THREE WOUNDED IRAQ WAR VETERANS RECOUNT THEIR NEAR-DEATH STORIES AND TRIUMPHANT CLIMBS BACK HOME

Since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, in 2001 and 2003, respectively, nearly 2 million troops have deployed. More than 5,000 have been killed in action, with roughly 40,000 injured. A good many of those injuries involve amputations. According to Aaron Glantz, author of The War Comes Home, “In February 2008, the Pentagon reported that more than 1,000 Iraq War veterans had become amputees.” Wounded vets face a long list of challenges, including bureaucratic hurdles to receive medical compensation, overloaded military hospitals, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), not to mention adapting to damage or any limb loss. Many turn to therapy, prescription drugs, or self-medication (i.e., alcohol and drugs). Others climb. Here, meet three soldiers — Brian Doyne, Chad Jukes, and DJ Skelton (below, left to right) — injured in the line of duty who successfully turned to the rock for solace, strength, and growth.

BRIAN DOYNE: THE G-I-M-P

Brian Doyne surveys the routes at SportRock Climbing Gym, Alexandria, Virginia, seeking the perfect warm-up. He scratches his strawberry-blond hair before testing a 5.9. Too easy. The 30-year old former Army sergeant comes here three times a week, chasing the elusive 5.13. Since he started climbing in 2006, after losing his left arm and eye in Iraq in 2005, Doyne has progressed from 5.6 to 5.12. For now, he settles on a 5.10.

Doyne peels off his shirt (“I get sweaty,” he says, laughing), revealing myriad tattoos. One, on the stump of his left arm, shows the grim reaper wearing a gas mask — an homage to the fact that at any time, members of Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) squads could die for their work detonating roadside bombs and other explosives placed by enemy fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Doyne got the tattoo in 2003, after graduating EOD school. The image once covered his left arm, and 13 skulls — representing all US EOD techs lost on duty since WWII — halo’ed the reaper. But when Doyne lost his arm, the reaper’s body went, too. When doctors repaired the damage, only the reaper’s face and fi ve skulls remained.

Doyne secures his climbing prosthetic, a modified Petzl ice axe he and the prosthetics company Advanced Arm Dynamics developed. He ties in, cradling the rope in his stump as he retraces the knot with his right hand. Doyne starts up. Hook, foot, foot, hand. Repeat. Doyne picks precisely, his belayer watching. If Doyne falls, both risk impalement.

The axe is an improvement over the first climbing arm Doyne concocted, in 2006 — a stripped-down ice axe reminiscent of the weapon from Sling Blade. “That was a little sketchy,” Doyne admits, “but it worked.”