AcrossAmerica: Sgt Luke Wilson of the First Cavalry Division has not received his purple heart yet. The US army is organising a ceremony in the wounded soldier's home state of Oregon, and Wilson hopes the medal will be awarded by President Bush himself.
He'd be delighted if it won a few more votes for Bush. "Any way I can help him I will. The Bush family have done so much for the military," says Wilson.
Try to understand this: since Bush invaded Iraq, 1,013 US soldiers have been killed there, and another 6,987 wounded. Like Wilson, most of the wounded, heralded as "warriors and heroes" on the banner welcoming them to to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, have lost limbs. And they love Bush. Perhaps they don't want to believe it was all for nothing. A steady diet of Fox News and distrust of Senator John Kerry only partly explain why they intend to vote for Bush in November.
When he was still in high school, Wilson's father, an Oregon state police officer, and his mother, a government employee, offered to buy him a truck and pay his way through college if he'd forget about the army. "I'm very patriotic. I love jumping out of airplanes. I love going out on a mission, taking the weapons back to the barracks and going to the bars with the guys," he explains now. His parents reluctantly gave permission for Wilson to join up at 17.
A medical doctor who disagrees with Bush and his Iraq war had agreed to take me into Walter Reed, so I could see for myself the human cost of the conflict. But he lost his nerve, fearing for his government job, and I had to talk my way through the security gate alone.
The doctor's timidity contrasted with the certainties proclaimed by Wilson, five months after he was maimed in Baghdad. I met the wheelchair-bound 24-year-old in the hospital canteen. No Public Affairs Officer was there to eavesdrop, but Wilson sounded like a recruitment advertisement.
Had he known he would lose his left leg in Iraq, Wilson said, he would still join. "If the government would let me, I'd go back and lose my right leg," he claims. "If I can be there guarding my buddies' backs, I'm doing something worthwhile." Is he angry about his lost leg? "I'm a little pissed off I'm not over there still," Wilson continues. "I joined the army looking for combat and I was taken out after two days."
Wilson's 30-vehicle convoy was crossing a bridge from the Green Zone in Baghdad on the night of April 8th, the eve of the anniversary of the fall of the regime, when insurgents began firing rocket-propelled grenades from abandoned buildings on both sides of the road. He relishes recounting the sudden explosions; the sky lit up with tracer fire; return fire by his machine-gunner; a silhouette on the corner of a rooftop; a white flash.
Then "everything went totally white and just hot." Wilson had been leaning on his left knee to fire his M4 assault rifle. "The RPG went through my calf and lodged in the other side of the vehicle," he recounts. "I knew there was something wrong when my knee moved all the way forward . . . it was just dangling. The RPG cauterised the wound, but the artery was pouring blood. My guys panicked; I had to tell them how to make a tourniquet."
After his leg was amputated in Baghdad, Wilson was moved to the US base at Balad for transfer to Landstuhl, Germany, then Walter Reed.
As he lay strapped to a stretcher, the morphine barely denting his pain, insurgents mortared the base all night. "I was more pissed off than scared," he says now. "Three or four rounds would impact. They'd wait five minutes and start again. The nurses were crawling around on the floor."
Wilson says his "positive attitude" has made him popular with US authorities. He was guest of the chief-of-staff at the army ball, and has toured the White House three times during his rehabilitation. For him, losing a leg is less tragic than the end of life with his "band of brothers". He is resigned to building a house in Oregon with his fiancée Tonya and going to college. He will receive 60 per cent of his base salary of $2,310 per month for the rest of his life.
"I already got a prosthesis," Wilson boasts. "It's in my room charging right now. The leg itself costs anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000. It's got hydraulics in it and the computer works in two different modes, one for walking and one that swings, so I can ride a bike. I'm going to get a swimming leg and a running leg."
When Kerry visited the hospital, a secret service agent asked Wilson if he'd like to shake his hand. "I said, 'I got nothing to say to that piece of shit.' They had to get me out of there - fast. I mean this guy earns all these medals in Vietnam, which was honourable, and then he goes and throws them at the White House." He accuses Kerry of voting against body armour for the military.
Bush supporters denounce "liberal bias" in the media. Wilson calls CNN - hardly outraged critics of the Bush administration - "the communist news network".
Virginia Sanchez, whose son Michael is at Walter Reed after losing a leg in Iraq last month, told me: "We got too many reporters in war zones. It gives too much information that should be kept secret, that's getting out to the terrorists."
Wilson's world-view is shaped by Fox News and never quite meshes with reality: Arabs perpetrated the hostage siege in southern Russia last week, he tells me. There was a Hizbullah base in northern Iraq; the US found traces of nerve agents on Iraqi artillery shells; Bush did his utmost to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by "offering the road map".
Wilson believes that Arabs from the entire region, not just Iraq, are fighting US troops. "I'm not sure why they feel the need to do it," he shrugs.
The results of the insurgency were all around us in the canteen: a soldier propped the stub of his left leg on a shelf while he consumed a cheeseburger with his wife; a soldier with a swollen, disfigured face and a black eye-patch sat at another table.
Virginia Sanchez (62) and her daughter Ramona (27) had brought People magazine and a "best of Mozart" CD for Michael, who is waiting to learn whether doctors will amputate his second leg. A demolitions expert, Michael was maimed by booby-trapped debris in Samarra.
Virginia is a cook in a home for foster children. Ramona runs a beauty salon. The women feel no bitterness towards the US administration, but are shocked by the "ingratitude" of Iraqis. They don't understand why Iraqis do not want US troops in their country. "If I was one of the people that wanted freedom, I'd want us there," says Virginia.
There is just a hint of confusion. Ramona felt angry towards anti-war protesters in 2003. "At first we were so supportive," she says. "I don't know anymore. There's so much we can't know, that the military won't tell us."
If the Sanchez family are a barometer, John Kerry doesn't stand a chance in November. Virginia voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the last two elections. This time she's voting for Bush. Ramona did not vote in 2000. She doesn't trust Kerry. "I think he's just saying things to get people to vote for him," she says. "He's not really for the people." On the other hand, Bush "stands for his beliefs," Ramona says. "He's very Christian and that's important to me."
Tomorrow: one of President Bush's most outspoken critics gives his views on civil liberties and his success in defending the rights of the Guantanamo Bay detainees
