Benjamin Ricard deftly navigates the hallways of McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in his wheelchair.

The 34-year-old Marine staff sergeant can walk, but slowly since he still has a cast on his right leg, so the wheelchair remains a preferred mode of getting around sometimes.

Ricard's condition is remarkably better than when he arrived at the South Richmond hospital's polytrauma unit less than six months ago. Then he had two broken legs, two broken ankles, a broken right arm, and his back was broken in three places from an explosion in Afghanistan that blew him out of an armored vehicle.

Next week, Ricard hopes to leave his wheelchair and McGuire behind, thanks to the state-of-the-art rehabilitation he has received there.

The first stop is Maine, where his father lives and where Ricard will spend some time on convalescent leave and undergo outpatient therapy.

"And then [I'll] get on a plane, go back to Japan and start being a Marine again," said Ricard, who grew up in Kennesaw, Ga., and joined the Marines at 18.

"I'm not getting out. That's the first thing I told people when I was coming out of consciousness. I would tell them, 'I will get better.'"

Ricard is one of more than 3,800 U.S. men and women injured in action in Iraq and Afghanistan to be treated at the polytrauma unit at McGuire since the fighting began.

"I'm going to have limitations," said Ricard, who has four more years before reaching 20 years with the Marines. "I'm excited about going back to work."

"I remember telling [Ricard] he was going to walk off the unit," said Dr. Shane McNamee, medical director of McGuire's polytrauma rehabilitation center.

Said Ricard, recalling the same conversation: "I thought he was a little crazy. I thought he was just trying to make me feel better about it."

McGuire's polytrauma rehabilition center, one of four in the Veterans Affairs network, is part of the massive medical complex on Broad Rock Boulevard.

The polytrauma unit offers comprehensive, cutting-edge care for members of the military and veterans who suffer multiple traumatic injuries, be they from blasts of war or vehicle accidents. Once injuries are taken care of in an acute care setting, the unit's staff of rehabilitation experts take over. In November, a new transitional rehabilitation program will open.

To help the men and women, "you develop that narrative of healing," McNamee said. That means pointing out small changes that over time add up to big change. That means helping them see themselves differently and in a new reality, maybe with limitations.

"We get very complex patients and we slowly try to turn them back into people," McNamee said. "You work on what their personal motivations are."

In Ricard's case, McNamee could see that it was getting back to work and his family.

The ongoing conflicts in Iraq have taken the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen. More than 1,000 have died in and around Afghanistan. Many more have been injured.

U.S. Department of Defense casualty figures show that as of Friday, 37,865 have been wounded in action. More than 17,300 had injuries that prevented them from returning to duty within 72 hours. An untold number, some say, suffer mild traumatic brain injuries and combat stress disorders that are not readily picked up.

. . .

It was Friday, Nov. 13, when an improvised explosive device, or IED, detonated near the armored vehicle Ricard was driving during a mission in Tangi Valley in Afghanistan.

Ricard was blown out the side. A fellow Marine was blown out of the top. Both were gravely injured but survived.

Three members of an Afghanistan training team who the Marines were mentoring also were in the vehicle and did not survive.

One of the last things Ricard remembers as he went in and out of consciousness in the minutes before U.S. help arrived was a member of the Afghan National Army trying to give him a cigarette.

"They knew I smoked," said Ricard. The cigarette, he said, was something to try to keep him going.

The blast left a crater 10 feet deep that would have required at least 300 pounds of explosives, Ricard said he heard later.

"No one wants to get hurt. It goes with the territory. I am not a hero," Ricard said. He sports a cap with a Purple Heart emblazoned on it.

Before he left Okinawa, where he was stationed, he sat down and had the typical "what if" conversation deployed men and women often have with a spouse. What if he is badly hurt. What if he is killed.

"Make sure my kids knew I wanted to do this," he told Mutsuko Ricard, his wife and the mother of his 3-year-old. He also has two older children living in Maryland.

. . .

His days were one therapy session after another.

Kinesiology therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy sessions.

"When I first got here, I was in a lot of pain and I didn't know what to expect," Ricard said.

"I had to get lifted up out of bed and into the wheelchair. It's hard to deal with. It's hard to understand I am dependent on so many people just to get up and go and do anything."

A day's goal might be to work on sitting up in a chair for an hour. Then two hours. Then three hours.

He can pick up a cup with his right hand, something he could not do months ago. He can put on his socks and underwear by himself.

"You take it for granted. . . . It's hard to explain. I was in a lot of pain," Ricard said.

Last week, he walked just short of 3 miles on a treadmill during a therapy session. He didn't do it in one long stretch, but it was still a milestone.

"My bones have healed," he said. "I still have pain. You push through that. It's not as bad as it used to be. I am self-sufficient. I go out on passes. I am looking at a discharge date of the 8th or 9th of June."

. . .

For families of the injured service members, the road to recovery is not necessarily quick or continuous.

For Brian and Angie Pearce, who live in Mechanicsville with their children, there have been ups and downs.

Brian Pearce, an Army staff sergeant, was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq in October 2006. The blast left him with brain injuries, nearly blind and deaf. He retired from military service.

"We've had some setbacks. He has been in and out of the hospital in the last couple of years," said Angie Pearce.

Severe headaches had bothered him from the time he was wounded. He had a ventricular shunt put in to drain fluid from around his brain, Angie Pearce said. After that, he spent June to October last year in McGuire's polytrauma unit's transitional rehabilitation program. He came home on weekends.

"We are still trying to figure out what the new norm is," Angie Pearce said.

"We had another setback. He was in the hospital the first part of January for about three weeks. We are still trying to figure out what all was going on with that. Every day is a challenge."

Last week, the Pearces traveled to Washington so he could testify before a Congressional committee in support of assistive technology for people who are blind and deaf.

When the wounds are so life-changing, military spouses and their children sometimes think they have gotten back a different person.

Angie Pearce thought their children were OK. For a time, though, there were problems that have since straightened out. They are doing well in school and playing sports. Herself, she is coping.

"I just found out about a research thing they're doing," she said. "It's called Spouse's Battlemind. It's to help. I'm getting ready to start that. It's kind of a support."

Overall, the supports and services, she said, are "kind of hit and miss."

"It's still a work in progress for everybody to figure it all out. That's fortunate and unfortunate, that eight to nine years out and we are still trying to figure it out for everybody. I guess really it's individualized to each person because not everything works for each individual person."

. . .

The polytrauma unit at McGuire is growing and getting better. McNamee, the center's medical director, describes it as maturing.

An emerging-consciousness program is focused on helping people in a minimally responsive, "near coma" state after suffering a severe head injury.

"We bring people in for a whole array of interventions. We try to help them recover more rapidly," McNamee said.

A permanent home for the polytrauma transitional rehabilitation program is under construction and scheduled to be completed in November. That program helps brain-injured men and women make the transition to living at home in the community.

The polytrauma unit's 360-degree evaluation program is dedicated to men and women who have had multiple combat deployments, often exposed to multiple blasts, and are suffering combat stress.

"We bring them in for three weeks. We evaluate them, treat them and start to figure out strategies to help them move past the injuries they've sustained," McNamee said.

"We maintain our primary mission here of supporting the most severely combat-wounded," he added.

"Unfortunately, the numbers really haven't gone away. Right now, they are increasing rapidly. . . . With the [Afghanistan] surge starting the first week of June in Kandahar, we are expected to have very large numbers. This looks like it's going to be very similar to the most busy days during the Iraq surge."