Post-Traumatic Growth

We’ve seen them come home from the battlefield and all too often they’re broken in body and spirit. But not always.

When the bomb went off on a road near Baghdad, Hilbert Caesar thought his life was over.

What he discovered was … it was just beginning.

According to The Washington Post (November 26, 2005), Army staff sergeant Caesar was in charge of a long-range 155mm howitzer — a self-propelled gun that resembles a tank. He was out on patrol in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded. When the smoke cleared, Caesar looked down and saw that his right leg was severed in three places, flipped backward, just dangling by the skin. He tried to give his machine gun to a fellow soldier, but discovered it was bent. Then he yelled for the howitzer hatches to be closed, and thought to himself, “Oh man. This is it. My life is over.”

But he didn’t die. The insurgents responsible for the attack disappeared, and Caesar was transported to safety. At Walter Reed Hospital, his missing limb was replaced with an artificial leg of plastic and steel.

Still, he felt despair about his future. He was in...