Melissa Stockwell lost her leg in the Iraq War. Now she has her sights set on the Tokyo Paralympics.
CBSN
Earlier this month, military veteran Melissa Stockwell completed her first paratriathlon since the pandemic upended the world and brought sports to a halt. The Purple Heart recipient and mother of two has her eyes set on the delayed Tokyo Paralympics – but for now, she told CBS News that was just "thrilled to be back."
"To have a race – everyone was on such a high, just so giddy being back on the race course," she said from Colorado Springs, Colorado on Monday. "This whole COVID time of training – it's been a year now, where we've been training in uncertain times. Will Tokyo happen? Will it not? How are we going to qualify to get there? But my teammates and I have continued to believe it's going to happen, we continue to get up every morning, put the work in." The 41-year-old has come a long way to return to this stage. In 2004, the former Army officer became the first woman to lose a limb in active combat when an IED exploded during her daily convoy in Baghdad, Iraq – just a month after being deployed there.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.