Through the Looking Glass: One Injured Veteran Looks Back on His Time in Service

Jonathan Bartlett on Recovery and Reflection 
In his brief 22-year-old life, Army Cpl. Jonathan Bartlett, 22, of Norfolk, Virginia, has experienced a lot of life—and death. Barely 16 years old when he witnessed the World Trade Towers collapse on September 11, 2001, he watched the tragedy unfold on live television during American History class at Maury High School in Norfolk, Virginia, and felt something change inside him.

“It was just astonishing. I knew at that moment I had to go and find the people that had done it and beat the crap out of them,” he remembered. His spirited resolve was not a surprise to those who knew him. Both of Jonathan’s parents had served in the U.S. Navy, and he had always considered a similar path for himself.

When he turned 17, Bartlett entered the delayed entry program of the United States Army, with the goal of becoming a Green Beret. At 18, he joined the Special Forces, a daunting enterprise for the newly graduated Bartlett, “The first month of SF training was torture, but it got me into amazing shape.” With his physical strength, quick mind, and strong spirit, Bartlett became a good soldier. “The military was good for me,” he recalled, “I was good at being a soldier, mostly because I enjoyed it. I could shoot straight, I could ride true, I could fight, I took care of my vehicles, I could take care of my buddies.”

Less than two months into his tour of Iraq, on September 25, 2004, Bartlett’s life as a soldier and as an able-bodied 18-year old was detonated in the same moment his Humvee exploded outside of Fallujah, the result of an insurgent-planted bomb. Of the four soldiers in the Humvee, only Bartlett was seriously injured. So severe were his injuries, in fact, that his unit believed him to be dead.

“The medic who rode with me from my unit told them I had died on the helicopter,” recalled Bartlett, who was pronounced dead upon his arrival to the base hospital. Recalling it later, Bartlett shrugged off the experience with a chuckle. “And then, you know, I got better,” he said. Except that, of course, “getting better” meant enduring a lengthy and excruciating process of physical, emotional, and psychological healing.

In addition to losing both of his legs, Jonathan Bartlett suffered severe brain injury when his head struck the Humvee steering wheel. He could not recall the incident beyond what he was told. What he does remember is the surreal aftermath, the hazy hospital room fog of body bandages and anxious faces.

On the second anniversary of his Alive Day, September 25, 2006, Bartlett wrote about his first post-operative memories in a poignant piece he called Broken Mirror, in which he grasped for words to describe the feeling of shock, pain, and loss. “When I look my self, into the mirror image of what I am,” he wrote, “the person that stares back at me is shattered and broken as well.” On his blog “Machievelli’s Protégé” he worded it this way:

When I was taken out like that, it broke me. Who I was, what I did, what my future was, and my self-worth were all put in this mirror of the mind. Everyone has it: the image of who you are in your head. Mine shattered that day. All the facets of who I was that were tied up to being a soldier were scattered around my mind, and the man I was lay broken.

Bartlett spent more than 13 months at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., during which time he underwent 17 surgeries. In between surgeries and fittings for prosthetics, he began to work on a revised future for himself. Where originally he had planned to take on the world by advancing his way up through the military system, he now had to face an altered future, one with wheelchair ramps, veterans’ affairs, and sympathetic stares.

He handled the daunting assignment as best he could. Not surprisingly, his forays into adulthood, even while burdened with the encumbrances of prosthetics and psychiatry, followed the familiar path of most disappointed youth—volatile mood swings, the use of dark humor, acting out through fashion (sporting tee-shirts with pointed messages, “Tell your children not to stare, or the bogeyman will take their legs, too”), and self-deprecation.

He moved back to Norfolk, Virginia, in late 2005 and began taking business classes at Old Dominion University with the dream of one day owning a prosthetic technologies company. With his trademark combination of determination and spite, he confessed that his dream, though seemingly self-indulgent, would mean greater availability for other disabled veterans and athletes.

“The technology to create artificial limbs for vets like me is being advanced,” he stated, “but no one is trying to market it.” His plan? “To fleece the highly rich, then take all the money I make and put it back into research to make technology cheaper and more readily available.”

Last September Jonathan Bartlett was chosen to appear in the HBO documentary Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq, a hard-to-forget firsthand retelling of the horrors of war and its severely injured veterans as told to James Gandolfini. Along with nine other injured Iraq war veterans, Bartlett’s story brought into American homes the realities of war and the overwhelming number of young people who are returning home to face dramatically difficult futures as disabled adults. In addition to the HBO film, Bartlett’s story was picked up by Vanity Fair and the political blog Huffington Post.

Although Bartlett embraces both the word “crippled” and his life as a war veteran, he admittedly doesn’t have a connection to either community. More of a lone wolf, he appears to find support in a well-protected subset of family and a few friends. He also finds cathartic aid in his writings and admits to having a cult following of fans who appreciate his live-out-loud writing style and keep in contact with him. He does not mind his newfound fame or the role of inspiring war hero; he does, however, seem rather bewildered to be a source of inspiration.

“I did what anyone else can do,” he remarks, “anyone can decide to soldier on.” His decision to soldier on, to not give up, to “not stay in the chair,” has moved him beyond the confines of his wheelchair and into the world of walking—and even running.

The last time we caught up with Jonathan he was preparing to receive his “running legs,” prosthetic devices that would enable the former athlete to run again. Perhaps the next time he is interviewed for TV will be when he crosses the finish line on the springs of his self-engineered running legs.