Melissa Stockwell was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in May 2002, after which she received training as a transportation officer. She was deployed to Iraq in March 2004 and found out right away that a transportation officer's job is a tough one.

The roads in and out of Baghdad are mean - loaded with homemade bombs. One of those weapons took out First Lieutenant Stockwell's vehicle as she led a convoy along those treacherous roads. The blast threw the vehicle into a swerve. It slammed into a guardrail and crashed into a house.

There was a lot of blood. A medic put a tourniquet on Melissa's leg, but she didn't yet know her leg was gone. She got that news when she woke up in a hospital and talked with her husband, who was also a soldier stationed in another part of Baghdad.

It was a tough moment, but self pity never entered this young officer's mind. Her thoughts went straight to the troops under her command. She was grateful that she was the one who was wounded, not one of the soldiers for whom she was responsible.

Melissa was glad her husband, Dick, was there for her at that moment, and they made an immediate decision: "Let's get on with this, and on with life."

From Iraq, Melissa was flown to Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany. Her father was in Vienna at the time, and he came straight to Landstuhl, as did her sister and brother-in-law who were living in Slovakia. Melissa's husband was also able to leave Iraq to join her and accompany her to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where she would spend a year recuperating.

Melissa underwent 15 surgeries in all and says the treatment she received at Walter Reed was the "best care in the world. The rehab was wonderful." However, she'll admit to having a few bad days as she learned to walk again, and that's when it was helpful to be surrounded by other war-wounded amputees.

When asked about the Wounded Warrior Project, the first thing Melissa mentioned was the WWP backpack she received. It's the same with all the combat-injured troops. They're whisked from the scene where they were wounded; their uniforms are taken at the first medical station they reach. They go one way, usually to Landstuhl; their belongings, what little they have in Iraq or Afghanistan, goes somewhere else. The troops arrive at stateside military medical centers in hospital gowns; often, they don't even have toothbrushes.

So a WWP backpack full of simple clothing and toiletries can be a big deal - a very big deal.

But that's just the beginning of the Wounded Warrior Project's relationship with newly injured troops. "WWP staff come right to your room," said Melissa. "They're very visible in the lives of the patients. In the hospital, you see the WWP name everywhere. It's very comforting to know, right away, that there's an organization out there helping."

Melissa's first experiences with WWP athletic rehabilitation programs came with a skiing trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, and with the Soldier Ride cycling event. She's completely clear about the value of these programs. "Skiing was absolutely the best experience I had after being hurt. I felt so free just to fly down the side of a mountain."

At the time of this interview in 2006, Melissa was earning a second bachelor's degree in prosthetics from Century College in Minnesota. She said she felt absolute joy when she made a prosthetic leg for a ten-year-old girl, watched the child put the leg on, then get up and jump around. In the future, she is hoping to help wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan get their lives back through prosthetic care.

"The people at Wounded Warrior Project get right in there to do such a broad range of things. I feel very honored to be a part of it," said Melissa, who serves as treasurer on WWP's board of directors. "I love being involved with this organization. Helping others like myself lets me know that I'm having an impact."

For more stories and photos of the Wounded Warriors, go to warriorwoundedproject.org