w/AP story "9/30 wounded warriors"

It was on a dirt road just outside Fallujah two years ago that a cloud of fire and shrapnel enveloped Marine Cpl. Brandon Love. The blast, detonated from 10 feet away, crushed his Humvee and left behind only the axles of the suicide bomber's SUV.

Initially, recovery for the Waynesboro man focused on coping with a numb right hand and a blown right eardrum. That was a relatively easy adjustment. The real challenge was the gradual memory loss that clued him in to an injury doctors had missed — traumatic brain injury (TBI).

"It just got to the point of frustration. I couldn't personally deal with it anymore," he said.

It's only a matter of time before Love and thousands of other veterans try to filter back into civilian life with battle scares rarely suffered in America's previous wars, experts caution.

"The good news is that more soldiers are surviving on the battlefield. The bad thing is they're surviving with worse and more serious injuries," said David Autry, spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, a private wounded-warrior watchdog group.

On the way back to normalcy, some veterans dealing with new limps, memory lapses and mangled limbs might pass through places such as Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville. There, they will learn how to use their body all over again in conjunction with a new job skill.

American casualties began mounting ever since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Vets who since have healed enough to leave military hospitals now are nearing the end of their recuperation at home.

"They're around the house and they're thinking about getting their life going again," said Keith Burt, spokesman for Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center.

Medical experts say some wounded vets suffer from undiagnosed brain injuries caused by these highly concussive explosions. An estimated 150,000 soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned home and even gone back to the battlefield with an unrecognized brain injury, according to the Brain Injury Association of America.

A neurologist diagnosed Love's brain injury nearly a year after the suicide bombing. Lapsed concentration and memory loss had aroused Love's suspicions.

"It's an 'I remember you, but I don't remember what I had for breakfast' type of thing," he said.

Love now carries a pocket-sized notebook to jot down assignments and general thoughts.

Recovering at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Love is scheduled to leave the Marines in February. He has fielded job offers from police departments, a military prep school, and other businesses.

Traumatic brain injury is considered "the signature injury" of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Brain Injury Association of America.

"Those types of injuries are unique to this war. This is something new," Burt said.

Today's standard-issue body armor saves soldiers from explosive blasts that killed soldiers in previous conflicts.

Soldiers slogging through Vietnam's jungles also dealt with bullets as well as an assortment of ingenious booby traps and landmines intended to maim more than to kill.

Battlefield medicine and on-the-spot helicopters combined to save most of the wounded. Survival rates reached 76.4 percent, according to studies by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS).

It marked a slight improvement over a soldier's 69.7-percent survival rate in World War II and the 75.4-percent rate in Korea, according AAOS studies.

Fighting in Iraq has resulted in 27,767 American soldiers wounded through Sept. 1, according to the Department of Defense. Explosives accounted for almost 70 percent of those injuries.

Advances in battlefield medicine and the standard-issue body armor made of Kevlar and ceramic plates of today's war mean a 90-percent chance of returning home.

Love credits his helmet with preventing a traumatic head injury, and shrapnel-proof sunglasses for saving his eyesight.

The blast "pretty much tore [the sunglasses] up," he said.

Usually, booby traps in Iraq come in the form of a 155-mm howitzer round buried with nails smeared with human feces to increase the chance of infection, according to AAOS studies.

Even with increased survival rates, it's the condition of the shattered bodies returning from Iraq and Afghanistan that has stirred up a new concern.

Long ago, civilian doctors devised the term polytrauma to categorize patients suffering multiple injuries. For the military medical world, it's a relatively new problem.

"The force of these blasts are virtually pulverizing the internal organs," Autry said.

The Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center began as an Army hospital in World War II. Officials there anticipate a new influx of wounded warriors soon.

"We're ready and we're letting them [Veterans Health Administration] know that we're available," Burt said.