Army telegram said he was ‘slightly wounded’

The telegram arrived on Nov. 15, 1969: “Private First Class Johnny O. Brooks was slightly wounded in action,” it began.

Newlywed Flora Brooks, 20, read on, not realizing how her life was about to change.

“Since he is not, repeat not seriously injured, no further reports will be furnished,” the telegram concluded.

The couple would grow old together, but not in the way either had envisioned.

There would be no children, no exotic vacations, not even the simple fishing jaunts they had enjoyed before Johnny Brooks was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam.

He returned home without a leg and would soon lose the other, along with his ability to speak and the use of his arms.

Nearly 40 years later, Flora Brooks continues to serve as nursemaid and constant companion to a husband who is confined to a bed, unable to talk or move on his own.

Yet she never imagined any other way: “I’m so thankful that we were married,” she said.

Now 58, Flora Brooks is a pillar of compassion and dedication, a model for those now coping with spouses returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with missing limbs or damaged minds. Nearly 30,000 U.S. troops have been injured so far in Iraq alone; about 600 have lost at least one limb.

Her advice to those now facing a much different marriage than they had dreamed of is simple: Just get through each day, because thinking about a whole lifetime is too daunting.

“My heart goes out to them because they’re just starting on this journey,” she said. “If they don’t have a family, I can’t imagine having to go through it yourself.”

Despite her reliance on family and close friends, Flora Brooks has cared for her husband mostly by herself. She leaves their home in Stockton, a working-class port city about 45 miles south of Sacramento, only for brief outings and appointments.

She sleeps in a small bed in the living room, next to her husband’s medical bed.

Her days are spent almost entirely caring for her husband: She fills syringes with the liquid food she injects into her husband’s stomach tube every two hours, suctions his mouth when he coughs, dispenses a small pharmacy of medications, drains the catheters.

She says she shares a rich, full life with her husband, who responds to her and other family members mostly through eye contact.

She reads the Bible to him, buys DVDs for them to watch and chatters to him while she completes the intricate stitchwork on the patriotic quilts that adorn the walls of their home.

Most incorporate photographs and other military memorabilia. One has a copy of the telegram she received that day back in 1969.

It was a mortar attack that tore through her husband’s body, wounding him so severely that he lost most of his blood.

While being prepared for surgery to graft skin onto his back, which had been shredded by shrapnel, he went into cardiac arrest and suffered serious brain damage. He was not expected to survive.

Flora Brooks knows that many people in her position would have prayed that her high school sweetheart would die. She prayed for him to live, regardless of what that life might hold.

“They didn’t even have a chance to have a married life,” said Johnny Brooks’ mother, Ruth.

The couple had been married just three weeks before the draft notice arrived.

Their story resonates with today’s military couples, as U.S. troops return with serious injuries from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many are in their 20s and suffer from multiple amputations or other debilitating injuries.

Better armor and field medicine have kept them alive at far higher rates than in previous wars, but their survival also will tax the nation’s medical systems and many families’ ability to cope in the coming years.

While many of today’s severely wounded veterans are married, others are forced to rely on their parents, who never imagined caring for their children in this way.

That has created financial and emotional burdens in families throughout the country, said Jim Weiskopf, a spokesman for Fisher House Foundation, which has set up 38 homes where family members of wounded veterans can stay while they get medical treatment.

“There’s no doubt that that takes a significant toll. In an instant, your life is just changed and can never be changed back, when you get the phone call that your son or daughter’s been severely wounded,” he said.

Four decades later, Ruth Brooks is still coping.

She spends a lot of time visiting and helping her son and daughter-in-law. But even she depends on Flora.

“I still am not over it,” she said. “She’s so strong, and I’m not.”

That resilience has amazed Flora Brooks’ family and friends, especially now that she also is caring for her mother, who suffers from dementia. It would be easy to feel down, she said, but she chooses not to dwell on her own twists of fate.

“I’m way thankful,” she said. “I’m the one that’s still saying, ‘Please, God, please God, don’t take him yet.’ ”