Forever changed
First of four partsBy Jim O’Neal
The Gazette
The Afghan sky was as blue as the ocean Spc. Kenny Lukes had flown over to rejoin his comrades in arms two months before. As Lukes packed for a convoy drive back to Sharana, where his unit provided security for a provincial reconstruction team, he repeatedly looked up at that vast wash of clear, vivid color for momentary relief from the buff tone of the dust that covered everything beneath it.
The Iowa Army National Guard soldier from Protivin had been wary of this mission. The contingent of the Sharana Provincial Reconstruction Team was to deliver funds and humanitarian aid to a forward operating base at Shkin, a village in southeastern Afghanistan about 175 miles southeast of Kabul and just a few miles from the Pakistani border. The remote and unstable sector of Afghanistan’s Paktika Province is dominated by the Pashtun tribe, members of which formed the Taliban, the terrorist-breeding Islamic militia that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 until U.S. and coalition forces drove it from power in the wake of 9/11. U.S. intelligence indicated that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his conspirators in the attacks on America took refuge in that mountainous region, known as Pashtunistan, or land of the Pashtuns.
Anti-coalition militia forces, including al-Qaida fighters and remnants of the Taliban, camped in Pashtunistan, mostly on the Pakistani side of the border, and regularly slipped into Paktika Province to hunker down and attack coalition convoys with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and heavy machine guns. In October 2003, after anti-coalition militia forces killed two CIA operatives near Shkin, U.S. military spokes-man Col. Rodney Davis said commanders of the 20,000-strong U.S.-led coalition force considered the deadly region “the most evil place in Afghanistan.”
Before leaving Sharana, also known as Sharan on some maps, reports and area signs, on Oct. 31, 2004, Kenny Lukes had conveyed his dread to the eldest of his seven sisters, Theresa Lukes of Protivin, the tiny northeast Iowa farming community where the Lukes siblings had grown up.
“I don’t have a good feeling,” Kenny, then 29, had told his sister in an e-mail. “Just tell everyone I said I love them. Tell my daughter that I love her.”
Lukes never allowed himself to be oppressed by such passing fears. It was during a similar time of discouragement that he’d gone in for his fifth tattoo: He had the words “Always hope” inked into the top of his lower left arm in Old English script.
The six-hour drive from the PRT base in Sharana, the capital of Paktika Province, to the forward operating base had been uneventful. Like most of the 30 Army troops who took part in the operation, Lukes and a buddy, Luke “Chatty” Chatfield of Charles City, had spent the night that linked Halloween to All Saints Day beneath a swirl of brilliant stars, one of which Lukes would soon name for his daughter, Teryn. The cohorts had awakened to a tarpaulin of crystalline frost that evanesced as the air warmed toward the sweet spot between the frigidity of midnight and the ferocity of noon. The Army picked up a Marine colonel at Shkin, so 31 coalition personnel made the return trip, departing about 11:15 a.m.
The convoy comprised four armor-plated Humvees and five non-tactical vehicles – civilian pickups and sport-utility vehicles. The size of the detachment was normal. In a peaceable land, the operation would have required fewer troops, but peace was more foreign than Gershwin tunes to this crippled nation, a land Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Britain, the Soviet Union, the Taliban, tribal chieftains and, most recently, Americans had fought to control and stabilize. Because of the constant threat of attack, coalition forces engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom cross the largely trackless deserts, plains and mountains of Afghanistan only in units large enough to effectively engage the enemy.
Lukes climbed into the back seat of the Humvee that brought up the rear. It was, he knew, one of the two most vulnerable positions a soldier could occupy. Insurgents seek to immobilize convoys by disabling the lead and rear vehicles, setting up a “kill zone” in which to spray their prey with firepower.
Soldiers in the convoy were braced for action. Spc. James Kearney of Emerson manned a .50-caliber machine gun in the turret of the lead Humvee. Gunmen in the turrets of the other Humvees stood watch at MK-19 belt-fed grenade launchers. In the rear vehicle, Spc. Michael Johnson manned a weapon known to soldiers as the Mark 19. Lukes sat on the right side of the back seat, clutching his M-16 rifle on his lap as he peered out the narrow window, scouring the terrain for movement. If the convoy were to be halted, his job was to hop out and set up a 60mm mortar stored in the trunk, to the rear of the armor plating behind the back seat. Chatfield sat watch from the left side of the rear seat. The gunner in the front passenger seat manned a window-mounted machine gun.
Maintaining alertness was a challenge to Lukes when he humped the perimeter of a work zone where a PRT was building a school or clinic or digging a well for some of the 2 million Paktikawals – inhabitants of Paktika Province – who desperately needed drinking water, medical care and literacy training. Most of the time, a PRT’s work – the kind of heroic, everyday service to humanity that Lukes was proud to be a part of – was the only visually interesting thing in his line of sight. But since the work zone was, practically speaking, the only place he needn’t watch for enemy activity, it was a distraction he was obliged to ignore. So he’d turn away from the crew, grip his M-16 and watch Afghan children amusing themselves or travelers treading by on foot or camelback.
The more Afghans Lukes met, the more fondness he felt for them. The children played endearingly universal games, like competing to knock over a tin can with a rock, and they often displayed their gratitude for the U.S. invasion by waving American flags and flashing peace signs when GIs rode past. The civilian men who signed on as laborers also voiced thanks for their liberation from the Taliban, which most Afghans regarded as a band of thugs who had disgraced Islam by wielding it like a club. Still, Lukes had been trained to keep his cynicism locked and loaded. He knew an innocent-looking child or a workman with a pass might be harboring a bomb or creating a distraction for a strike force. Lukes found it both easier and harder to maintain alertness during a convoy trip. Easier, ironically, because there was so little of interest in the desert. There was virtually no innocent activity – no children playing or workers laying bricks – to trouble the eye or confuse the mind. When something moved, chances were it needed killing. Harder because every time a convoy cleared one kilometer safely, it entered another pregnant with danger.
Seconds dropped like pellets into minutes and hours that strained a soldier’s back and darkened a soldier’s mind. Lukes lightened the weight of such hours by thinking of Teryn, the daughter who had drawn her first breath Sept. 7. Lukes had gone home on leave to welcome her into his old world, his civilian world. Teryn’s mother, Amanda MacDuff of Cresco, and Lukes were now friends, not sweethearts, but the two were united in their devotion to their daughter.
Had Lukes intended to make 2004 the year he undertook fatherhood, he would have left the Guard when his enlistment drew to a close in May. As it was, he had entertained no life-altering plans for the year. He intended only to hone his home-building skills, working full-time on a construction crew while completing a top-to-bottom rehab of the two-story Protivin home he’d bought in 2002.
Like other members of his Guard unit, the 133rd Infantry based in Charles City, Lukes had been more or less braced to fight ever since the United States declared war on violent extremists. But the 133rd was not dispatched to Afghanistan or Iraq in 2002 or 2003, so Lukes’ adrenalin was on the wane when his commanding officer called in early 2004 to tell him the unit was being deployed to Afghanistan and to ask him to reup so he could join in the deployment. Lukes took a moment to consider the request. His thoughts went first to his comrades.
The 133rd had not been wholly mobilized in Lukes’ six years of Guard service. The thought of leaving the unit on the eve of a call-up felt selfish, almost cowardly. He remembered, in the crude shorthand of a foot soldier, how he’d been trained to respond if his unit came under fire: “If you get in the shit, you take care of the guys you’re with.” He was standing in his kitchen, gazing at a buff-colored ceramic cross on the wall next to the doorway to the living room. On the cross were etched the words of St. Paul’s homily on the nature of love from the first book of Corinthians: “Love is patient. Love is kind…. It is not self-seeking…. It always protects.” He thought, “If I have children someday, I want them to grow up free and safe, as I did. That takes soldiers who are willing to die in the cause of freedom.” He challenged himself to think of a solid, honorable reason to say no. He couldn’t. He reasoned – wrongly, as it turned out – that he could resume his civilian career after he answered the call to serve his country. He made his decision a nanosecond before he heard himself say, “Yes.” And that was it: Done deal.
Some of his co-workers and neighbors thought he was crazy to dive into such a den of serpents, but his family understood. Military service was a Lukes tradition. Lukes’ sister Theresa, 41, retired from the Air Force as a senior master sergeant after 21 years of service. His sister Sarah Lukes, 37, of suburban Detroit, was a Marine Corps captain. And his sister Laurie Lahr, 34, of Ankeny, served four years in the Navy. Lukes’ father, Larry, 64, of Protivin, did a three-year stint in the Army, serving in South Korea after the Korean War. While his experience stoked his pride in his son, it also informed his fears. Before leaving Iowa, Lukes reminded his father: “You know what it means if uniformed soldiers come walking up to your door, right? You’ll know then that I won’t be coming home.”
Kenny Lukes had always longed to serve his country in the armed forces. As he fed cattle and loaded up pigs on the family farm, as he slogged through his schoolwork at Turkey Valley Junior-Senior High School in Jackson Junction, he dreamed of traveling to far-off places in uniform. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1993 at age 18. He felt scared going into basic training in Texas. But learning about weaponry and military operations gave him a sense of empowerment, of shouldering some serious responsibilities in service to his fellow Americans. After completing seven months of advanced training in handling a drug detection dog, he was assigned to Vance Air Force Base, Okla.
“I joined the Air Force to see the world and they sent me to Oklahoma,” he likes to say wryly. But he got to trot about the globe a bit; during his Air Force career, he received temporary postings to Saudi Arabia, Honduras, England and France. He took up carpentry after his discharge from the Air Force in 1997, working on new-home construction, remodeling projects and home additions, such as decks. It was good, satisfying work, and he enjoyed broadening and refining his expertise week by week, but he missed the adventure and camaraderie of the military life. Deciding he could have the best of both worlds, he started a six-year stint in the Iowa National Guard in May of the following year.
It was in the spring of 2004, shortly after signing up for his second six-year stint, that Lukes received the best surprise of his life. The 133rd was training for Operation Enduring Freedom at Fort Hood, Texas. Lukes was at a makeshift PRT post at the camp when Chatfield got a call from Amanda and passed his cell phone to Lukes. Lukes took the phone, slipped out of the tent for a moment of privacy, and broke out the smile he would wear for months.
Lukes’ knowledge of his coming duties on the home front gave him a hopeful feeling as the 133rd departed for Afghanistan in May as part of the 168th Task Force. The United States had long since driven the Taliban from power and established a strong military presence in Afghanistan. Its mission now was to build up the country’s infrastructure while facilitating its transition to democracy. That was a cause Lukes embraced wholeheartedly.
“I’m doing this for democracy,” he reminded himself as the convoy rattled toward Sharana, scouring a sun-baked land 7,000 miles from the rolling farm fields of northeast Iowa. “I’m doing this for Teryn.”
Bone-weary from the heat, the rocky ride and the heft of constant danger, he wished he was going home, but Sharana was close enough for now. Once inside the walls of the compound there he could lay down his rifle, take a shower, play some cards, get some shut-eye while other soldiers stood guard. En route to their makeshift second home, Lukes and his mates in the Humvee talked little amid the din of rumbling engines, squeaking springs and rock-crunching tires. Lukes’ mind wandered but his senses were alive. The sky was beautiful, just beautiful.
From Lukes’ vantage, the desert still appeared calm when the voice of Lt. Lee Vandewater, the platoon leader, radioed the rear Humvee that the convoy was under attack. “Oh shit,” Lukes cried as rifle and rocket fire tore through the road noise. Lukes and Chatfield turned toward the center of the vehicle to load ammo into the Mark 19 in the turret. Johnson began firing into a line of trees on a ridge east of the convoy. The gunner in the front passenger seat also returned fire. His rapid-action weapon pounded out gunfire in a rolling roar, ejecting hot brass shells onto the vehicle’s floor. A nearly simultaneous pair of blasts at the rear of the Humvee hurled great balls of baked air through the vehicle. Lukes’ upper body shot sideways, toward the windshield, and then, strangely, sprang back toward the seat he had occupied.
Glancing at the seat in panicky puzzlement, his ears ringing from the explosions, Lukes took in a sight that his nervous system had yet to register: The steel missile at the core of a rocket-propelled grenade protruded from his upper left arm, pinning him to the armor plate behind the seat. The missile, about 20 inches long and about an inch in diameter, had been fired at such close range that its velocity propelled most of it through the armor plating despite the force of the grenade explosion. The olive-green tip of the missile, a grenade clasp bent back by the explosion, was just a bit wider than the shank. Determined to unpin himself, Lukes grasped the scorching missile and wrenched it forward, sliding the shaft through muscle and bone.
The instant he pulled the blood-streaked rocket free, his lower arm dropped into the ragged remnants of the long left sleeve of his desert camouflage shirt. His brain commanded his fingers to wriggle, but they lay defiantly still. That’s when he knew he was in the shit.
Editor’s note: This is the story of Kenny Lukes, an Iowa National Guard soldier who was maimed in Afghanistan during battle. The story includes strong language that may be offensive to some, but which helps provide an authentic description from a battlefield.
About the series
Gazette staff writer Jim O’Neal and staff photographer Cliff Jette have spent countless hours since June meeting and talking with Kenny Lukes and Lukes’ family, friends, colleagues and fellow soldiers to tell this story.
‘Save that arm’
Second of four parts Editor’s note: Kenny Lukes, a 30-year-old Protivin, Iowa National Guard soldier, lost his left arm in a Nov. 1, 2004, ambush in Afghanistan. His story today includes strong language and graphic imagery.
A rocket-propelled grenade strike that severed the left arm of Spc. Kenny Lukes was one of two grenade hits on the rear vehicle in a convoy bound for the Sharana Provincial Reconstruction Team base. The other rocket-propelled grenade struck the Humvee’s back hatch and ignited fuel cans in an adjacent rack. One of the explosions blew open the door to Lukes’ right, flooding the back of the vehicle with sunlight. Lukes freed himself from the missile, glanced about the Humvee and asked his mates if anyone else had been hurt.
Spc. Michael Johnson, who manned the Mark 19 grenade launcher in the turret, had taken shrapnel in both arms but did not respond to Lukes. He continued to fire grenades toward the insurgents` position. Spc. Luke “Chatty” Chatfield of Charles City, who had been seated next to Lukes, gave Lukes first aid, using a standard-issue field dressing bandage as a tourniquet. Lt. Lee Vandewater, the platoon leader, radioed orders to the convoy drivers: “12 o`clock 3,000” – meaning, meet up 3,000 meters straight ahead.
Convoy drivers slowed down after rolling out of enemy range and parked their vehicles at the designated rendezvous point. Lukes, his consciousness wavering, clutched the remnant of his left arm and stumbled out the door. Chatfield and another soldier rushed to Lukes` sides and braced him as they walked forward and called for a platoon medic. The hot missile had seared Lukes` flesh, cauterizing the smaller blood vessels it touched, but blood from a large artery spurted out of the fragment of a limb that remained below his left shoulder, soaking into his shirt and pants.
Incongruously, the fluid of life felt like the thick, dirty motor oil that sometimes spilled onto Lukes` hands when he changed the oil in his SUV or his Harley. Concussion and shock suppressed Lukes` recognition of pain until a medic, Sgt. Patrick Ragland, began administering an agony of aid. After tearing away the saturated fabric to expose the wound, Ragland shoved his fingers into the stump and pulled down the open artery so he could clamp it. He then applied several tourniquets, pulling each one tight, to stanch the flow of blood.
The wound now felt like a fire hose shooting pain through what remained of Lukes` body. He never imagined he could endure such pain. Ragland gave Lukes a strong morphine injection, but pain, heat and sunlight poked Lukes into moments of alertness. Lukes felt he was dying. Recognizing the gravity of his plight, Lukes thought of his newborn daughter and his parents and sisters – the people who most loved and needed him. He thought of Protivin. He thought of the homes he had yet to build.
“Save that arm,” he told Ragland. “I’m a carpenter.”
His other plea, repeated several times, was: “More morphine. Please.”
As Ragland worked on Lukes, Johnson hopped out of the Humvee and trotted up to the medic. Johnson assisted Ragland and refused medical treatment until he lost feeling in both arms. After thoroughly binding Lukes’ wound, Ragland turned his attention to Johnson, who was slipping out of consciousness. Chatfield and other soldiers, meanwhile, put out the fire in the rear Humvee.
Vandewater determined that one vehicle had not made it to the rally point. He, Chatfield and two other soldiers took the charred Humvee back to the attack site. Vandewater wanted to tow the disabled vehicle, but the recovery detail began to take small-arms fire from the hills. So after transferring personnel to his Humvee, Vandewater destroyed the disabled vehicle with thermite grenades to keep it out of enemy hands.
Ragland and an assistant loaded Lukes, Johnson and the pancho-draped body of another soldier on stretchers into a Ford Explorer. Once Vandewater’s detail rejoined the platoon, the convoy continued on to coordinates established as a landing zone for a Medevac unit. Once the chopper landed, the medics loaded the casualties onto it for a flight to Salerno, site of another forward operating base in Afghanistan.
Lukes asked Johnson who lay beneath the pancho. “Don’t worry about it,” Johnson said. “You just hang in there.”
During the relative calm of the flight, Lukes recollected the attack. He realized then that the missile had driven through the point of the back seat where he had been resting his back just seconds before. Had he not scooted forward and twisted to the left, he would be dead now. His 29-year-old life had never seemed so fragile.
Doctors in Salerno performed Lukes’ first operation. Their examination of the ragged wound and mutilated limb convinced them that reattachment was impossible. The arm, forever unable to enfold a child or set up a nail, was now debris. Hospital personnel incinerated it, turning Lukes’ reminder of “hope” into ash and smoke.
Once told of the finality of his loss, Lukes phoned his sister Theresa in Iowa. He knew the call would be tough on anyone, but he decided it was best to lay the news on Theresa so she could break it to their parents in person. His voice delivered the tenor of the news before he reported the specifics.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I lost my left arm,” he said.
“Is that it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“All right, Kenny,” she said. “I`ll tell everyone. I love you, Kenny.”
Lukes` next stop was Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan, where the wound was again cleaned and dressed to ward off infection. Lukes then was flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein, Germany. When he woke up in his hospital room in Germany, Johnson was at his side, waiting for him to open his eyes.
Lukes again asked Johnson who had died in the attack. Johnson sat on the edge of his hospital bed and held his gaze as he told him Spc. James Kearney of Emerson had been killed by a sniper shot that signaled the start of the ambush. Lukes began to sob. Johnson, both arms wrapped in bandages, leaned down to him. Lukes reached out his right arm – the only strong arm in the room – to hold Johnson close as the two fresh veterans of combat wept for their friend.
During his three days in Germany, as he came to appreciate he was going to survive, Lukes thought constantly of his daughter, Teryn. More than anything, what he wanted now was to be with her and to love her as his father had always loved him, with kindness and wisdom. Whenever he felt sorry for himself, he told himself that wouldn’t do – that self-pity would harm his most cherished relationship more than the loss of an arm his daughter would never remember.
But for all his yearning for home, Lukes felt profound disappointment when he was told he was being sent back to the States to recuperate and get fitted for a prosthetic arm. He felt he was being forced to abandon his comrades on the field of battle. Although he knew the Army had no use for a one-armed infantryman, he could not help wishing he could come back after his wound healed.
Contact the writer: jim.o’neal@gazettecommunications.com
Tomorrow: Lukes begins the arduous task of training for life as a disabled veteran.
‘We’re going to take care of you’
Third of four parts Jim O’Neal The Gazette Editor’s note: Kenny Lukes, a 30-year-old Iowa National Guard soldier from Protivin, lost his left arm in a Nov. 1, 2004, ambush in Afghanistan. Knowing that a comrade in his unit, James Kearney of Emerson, died in the ambush, Lukes underwent physical therapy to live with one arm.
After three days recovering in Germany from losing his arm in battle, Spc. Kenny Lukes was put on a flight bound for Washington, D.C. When he woke up on a cot in the transport plane, he looked about him at scores of troops bloodied in Iraq and Afghanistan — fighters with head wounds, fighters missing legs and eyes. The sound of a man crying – a sound he didn’t like getting accustomed to – drew his attention to a serviceman sitting lopsided in a chair because he hadn’t adapted to the loss of both right limbs.
Lukes swung to his feet and helped the other man onto the cot. After he’d exchanged places with his comrade, a two-star general approached and commended him for a gesture he called “real soldierly.” The general invited Lukes to sit in the cockpit for the remaining three hours of the flight. Lukes remembers that as one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for him.
Lukes recalls the disembarkation of the wounded in Washington as an event soldiers label with a bit of slang that incorporates the word “cluster.” At least four buses rolled up on the tarmac to take injured service members to the medical facilities charged with caring for their respective branches. Lukes realized he’d been misrouted when a medic told him in a reassuring tone, “We’re going to take care of you, Seaman.”
“I’m not a seaman,” Lukes said, more amused than put out. “I’m Army infantry.”
The medic had Lukes transferred to a bus bound for Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. A beep that repeated about every two minutes annoyed Lukes into consciousness. In an effort to make it stop, Lukes fiddled with knobs on a bedside machine but succeeded only in making it beep more. A nurse entered the room and curtly told him not to touch the machine again. He didn’t like the place, and he liked it less each of seven days he spent there while undergoing nine more operations to cleanse the wound he had received in Afghanistan and facilitate the close-off of the stump where his entire arm once existed.
By the third day, he had regained enough strength to walk. His legs were weak from trauma and disuse, but they held up, and they’d soon work as well as ever. The high point of his stay was the day Amanda MacDuff, his former girlfriend, brought their 2-month-old daughter, Teryn, from Iowa to see him. Lying on his bed, stroking his daughter’s pink cheeks and pudgy arms, he felt thankful to be alive and to have the arm that remained. He knew then that he was safe and soon would be home. The memory of that visit carried him through nine more operations and six months of convalescence and rehabilitation.
“She was my constant reminder it’s going to be OK,” he says. “I say there’s never a bad day when you can look at your daughter.”
Lukes also received a visit from President Bush. He has a photo of the two of them. Lukes, like his commander in chief, is smiling for the official photographer, but he can’t remember why. He doesn’t recall his conversation with Bush. “He was my boss,” he says with a shrug.
Upon his discharge from the hospital, Lukes moved into Mologne House, a 200-room hotel on the grounds of the medical complex. Hundreds of servicepeople wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan convalesced at Mologne House, giving Lukes a chance to share frightening tales and hard feelings with other warriors who had spilled blood on foreign soil.
The fellowship at Mologne House confirmed Lukes’ sense of purpose and just sacrifice. He can’t recall a single soldier voicing bitterness there.
“That was our job,” he says. “We knew what we were getting into when we volunteered. We knew the risks, and we faced them. That was it.”
During his stay at the Walter Reed complex, Lukes worked diligently with Spc. Harvey Naranjo, an occupational therapy assistant. Using Velcro straps, Naranjo hooked Lukes’ 8-inch stump up to weightlifting devices, pushing him to develop the strength and range of motion he would need to support and operate prostheses. He also massaged and stretched Lukes to facilitate his healing. To help Lukes come to terms with his altered appearance, Naranjo repeatedly had him stand before a full-length mirror.
While recovering, Lukes was fitted with three prostheses – a lightweight one activated solely by muscle movement, a midweight hybrid that uses electrical impulses as well as body mechanics, and a fully electronic one that’s far heavier than the limb it’s meant to fill in for. Naranjo taught Lukes about the pros and cons of each and showed him exercises designed to increase his dexterity in using the devices.
Shifting his torso and left shoulder and flexing what remained of his left biceps and triceps muscles, Lukes learned to pick up and transport everyday objects with the prostheses. Lukes dutifully pushed himself through the training sessions, but the prostheses felt like three differently weighted hunks of baggage. They were foreign and unfeeling. They hung; they chafed; they gouged. Getting used to them, he thought, would be even harder than getting used to the loss of his arm.
Worries harassed him: “Am I going to be a safe driver?” “Will I be a satisfactory parent?” “What kind of job will I be able to handle?” He thought back to the moment before the ambush he and his colleagues had been in – the last moment when he had a left arm to take for granted. He wondered how long it would take him to accept that his body – and his life – were forever changed.
Contact the writer: jim.o’neal@gazettecommunications.com
Tomorrow: Back home with his newborn daughter, Lukes begins building a new life on the old foundation.
‘I don’t need any help,’ Lukes says
Fourth of four parts Editor’s note: Kenny Lukes, a 30-year-old Protivin man, lost his left arm Nov. 1, 2004, when his Iowa National Guard unit was ambushed in Afghanistan. Knowing that a comrade in his unit, James Kearney of Emerson, died in the ambush, Lukes underwent physical therapy to live with one arm.When Kenny Lukes returned to Protivin in May this year, townspeople packed into The Mint, the town watering hole, to welcome him home. Janelle Straw, 36, a Protivin resident and friend of the Lukes family, says the turnout surprised Lukes.
“I hugged him when he came in, and he said, ‘I can’t believe all these people are here just for me,’ Straw says. “He’s very humble. He’s the most kind-hearted man you’d ever want to meet.”
Lukes, missing part of his left arm because a missile severed it during a battle in Afghanistan, relies largely on disability payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs. At the invitation of his former boss, he rejoined his old construction crew on an experimental basis.
“It was great being there, but seeing these guys I trained working circles around me was an eye-opener,” he says. “I’m used to giving 150 percent.”
After two weeks, he decided to start looking for a trade he could be really good at. He slipped into a part-time job. While hanging out at The Mint one evening, he saw that the wait staff couldn’t keep up with drink orders. He walked behind the bar and started pulling beers. Soon, helping out just became a habit.
“Kenny worked about 20 times at the bar before he would let me pay him,” says Tom Ward, owner of the bar. “I said, ‘Kenny, you’re working here now.’ Lukes also delivers farm machinery for Clet’s, a Protivin implement dealer and service center.
“I think he can do more with one hand than a lot of people do with two,” says Clet Koshatka, who still works at the business he sold to his son, Don Koshatka.
Still, adapting to life without two arms is an everyday challenge. “It’s hard – very, very hard,” Lukes says. “If you want to know what it’s like, just keep your hand in your pocket all day long.”
Even after a year, the loss keeps reintroducing itself.
“There’s many times I go to reach for something with my left hand and realize it’s not there,” he says. “Even the things we take for granted, like changing diapers for my daughter.”
The drive to care for Teryn has been the mother of persistence. Using his stump and his right arm, he can feed her, bathe her and hug her. Now that Teryn is a curious and active 1-year-old, Lukes has to improvise a lot. When he changes her diapers, he gives her a toy or makes silly sounds to occupy her attention while he spreads her diaper on the floor and slides her onto it. Velcro is a cherished ally.
Lukes cares for Teryn about half the time. Lukes and Teryn’s mother, Amanda MacDuff, 23, of Cresco, dated for two years before Lukes was called up for service. They discussed the possibility of reuniting for Teryn’s sake but ultimately decided that two people who chose to part when they were childless shouldn’t try to make their child the basis of couplehood.
MacDuff, completing a business degree at Luther College in Decorah, and Lukes stay in close touch to ensure that Teryn gets all the love and care they feel she needs.
Lukes feels more attached to his hometown than ever.
“I’ve been all over the world, and there’s no place I’d rather be,” he says.
He appreciates how his neighbors call and drop by to check up on him, but he turns down offers of help.
“I don’t need any help,” he says. “Even if I did, I have too much pride.”
He’s glad he finished rehabbing his two-story, two-bedroom home before losing the arm. The final phase of the project was a natural wood porch Lukes built on the front of the house. When the weather is fine, Lukes flies a U.S. flag on one side of the porch and a POW/MIA flag on the other.
Autographed portraits of country singer Martina McBride and country rock band Cross Canadian Ragweed sit atop the finely crafted cabinets in Lukes’ kitchen. Beside them are the missile that took Lukes’ arm and the bloodstained camouflage helmet he was wearing when his convoy was ambushed.
His stump has healed and toughened, but his brain still gets messages from the bygone arm. He calls on his construction experience to describe the sensation.
“It’s like a live wire, and you cut it,” he says. “There’s still power there, but it’s not going anywhere.”
Other amputees tell him he may never stop feeling his “phantom limb.”
“I can tell you what my fingers are ‘doing,’ he says. “Sometimes they’re clenched up. Sometimes they’re just hanging out – they’re not really doing anything, but they’re there. And a lot of times my elbow itches on my left arm and I go to scratch and it’s just my stump. And then it feels better.”
Lukes rarely wears his prosthetic arms.
“They get in my way,” he says. “They slow me down. I can do things just as well as people with two arms.”
He has found one use for them. As much as he loves the Harley 1200 Sportster he bought new in 1998, he was reluctant to ride it in his altered condition.
“It sat in my garage for about two weeks,” he says. “I didn’t survive all that just to come back and die in a motorcycle accident.”
His friends had the bike modified for him while he was in Washington, D.C., moving the clutch from the left side of the handlebars to the right and shifting all the braking power to the right foot. Still, he felt wobbly on it. Experimentation showed him that putting on a prosthesis and clamping it to the left side of the handlebar bolstered his balance.
“Then I had a man-to-bike talk,” he says. “I told the bike to be easy on me, to help me learn to ride it a new way. That first ride was a thrill.”
Lukes retired from the Army on May 31. He had been promoted from specialist to sergeant, effective the date of the ambush.
James Kearney III, the Emerson man killed in the ambush, was posthumously promoted from specialist to sergeant. In Kearney’s honor, the compound where he served as a member of the Sharana Provincial Reconstruction Team was named Camp Kearney in a ceremony held Nov. 21, 2004.
Lukes is still tight with his Guard buddies. Five of the soldiers who fought with his unit slept at Kearney’s grave in Emerson on Halloween night, the eve of the anniversary of the ambush.
“No soldier should ever have to be alone on the day he died,” Lukes says.
Lukes doesn’t pay much attention to war news, which he says distorts life in Afghanistan and Iraq by focusing on acts of violence.
“How many times do you hear in the news that a school went up or we drilled four wells?” he asked. “That’s not news – but that’s what makes a difference.
“That’s what made a difference to me. When I’d see a little kid holding an American flag who has no idea why we’re there but is glad that we’re there – that, to me, is a difference. Later on in their life, they’ll say, ‘This is because a U.S. soldier came here and sacrificed, or gave as much as he could for my country, and I’m thankful for that.’ And that makes me happy inside.”
Lukes is fine with Americans challenging the Bush administration’s foreign policy. After all, he says, it was freedom he fought to defend.
“You can support the war – you don’t have to – but you should damn well support your soldiers,” he says. “We live in a great country and a free country because of vets who kept us safe. There’s a blanket of freedom that every citizen sleeps under every night. Thank a vet. Take the time out to thank a vet.”
Lukes will go on paying the price of war.
“I’d give anything to have two arms to hold my baby again, but you make do with what you have,” he says. “I take it day by day. That’s the best I can do. Day-by-day is hard.”
He has no regrets.
“I’m very proud of what I did,” he says. “I know what I did was right, and I’d do it again, no matter the outcome.”
This series was originally published in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, from Nov. 27-30, 2005.