BETHESDA, Md. - Three days after an Iraqi grenade shattered two of his limbs and nearly ended his life, Cpl. Mark P. O'Brien found himself in intensive care in the National Naval Medical Center, with a tube down his throat and his head swollen to the size of a basketball.
Looking up at his parents for the first time in months, the young Marine from East Aurora grabbed a marker and scrawled a note, using a hand that had never before been used for writing.

In awkward shaky letters, it said: "I have no regrets."

A week later, O'Brien, 21, looks and feels much better. And if he has a regret now, it's that he can't go back to Iraq and continue the fight for a cause he sees as just, continue the fight alongside his buddies.

"I'm doing great, I really am," O'Brien said in an interview in his hospital room last week. "I'm relieved and I'm sad at the same time. I'm out of Iraq, but . . . it's hard to explain. I still want to be there. All my friends are there, and I'm really worried about them."


Of course, O'Brien has plenty to contend with on his own.

During up to six months of rehabilitation, the former lacrosse star at Iroquois Central High School will learn to use a prosthetic right arm and prosthetic right leg.

He will learn to write all over again. And he will begin to build a future he never could have imagined four years ago, before 9/11, before a buddy talked him into joining the Marines.

Buffalo News - 'I have no regrets'