I can drink beer out of my leg. How many people can do that?" Specialist Matthew Braddock takes a breather from the pound of pork ribs he's packing away to show off his prosthetic leg. The 25-year-old National Guardsman props his mechanical limb on the picnic table so everybody at Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q can see. Then he rolls up the sleeve of his battle-dress uniform and points to the long, wide, nasty scar left by the explosion that took his leg in northern Iraq a year ago. People come by afterward to slap him on the back and thank him for serving his country. No pity party here. "I live by the theory of suck it up. Why be negative?" he says. "I can run faster now, and the chicks dig it."
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