Wow, what a way to get an update
So I'm reading the Washington Post this morning, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but this:
Didn't recognize the face in the picture, for obvious reasons, but I knew the name. Brian Doyne. Hmmm, Brian Doyne. I went to PLDC in 2004 with an EOD (Explosives Ordnance Disposal) guy named Brian Doyne. Same squad, same classroom. He'd just gotten off the plane from Afghanistan, sent straight to PLDC without time to decompress. Very funny, very sardonic, very depressed guy. Layered guy, very deep.
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Life of Normalcy Rests in His Palm
With Lifelike Prosthesis, No Stares
By Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 28, 2005; Page B01
Brian Doyne steps up to the Starbucks counter, a cell phone wedged between his ear and left shoulder as he orders a grande mocha. An attractive blonde waiting nearby for her coffee sizes him up, from his calm gaze to the designer jeans, back to the sunglasses perched atop his carefully gelled hair.
The stranger's eyes stop for a vanishing moment at the scarred crevices across his face, where bomb fragments left their mark. But she doesn't notice his hand. No one seems to think anything of it.
...
About 9 a.m. Feb. 24, Doyne's unit was dispatched south of Tikrit to investigate an improvised explosive device -- IED in Army parlance -- that had blown through an M1 Abrams tank. The soldiers started to sweep the area for secondary bombs.
As he went to retrieve his post-blast kit, Doyne's eardrums burst as a 155mm shell blew him into the sand 30 feet away. His closest friend was killed, and a second soldier was wounded.
"The world just kind of disappeared," Doyne said.
So did his military career.
Doyne suffered a list of injuries that could fill a hospital ward. Both legs shattered below the knee. Right ankle broken. Throat slashed by shrapnel. Fragments embedded in his cheek. Wounds in his thighs and arms. Collapsed left lung. Left eye socket fractured in four places. Optic nerve severed. Two teeth broken, two lost. Even the tip of his right index finger was blown off.
And his left hand was gone.
At Walter Reed, his first words, uttered in a painkiller-induced fog: "IEDs suck."
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Yeah, that is definitely the Doyne I remember.
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Doyne inspected both palms as if he were trying on a new pair of shoes. He flexed his arm and spun the hand 360 degrees at the wrist as Curtin awaited the verdict.
"Well?" the former sculptor asked.
Slowly, shy smirks spread into a broad smile. "It'll hold a beer, I think," he laughed. "You got one?"
A Dr Pepper had to suffice. Doyne gripped the bottle. So far, so good. "I like it," Doyne said. "It's nice to have fingernails again. I can scratch. That's got to be one of the most annoying things, trying to scratch."
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Turns out that he's living out here in Maryland/Virginia/DC, having just been released from Walter Reed. Staying in the area to be an explosives consultant for the FBI.
If I can find him, I may just buy him that beer. He's earned it.
God bless Brian Doyne.