Effects of war

Earlier this summer, Army Sgt. Robert Brown of Moncks Corner retraced the route he took three years ago in Iraq where an enemy bullet cost him his right leg below the knee.

It was a haunting return. But it also proved emotionally healing.

"I needed to close a chapter in my life that was still open, and to leave on my own terms instead of on a stretcher," Brown, 26, said in a telephone interview from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where his physical therapy is continuing.

As the United States prepares to observe Veterans Day on Wednesday, the nation's military is experimenting with a modern twist on healing. "Operation Proper Exit" -- a program supported jointly by the USO and the Troops First Foundation -- seeks to return some wounded veterans back to the same ground where they were injured, if even for a little while.

The goal is multi-pronged. It shows vets that the "hot zones" from years ago have calmed, meaning their sacrifice was helpful to the war effort. It also helps close the loop on the events that happened in the confusion of battle following their exit out of harm's way.

"In past wars, service members recovering from severe injuries like amputated limbs were not given the opportunity to revisit the location where they were injured until years later," said Sloan Gibson, president of the national USO. "That is why Operation Proper Exit is so important."

A comparison is returning combat-wounded veterans from Vietnam, Korea or World War II to the same battlefields where they were injured within months, instead of decades later as tourists.

Brown was wounded in 2006 west of Baghdad. He and a squad of fellow 1st Armored Division troops were hunting an enemy mortar team that had wreaked havoc on their position. The squad walked into an ambush.

"They pretty much blind-sided us" with machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, Brown said.

Brown, whose family moved to Moncks Corner when he was in his early 20s, doesn't know what type of weapon injured his leg but thinks the wounds came from small-arms fire or a sniper rifle. Within days he was out of Iraq and back in the United States, leaving his buddies and the war zone behind and preparing for years of therapy. He learned of the Proper Exit program this spring, joining the first class of five soldiers in a June trip described as a "test case."

"I basically jumped at the opportunity to go back," he said. "I wanted to know that everything we were doing there wasn't in vain."

Brown didn't get to go to the exact site where he was wounded but instead got a bird's-eye view of the battlefield as part of a military fly-over.

If any of the return troops were re-injured or killed, he expects the program would be stopped, he said. "The final pieces of the puzzle" were filled in as a result of the trip, he said.

Brown's emotions fared so well in the first trip that he made a second journey in October, this time in a counseling role for the new group that was going over. They represent a small portion of the nearly 31,500 U.S. military personnel wounded in Iraq.

Brown said the program has proved its worth and that he hopes it expands so other wounded vets can get a second chance to leave Iraq feeling better about what they were doing.

"It's that ability to see in real-time the fruits of the efforts of what's been accomplished," he said.

Reach Schuyler Kropf at 937-5551 or skropf@postandcourier.com.