Making a difference

Staff Sgt. Robert Doughty didn’t train to be a Green Beret, but he was surrounded by guys in his Army Special Forces unit who had been to war before and took their assignment in Iraq in stride.

Sgt. Doughty was severely wounded in an ambush by insurgents when an improvised explosive device, or IED, blew up in July during his unit’s secret mission inside the deadly Sunni triangle.

He lost both legs.

Today, Sgt. Doughty, 29, is recuperating and adjusting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Northwest Washington.

Some wounded soldiers “have a chip on their shoulder,” Sgt. Doughty acknowledges. “The biggest thing I would say is that I don’t have any regrets, and 99 percent of the guys up here [at Walter Reed] with me don’t either.”

They “feel like heroes,” he says.

Recent interviews with Sgt. Doughty and other troops rebutted talk in some quarters of troops’ growing disillusionment with the U.S. mission in Iraq. The interviews included a Marine corporal also being treated for wounds at Walter Reed and men in a National Guard unit in northern Iraq that faced renewed attacks from insurgents in recent days.

Army Master Sgt. Keith Hudson, himself wounded two days into the push toward Baghdad, returned to the United States in August 2003, but expects to be back in Iraq for a second tour of duty by Christmas.

Sgt. Hudson, now at Fort Stewart, Ga., with the 3rd Infantry Division, says he’s not concerned about what lies ahead, despite the grim picture that much of the media paint.

Sure, he and the 54 men in his unit follow such news.

“We all know that it’s an election year,” he says.

There’s nothing wrong with the morale of his men, he adds.

“Since we got back, I’ve only had two soldiers get out and 11 re-enlist,” Sgt. Hudson, 36, says. “Some of the guys … you’d have expected to get out, they weren’t the stellar performers. And you hear them standing in front of the company … saying they’re ready to go back there because they want to make a difference.”

Making a difference to Sgt. Hudson means finishing the job by winning. His view is that to do less is just not right.

“It’s like stopping the game at halftime and leaving the field,” he says. “You don’t want someone else to have to go. You want it over and done.”

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