Surf’s up and lifting spirits

As the cobalt blue sky began to fill with gray clouds Saturday and a stiff afternoon breeze lifted spray from the rolling surf, David Camargo waited his turn to paddle out. It didn’t matter to the 24-year-old Army sergeant from Mission, Texas, that he was missing his right leg, or that he’d never learned to swim, he was determined to try something new.

“You realize that life is short,” he said. “It could end any day.”

That’s a common sentiment among the servicemen who are participating in a surf camp this weekend at the northern edge of Camp Pendleton near San Onofre. All are dealing with life-altering injuries, most incurred in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Camargo, the most recently injured of the 17 servicemen who attended the camp, said he drove his Humvee over an improvised explosive device three months ago while on patrol near Amiriyah, Iraq, but doesn’t remember the event. He was released from Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio a month ago and was making his first excursion away from home.

“It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this,” he said. “Even before, when I had both legs.”

Fellow service men and women who have been similarly injured said the initial steps are the most difficult.

“A lot of it is mental,” said Randell Leoncio, 25, a Navy corpsman and graduate of Laguna Hills High School who lost his right leg in Iraq almost two years ago. “Just to be able to do the things you did before, or the things you’ve always wanted to try. A big thing is getting people out of the hospital because sometimes they don’t think they can do all this stuff.”

Galen Matthiesen and Eric Bobbitt, both Marine corporals from Texas who have served multiple tours in Iraq, were cooking shrimp on a barbecue next to the surf camp headquarters. They thought about approaching the wounded servicemen, but decided to show respect by giving them privacy.

“We call ourselves lucky,” Matthiesen said. “They’re the ones that got injured, but they come down here and do this. We’re like, ‘Man, nothing is slowing them down.’ ”

But Karen Sullivan-Kniestedt, a Bellevue, Wash.,-based physical therapist who specializes in amputee rehabilitation among civilians, said she thought the idea of amputees learning to surf sounded “very challenging and somewhat scary.”

“It sounds on the extreme side,” she said. “For an amputee, they really can’t run any risk of injuring their other limbs or their spine.”

John L. Joe, a Santa Monica-based physical therapist who works in orthopedic sports medicine, had a different view.

“You have to consider that most soldiers are young and very active,” he said. “Because of the devastation of their wounds, they are ready for another challenge.”

Among those volunteering this weekend at Operation Amped, the camp sponsored by surf-wear manufacturer Billabong, was Courtney Conlogue, a 14-year-old from Santa Ana who reached the semifinals last month at the Honda U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach, and former world champion Shaun Tomson, 51, who is still grieving from the apparent suicide of his 15-year-old son last year in South Africa.

“Dealing with loss, whether it’s the loss of a child, or loss of a limb, it’s very, very difficult to handle,” Tomson said. “Certainly, surfing helped me and I can see how surfing is helping these guys.”

Camargo finally lifted himself from his wheelchair, put his right arm around his wife, Michelle, and hopped toward the water, the right foot of his wetsuit dragging through the wet sand. Not yet fitted with a prosthetic leg, Camargo lay on his stomach and rode a waist-high wave in to shore, beaming.

“These guys are teaching me and giving me confidence,” Camargo said. “Now I’m doing it and it feels good.”

dan.arritt@latimes.com