too. Look.”
The kids gasped. Bernardo chuckled.
“Were you a soldier?” one of the chaperones asked.
“Yes,” Bernardo replied. “I was a soldier.”
Loading...
Comments