BALTIMORE — At the start of Veterans Day weekend in 2012, Army Sgt. Maj. Jeremy Bruns was loading the bed of his Toyota pickup in his Fayetteville, N.C., driveway. It was 9:30 a.m., and the sun was out.
Bruns was going fishing.
Moments later, both his femurs were shattered and the 41-year-old could smell his flesh burning on the engine block of a sedan that had swerved off the street and pinned him between its hood and the rear bumper of his truck.
The driver who hit him was drunk and high, and Bruns, a soldier for 22 years and a veteran of two wars, was bleeding out a few yards from his front door.
But Bruns lived. The impact and pressure from the sedan acted like a tourniquet and partially stopped the bleeding.
Now, almost three years later, Bruns walked his first 5K in Baltimore on Saturday to raise awareness about the costs of drunken driving.
A Minnesota native, Bruns joined the Army in 1991 after watching Iraq invade Kuwait at the start of the Gulf War. He was 18, and the same year he enlisted he also married his high school sweetheart — Jenny.
Shortly after their marriage, their son was born. Drake Bruns, now 24, is learning to be an EMT.
Bruns bounced around the Army as a paratrooper, spending the majority of his time at Fort Bragg, N.C. In 2004, he transferred to Army Special Operations where he served in Civil Affairs. All told, on the day he was hit, he had been on nine deployments, three to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.
“I spent plenty of time in war zones … not a scratch,” Bruns said. “And I almost died in my front yard.”
Bruns lost both his legs above the knee as well as his right thumb and pointer finger. After a few days at a local hospital and about a week at Duke University Medical Center, where they amputated his legs, he was transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.
The woman who struck him, Rhonda Bryant, was sent to prison 17 months after the incident and served 16 months.
At Walter Reed, Bruns spent two years learning to walk again. It was tougher for him because of his age, he explained. The guys in rehab were mostly in their 20s.
Their frames, broken from bomb blasts or gunshots, had an easier time adjusting to the pressure of prosthetic limbs.
Bruns left Walter Reed in March and has spent the past few months getting used to his prosthetics.
Now lean and graying, Bruns walks around his apartment without a cane and with relative ease — something that younger double amputees sometimes have difficulty doing.
Though he and his wife seem settled, the transition has been tough for them. Bruns had planned to make his career in the Army, and though the military offered him a waiver to stay in, the last thing he wanted to do was “sit in a cubicle and write policy papers.” As a high-ranking enlisted man, he also didn’t want be in charge of people whom he couldn’t match in physical capability.
Just before leaving Walter Reed and a few weeks shy of his 24-year mark, Bruns left the Army.
The Baltimore event, called Walk Like MADD, is one of thousands held around the country to raise awareness of the damage caused by drunken driving. The Baltimore event has raised more than $80,000.
“I want to remind people there are consequences to driving drunk,” he said. “You hate to see all that pain and suffering based off of one person’s poor choices.”
