Published: May 14, 2008

Having a bad day?

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A veteran runs into his future

John Fernandez plays lacrosse at an Army-Navy alumni game at Madison Square Garden.
AP/Fox News

When I first saw that picture on Soldiers' Angels Germany website (link: http://soldiersangelsgermany.blogspot.com/), I just saw two athletes playing lacrosse. It IS an action shot.

However, after a while, I realised that one of the athletes has a pair of very special legs. Over at Fox News is the story which SAG quotes:

NEW YORK - John Fernandez should not have been playing lacrosse in the Army-Navy alumni game at Madison Square Garden.

By all rights, the former U.S. Army first lieutenant should be dead. But luck intervened.

"It was just a matter of chance - pure luck," said Fernandez of Shoreham, Long Island, who was severely wounded in Iraq after a U.S. plane dropped a 500-pound bomb on his Humvee in a case of friendly fire on April 3, 2003. Shrapnel from the explosion shredded his legs.

"I crawled," Fernandez recalled. "I couldn't walk."

More than five years later, the soldier can do more than just walk. He can play lacrosse thanks to prosthetic limbs as he demonstrated during the Heroes Cup, which preceded the New York Titans professional game Saturday night.[link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352746,00.html]

To read this story, is to be reminded of the tenacity, the courage of all our troops. It is to be reminded that what YOU may call having a "bad day" doesn't even come close to what our troops face. Go read the rest of this story on Fox News, and quit sweating your own "small stuff." Oh and yes, check out Soldiers' Angel Germany site, too. Always GREAT pieces on there.

Ros Prynn is a NewsBlaze investigative reporter and editor, who writes on a range of topics. Contact her by writing to NewsBlaze.