WASHINGTON - Three more seconds. Just three more, and Emanuel Pickett might be alive, and Michael Beck would not be facing a life of disability at age 20.

The two N.C. National Guardsmen were among a group that dashed into a concrete bunker when a mortar alert began shrieking at Forward Operating Base Rustamiyah in Baghdad on April 6.

The boyish Beck and Pickett, the older, widely respected staff sergeant whom Beck sometimes called "Dad," turned and stepped toward the door to close a thick Kevlar blanket designed to stop shrapnel. They hadn't even begun to raise their arms when the mortar shell exploded near the doorway.

"We were a little late," Beck said recently in his computerized bed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, his soft drawl turning sharp and bitter on the "late."

To put it simply, Beck is torn up. It's almost more a question of what parts of him weren't injured. At hospital stops in Iraq, Germany and finally Walter Reed in Washington, doctors began work on a long list of damaged limbs and organs: colon, kidney, spleen, liver, left eye, right leg and left foot.

They removed the front half of his left foot. They clamped what was left of each lower leg in an external fixiator -- a framework of metal rods around the leg to support it and keep it stable. They did three days of surgery to gradually close the severe stomach wound that reached from his pubic bone to the bottom of his chest. They used Gore-Tex mesh that acted like a shoelace drawn gradually tighter.

All told, Beck's family estimates, he has more than 100 wounds large and small where shrapnel tore and burned his body.

At first, doctors operated on him every other day. The cutting and cleaning and stitching has slowed only a little. His mother, Lynn Beck, has lost track of the total, but knows there have been more than a dozen operations.

Beck is among nearly 30,000 U.S. military personnel wounded in Iraq so far, including more than 800 from North Carolina, according to icasualties.org. That's why he wanted to tell his story. He doesn't want people to forget the troops still in Iraq, the thousands who have been wounded or those like Pickett who didn't make it home alive. In their 120-soldier unit, the Rocky Mount-based 1132nd Military Police Company, four were killed and many more wounded this spring.

"On the news ... they go through a short story of what's going on in the war, but they totally forget about all the soldiers, not just the ones who are injured," he said. "The ones who are injured, you really don't hear much about them. And everyone forgets about the soldiers over there still fighting, still fighting this war."

Like father and son

When the mortar shell exploded, Beck was thrown upward and back and came to rest atop Pickett's shattered body. He doesn't like to talk about that.

As National Guard soldiers, both men had civilian lives and civilian jobs. Beck had just started working as a security guard at a manufacturing plant in Rocky Mount when the 1132nd learned it would be going to Iraq. Pickett, 34, was a police captain in Wallace, N.C., and had already been to Iraq once.

Back in Duplin County, Pickett, 34, was one of those people who quietly hold their communities together without seeking the spotlight, coaching youth sports, starting a mentoring program for children with no dads.

Beck, meanwhile, hadn't had a father in his life since childhood. His father left the family when Beck was 4 years old, Lynn Beck said. In Iraq, the older soldier had looked out for the younger one.

Some nights in Baghdad, before the soldiers went back to their tiny prefabricated housing units, Beck would call out to Pickett.

"Good night, Dad; I love you Dad," the young soldier would say.

"I love you, too, Son," would come the reply.

'Stay with me'

After the explosion, Beck blacked out but woke up quickly to a disorienting scene of injured soldiers and dust so thick he had to struggle for each breath.

A female medic began working on his wounds.

"Stay with me," she kept saying. "Stay with me."

He was carried on a stretcher to a truck. Lying in the back of the truck, he heard the mortar alarm again and one more explosion; then he lost consciousness again.

At the base hospital, Capt. Leland Pearson stood over the bed. Beck, who was probably in shock, reached up and began rubbing his company commander's face.

"It'll be all right," the injured man said. "Everything will be fine."

In Rocky Mount that day at 1:49 p.m. Lynn Beck's cell phone rang. She works for a company that escorts wide highway trailers; but it was Sunday, so she was piecing together one of the care packages she mailed to her son every Monday morning. She was about to drive to a store to pick up the last item: athlete's foot cream.

The soldier at the other end of the line said her son had been wounded. Beck handed the phone to her mother, Laura Beasley, and, flapping her arms in distress, stepped outside, trying to regain composure so she could ask the questions she needed to ask.

Beck would go to a hospital in Germany, but by the time she could get there, he would probably be in Washington. Laura Beasley called Lynn's brother, Ray Beasley of Kill Devil Hills. The injured soldier and his mother would need Beasley's help: He retired as a gunnery sergeant after 21 years in the Marine Corps and knows the ins and outs of military health care and disability issues, as he was injured himself while in the service.

Blurred memories

In Baghdad, shock and medication turned things vague for Beck. He doesn't remember being bundled onto a big jet headed for Germany, or a few days later another plane, this one headed to the United States. He got to Walter Reed on April 11. His mother and sister Jennifer headed up that day. Lynn Beck said she was so happy to see him that she barely noticed all the wounds and the various tubes running into his body.

"He's here," was all she was able to register.

Even the first week at Walter Reed was a blur to Beck, as the doctors kept him sedated. He would wake up for a few minutes, then nod off again, Beasley said.

His family won't forget that week, though. There were at least four operations, and once they wheeled Beck away saying that they were going to amputate his savaged right leg, and the remnant of his left foot above the ankle. When they brought him back, though, the foot and leg were still there. The doctors are still not sure they'll be able to save his leg.

Lynn Beck said they won't forget how much the doctors and nurses cared, either. The first doctor had tears in his eyes as he explained the long catalog of injuries. Another took half an hour to explain to the family his plan for an operation.

After the first week, the hotel bill was piling up, and Lynn was struggling to get housing from the Army. Beasley figured out whom to talk to, made one phone call and fixed the problem.

It wasn't until the second week that Beck was able to stay awake and focused. Still, the operations went on, at least three of them, including one to remove the shattered parts of the bones in his right calf, which left that leg shorter.

If the mangled leg doesn't have to be removed -- still almost a day-to-day question -- the surgeons might eventually perform a series of operations to gradually lengthen it again.

Once, the doctors proposed removing some tissue from his back -- a chunk of muscle, arteries, veins, the works -- to help rebuild his calf. Beck vetoed that.

"You know what, there's nothing wrong with my upper body," he said. "You're not going to mess up my back for a 70 percent chance that it's going to work."

Sad news withheld

His family didn't tell him about Pickett's death for a couple of weeks, trying to make sure he was strong enough to handle it. Beasley even consulted a psychiatrist who had dropped in to make sure Beck wasn't having problems with post-traumatic stress disorder, asking how long they should withhold the news.

Beck's sister finally told him. He cried, and hard. The stuff about Pickett being like a dad wasn't just a joke.

In an explosion, Beck said, sometimes you just can't figure out the hows and whys.

"I'm guessing he was probably a little bit closer," Beck said. "He probably received a little bit more of the blast. Or a lot of it. He's a lot bigger guy than I am."

The pace of the operations has slowed, but Beck is still being wheeled into surgery periodically. The doctors are trying to get the bone and other tissue in the right leg more healthy. Even if they can't save the leg, they might extend the area of healthy bone and tissue down a little farther below the knee. Then they could amputate below rather than above it so that he could wear a simpler, easier-to-use prosthetic.

Even if everything goes well with remaining operations and physical therapy, Beck will probably be at Walter Reed for a year, his uncle said. For now, Beck needs his mother close to do things such as move his legs around for him when they get uncomfortable. In a couple of months, though, Beasley said, his nephew should be up and around more, getting physical therapy.

Buoyed by ex-patients

Beck's family said he has been inspired by former patients who drop in to boost his morale and show off their abilities with their prosthetic limbs.

Many of the wounded find ways to embrace their terrible injuries, Lynn Beck said.

"You don't hear [on the news] 18 guys lost their legs today, or hear about that guy they brought in here who lost both his legs and an arm," she said. "I've talked to his family quite a bit now. He's already accepted it: 'It's my badge of glory,' that's how he sees it."

"I've accepted it, too," her son said from his bed. "The blast is over with. I might lose my leg. There is nothing I can do to change that."

Despite the inspirational visits, Beck doesn't have any fancy dreams for the future, nothing about dashing to Olympic glory on a carbon leg, or climbing Mount Everest. He just hopes to be able to go back to his civilian job and to regain as much of his old life as he can. At one point, he was thinking about becoming a police officer, but that's probably out now.

He is like many of the young and wounded: He doesn't think his wounds will affect him much. Whether it's the optimism of youth, bravery or a bit of both, Beck says his life will be little different from what it was before he was hit.

For the purpose of benefits, his uncle said, Beck will almost certainly be rated by the VA as 100 percent disabled.

In some positive ways, Beck's story is unusual. His uncle knows the military inside and out, and he is sticking close to Walter Reed. His mother's boss said she can take as much time off work as she needs to stay with Beck. His sister has a young child, but she was still able to stay in Washington nine days.

Not all the wounded are so lucky, Beasley said, and none of them deserve to be forgotten.

"These guys, they're going to need help later on, and people can't just forget them," he said. "They're doing all that anybody could ask, and we need to look out for them down the road."

Beck won't be the last of them, after all, not even in his own hard-hit little unit.

April 18, as he lay at Walter Reed, yet another improvised bomb exploded near yet another Humvee rolling down a Baghdad street.

Sgt. Lance O. Eakes, 25, of Apex was killed. Two other Guardsmen were wounded.