Breaking bread with fellow wounded veterans

(CBS News) BETHESDA, Maryland - The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a terrible toll. More than 45,000 American men and women have been wounded in ten years of fighting.

CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that there are stops along the road to recovery that can include something as simple as a dinner with friends.

It's the weekly Friday night dinner for the wounded and their families. When you're Adam Keys and John Peck and have only one limb between you, "thank god it's Friday" takes on a whole new meaning, as in, "Thank god I'm alive."

"Still hanging out on the weekends, really good friends. Since we're both injured, we both know what it feels like and we both will have each other's back and if anything happens I can come to him or he can come to me," Peck said.

Keys said the two met "in the hospital. All the wounded guys, especially the amputees are on the same place doing the same thing: getting better."

They see plenty of each other but not enough of life outside the hospital. That's what makes these Friday night dinners an institution. They're the brainstorm of two Vietnam veterans, Jim Mayer, himself a double amputee, and Hal Koster, a helicopter crewman who came home with his own case of post-traumatic stress. The dinners have bounced around Washington from restaurant to restaurant and recently reached a milestone Hal Koster never planned on: they've served 30,000 meals.

"When we first started this we thought it would take four to five months and then everything would be over and we'd be done with it," Koster said.

What a steak dinner means to a wounded warrior
The Aleethia Foundation, supporters of the Friday night dinners

By latest count, 436 American servicemen have suffered multiple amputations since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. And it is a fact of amputee life that the more limbs you are missing the more people are likely to stare.

Keys said that, in the beginning it was "definitely" easier to go out in public when everyone was a fellow wounded warrior.

"Yeah, like when I got to the mall, we still get the un-considerate, unappreciative glares and kind of like what happened to you kind of thing," Peck said.

"Some people are clueless and will ask what happened, and then, a couple times, I'll just say, 'running with scissors,'" Keys said.

On this Friday night there's a better reason to look at Adam Keys. He's celebrating his 28th birthday with his buddy John Peck, here at the place where everybody understands your pain.

Below, watch Peck and Keys talk about the challenges of eating with prosthetic limbs.

[stm128]

My deepest respect to all our men and women who have served in the military, even more so for those that are home and their battle will never end. This country can't possibly do enough to make their lives and the lives of their families more comfortable.

[stm128]

My deepest respect to all our men and women who have served in the military, even more so for those that are home and their battle will never end. This country can't possibly do enough to make their lives and the lives of their families more comfortable.

[shnovitz]

I am so sad for every one of these people. Apart from the devastating physical injuries, there is almost always PTSD, which often takes years to show itself and which changes life forever. I cannot imagine myself able to cope, and my heart goes out to every single one of these amazingly courageous people.

I know many people feel these wars to be necessary. I cannot agree; not without the condition that the politicians who send our young people to have their lives ruined should spend at least a few months in war zones themselves, or send their own children into those zones.

[rcmdblgr]

Perhaps the events during and after Vietnam and Iraq are a lesson that we could have learned from...to carefully consider the consequences to individuals and families before committing troops to some foreign country that neither shares our viewpoint or has the wherewithal to sustain it once we've left.

[myoleman]

We must thank the Lord for everything, even if we're missing some limbs. Better to enter into Heaven without limbs, than with all our limbs to be cast into the unquenchable fire. Besides, when we get our new resurrection bodies, they be totally whole and new, ready for eternal life in the heavenly kingdom. To God be the Glory!