‘I Want to Live for My Guys’

Two years after she lost her legs in an IED blast, Marissa Strock's cell phone still defiantly blasts Pat Benatar singing, "Hit me with your best shot." Even now Strock doesn't regret joining the Army, and she longs to rejoin her unit, though she never thought the United States should go into Iraq in the first place. "I signed up knowing we could possibly go," says the former MP. "I signed up to do a job. Unfortunately, I got hurt doing that job. But I'd go back in a heartbeat if I could. I'm someone who likes to finish what I start. I only had eight weeks left on my tour. I wouldn't lose any sleep over going back there and getting rid of the terrorists who tried to kill me."

Strock, 22, says she was both proud and a little reluctant to appear on NEWSWEEK's cover back in late February as part of the "Failing Our Wounded" story chronicling the problems besetting veterans. For the photo Strock sat somberly beside her prosthetic legs in a poignant, gripping reminder of the toll of war. Eight months later she still has mixed feelings about the picture. "It was weird," she says. "After that photo ran, a lot of people I didn't even know found me through MySpace, and others started calling and messaging me. They all acted like they were my best friends. They meant well, but I wasn't ready to make new friends yet. I just wanted to get myself together and get back home. I wanted to support other wounded soldiers, and it was a good story that needed to be told, but I didn't want to appear as a victim."

She doesn't. A sweet but tough, no-nonsense woman who grew up in Lansingburgh, N.Y., a small town north of Albany, Strock deployed to Iraq in May 2005 and spent six months training the Iraqi police force. On Thanksgiving Day that year, while patrolling the southern Baghdad area known as the "Triangle of Death," the Humvee on which she was the gunner was hit by a command-detonated IED. It was a violent blast that instantly killed both the team leader, Staff Sgt. Steven Reynolds, and the driver, Spc. Marc A. Delgado.

Strock was thrown backward by the explosion and knocked unconscious. In addition to her leg wounds she had traumatic brain injury and a broken wrist, collarbone and arm, and more. Cranial swelling left her in a coma for nearly a month. Few expected her to survive. She subsequently had both legs amputated below the knee. But her indomitable spirit prevailed; she has surpassed all medical expectations. "As soon as I woke up in the hospital, I wanted out. I wanted to get back to life," she recalls. "And when I found out that my guys died, well, it was all for them at that point. I want to live now for my guys. I want to show the bastard that tried to kill all of us that he didn't succeed."

In late February, while still an outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington, D.C., Strock told NEWSWEEK that while her doctors were terrific, some of the nurses lacked even basic human decency. Two months later, as she drove in her new truck from D.C. back to her home in upstate New York, she says she felt renewed. She felt alive again.

These days Strock is finding it much easier to smile. She has her own apartment she shares with her bulldog, and she's putting the pieces of her life back together as best she can after two years of intense recovery. She almost always walks now—unless she goes to the mall or some place that requires long walks. It hasn't been easy adjusting to life without legs, but Strock's body, and spirit, are strong and getting stronger every day. "I'm trying to ease my way back into life instead of just going face first into a brick wall," says Strock, who, just days after this interview was planning a trip to Florida with her mom to do some scuba diving and sailing and to reunite with an old friend from basic training. Also, she recently participated in a run/walk in which she traversed a full mile with her new legs.