Sgt. Peter Damon

Last weekend, as part of our Memorial Day tribute to the fallen, I re-posted a story on Michael Moore's abuse of those heroes in Fahrenheit 9/11. That story mentioned a wounded veteran:

The July 15 issue of The Enterprise, a Massachusetts newspaper, reported that Army reservist Peter Damon - also recuperating at Walter Reed after losing parts of both arms in an explosion in Iraq - was "surprised" to learn that an interview he gave to NBC this year is shown in the film.

John Gonsalves, the founder of Homes for Our Troops - a Massachusetts organization that builds homes for disabled soldiers - is constructing a new house for Damon and his wife, with whom he has talked extensively about the film.

"To do a movie that's clearly anti-war and totally against the Bush administration, and to put these guys in it without their knowledge, is morally wrong, and maybe even legally," said Gonsalves.

Pete Damon will go to the Fenway Park mound this afternoon to throw out the first ball before the Red Sox-Orioles game with his wife at his side. Jenn Damon will tote a backpack stuffed with the necessities: a screwdriver, a piece of Kevlar string, a cable, and a spare arm.

''The thing has a tendency to break at the worst possible time," Damon said yesterday, after throwing Wiffle-ball batting practice to his 7-year-old daughter, Allura, in the family's backyard. ''The string's going to break. I know it is."

The 32-year-old, in his parlance, is ''a lefty, but I used to be a righty." That changed for Army Sgt. Peter Damon in the fall of 2003 in a former Iraqi air force bunker converted to a US Army hangar.

A lifelong resident of Brockton, Damon had enlisted in the National Guard in 2000, shipped out to Kuwait in December 2001, then Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, in October 2003.

A helicopter mechanic, he was assigned to inspect for corrosion, cracks, and assorted damage. Army helicopters required scheduled phase maintenance every 250 hours, Damon said, and he and a crew would disassemble each part -- the transmission, blades, landing gear, and more -- then reassemble that component of the aircraft.

''For three weeks, we were doing unscheduled maintenance," Damon said. ''We were waiting for a phase."

A UH-60 Black Hawk finally arrived for phase maintenance Oct. 21, 2003.

''A UH-60 has three wheels, two in the front, one in the back," Damon said. ''We put a jack in each point. Me and another kid, Specialist Paul Bueche, were working on the right side of the landing gear, changing the brakes out.

''This is where I don't remember much."

Damon was filling a tire with high-pressure nitrogen, and while inflating the wheel, ''it exploded," he said. ''What actually exploded was the rim. When that blew up, it severed the hose. The nitrogen was spraying around like a wild snake. It was blowing dust everywhere, because there's dust everywhere."

Damon accepts that he'll never be the aircraft technician he wanted to be. He'd landed a temp job doing just that at Camp Edwards on the Cape in the fall of 2001. His life was falling into line, and he was pleased. A high school dropout at age 16, Damon, by his late 20s, saw himself ''going down the wrong path" and had done something to change it.

''I don't want to say I was a troublemaker, but I was going down the wrong path," he said. ''My wife and I weren't married but we had a child and we were split up. I didn't want to be one of those dads who just visits on the weekends. To get my act together, that was one of the things I did, joining the National Guard. I thought it would restore some discipline in my life, and it did."

But then came Kuwait and Iraq and Walter Reed. Today, Damon -- who also has a 3-year-old son, Danny -- is enrolling in Veterans Upward Bound, a program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston that prepares veterans for college. His education will be paid for, he said, and he's contemplating attending UMass or Bridgewater State College.

''I like art," he said. ''I used to draw before, and I can still draw now."

There is a sketch in his living room of a soldier carrying another soldier on his back, evidence the righthanded Damon can still draw, though he must clasp his pencil between two pieces of metal.

The drawing he's working on will be used in an advertisement for Homes For Our Troops, a nonprofit organization that uses donations by contractors to build homes for veterans. The Damons will be moving into a new home by the end of July, a place equipped with easy-to-open cabinets, latch-handle doors, keyless entry, low-maintenance vinyl siding, an easy-to-clean flat-top stove, and a master bedroom suite with a wide shower.

He thinks he can throw 50 feet, but he hasn't practiced with a real baseball in more than a week, thanks to the family's Jack Russell terrier. ''We had a baseball," Jenn Damon said, ''but the dog chewed it up."

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''They keep asking how far I can throw it," Damon said. ''What, do they want me to pitch in relief? I think I can throw it 50 feet or so. I was there Opening Day when they had Bill Russell and Bobby Orr out there.

''I think I can throw it the same distance they did, halfway to the plate. No problem."

He did, and the Sox won on a two-out, full count, bottom of the 9th-inning homer by David Ortiz.

What a comeback.

(Hat tip to K. J. Lopez at The Corner.)

Update: See the home being built for Sgt Damon and his family here. Take a look around the Homes for our Troops website while you're there.