A Kansas University graduate student who boxed in high school is battling a new opponent: Last week he lost part of his arm when his Humvee came under attack in Iraq.

Army reservist Chuck Bartles, 25, a master’s student in Russian and East European Studies, lost the lower portion of his right arm after a remote-controlled bomb exploded Thursday under a military Humvee, his stepfather said. Bartles was en route Wednesday from Germany to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

“Every time I talk to him he’s real upbeat,” said stepfather Ken Robbins of Yankton, S.D. “He’s not down or depressed.”

Bartles, who worked recently as a deliveryman for a soft-drink distributor, is right-handed and was a championship boxer in high school, Robbins said.

It’s possible Bartles will be able to regain up to 80 percent use of his arm with help from prosthetics, Robbins said.

“He was in the hospital — I don’t know where — when he called me. He said he was hurt and had a chunk missing from his arm … and he had some scrap metal injuries,” Robbins said.

In the news

News of Bartles’ injury spread after he was featured in a front-page Wall Street Journal article Wednesday that described how the military is handling the estimated 1,700-plus nonlethal casualties in Iraq. A reporter interviewed Bartles as he received emergency treatment at a tent hospital in the city of Balad northwest of Baghdad.

According to the article, Bartles, a sergeant with the 418th Civil Affairs Battalion from Belton, Mo., was returning from a meeting at an agriculture-ministry office in the city of Baquoba when the bomb exploded. In general, the goal of a civil affairs unit is to help rebuilding efforts and work with local civilians.

¢ 6News video: KU graduate student wounded in Iraq¢ KU graduate student injured in Iraq (10-29-03)¢Wall Street Journal

The vehicle in which Bartles was riding wasn’t armored, but the civil-affairs team has been trying for months to get armored vehicles, the article reported. They don’t have such equipment because, in conventional war, they’re supposed to do their work far behind combat lines, the article reported.

“We never even had a close call before,” Bartles told the reporter. “You just drive around — and next thing, there’s a boom, and your life changes.”

Bartles told the reporter that before going to war he’d interviewed with the State Department for a job in diplomatic security in Moscow — something he said he didn’t think he could do with a missing arm.

KU reacts

KU officials reacted to the news with sadness but said they hoped to see Bartles return to school to finish his degree. He majored in Russian as an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska, his stepfather said, and was nearing completion of the KU master’s program earlier this year when he was deployed to Iraq.

“We wish him strength during the challenges he has ahead,” said Paul D’Anieri, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies.

Robbins, a baker at a grocery store, said the injury hadn’t changed his support for the war in Iraq, and he said he and his wife, Nancy, were happy their son made it out alive.

“I think we should be there, but I feel bad for the ones that are getting injured,” Robbins said. “It’s guerrilla warfare, sniper-type action over there, and you don’t know who’s who.”

Support

Chancellor Robert Hemenway issued a statement of support for Bartles and all KU students and employees serving overseas — estimated to be roughly between 30 and 50.

“He is in the thoughts and prayers of the entire Jayhawk family, and we hope he will resume his studies here as soon as his condition permits,” Hemenway said.

Another passenger in the Humvee, Sgt. Jared Myers, 23, is from Kansas and suffered shrapnel wounds to his arm and face. A captain riding in the vehicle, John Teal, was killed, the article reported.

Officials with the 418th Battalion couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.