"Everyone wants to be supportive," said Joe Jacobi, 1992 Olympic gold medalist in the two-man canoe, on hand to teach last weekend. While they may not all back the war, the volunteers wanted to do more for U.S. troops, he said, "than just slap a sticker on the car."
The sport's -- and the river's -- reputation for danger appeals to men and women fresh from war. There, hospital smells and midnight worries give way to the white noise of the rapids, and a sport that pits body against nature.
"Anything that could get you killed is a lot of fun," said Orlando Gill, 32, an Iraq veteran who learned to kayak about five months after a rocket-propelled grenade sheared off the bottom of his right leg. "Life isn't fun unless you're getting challenged."
Gill carries his boat to the river himself and kayaks wearing his prosthetic leg, for stability. He uses his hips and torso to master the river. "Once you can break out from the group and kayak by yourself it's just you and the water," he said. "I don't think about what if; I look forward to what's coming."
On a clear weekend morning, Mornini drove the van full of soldiers into a parking lot near Lock 6, downstream from the "Feeder Canal," a stretch of river in Montgomery County's Brookmont area that is a training site for the U.S. whitewater slalom team.
Four men had come for this weekend's trip: Dale Bouck, 31, of Whitehall, Mich., who suffered a compound leg fracture during a training exercise in Iraq; Sang Nguyen, 21, and James Alexander, 20, both from New Orleans, hospitalized for stress; and Hamm.
The men don't give rank, nor do the kayakers ask. On the river, they are equals, and whole.
Hamm was a warehouse worker in Nashville whose National Guard unit went to Iraq last year. He lost a buddy there, killed by two bullets that got past his body armor. Hamm inventoried his friend's effects: a letter, a computer and a bloodstained uniform that triggered something in him that he could not control. He fasted, taking little more than water for two weeks, "for my brothers' safety," he said. On patrol in Iraq, he needed to check every village, every building, every room. One day he circled the same empty car 15 times, and eventually wound up at Walter Reed.
For six weeks, he's sat in sessions on combat stress, taken medications that "make me feel down, make me feel out," and then he met Mornini.
Who now glided up, to critique Hamm's first shot at the rapids. "When in doubt, paddle like hell," Mornini said. "You got your paddle up here" -- waving it over his head -- "you've got a zero percent chance of taking the correct stroke. Again."
The second time, Hamm made it through the rapids, only to roll in an eddy at the bottom. Shivering, he got back to the top, where Mornini joined him again.
Skin chalky with cold, Hamm paddled upriver again, then pealed out into the froth.
This time, water and man worked as one. Eddying out at the bottom, Hamm of the broken heart, a soldier no longer allowed to handle a weapon, raised his paddle aloft, shouting with joy.
Then turned around, to try again.
