WASHINGTON, Nov. 23, 2004 – Military officials joined recovering service members in breaking ground Nov. 19 for a new multi-million-dollar amputee training center being built at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Completion of the center is expected in December 2005 at a cost of $10 million. The 29,000-square-foot facility will be able to support about 300 appointments a week, planners said. It will include a combined-function running track, rope- and rock-climbing wall, gait lab, military vehicle simulators, and other training areas.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and new Secretary of the Army Dr. Francis J. Harvey were among those participating in the groundbreaking ceremony.

"The Military Amputee Training Center will provide a structure to bring together all aspects of amputee patient care," said Charles Scoville, program manager for the U.S. Army Amputee Patient Care Program.

The center will also bring together all of the services caring for Walter Reed's amputee patients, including social work, Veterans Affairs counselors, and the staff of physical medicine and rehabilitation service (which includes occupational therapy, physical therapy, and prosthetics).

"The facility is designed to return patients to the highest levels of activity, and to provide a place where research can be done to share our advances in rehabilitation and prosthetic design with all amputee patients," Scoville said.

Maj. Gen. Kenneth L. Farmer, commanding general of the North Atlantic Regional Medical Command and Walter Reed, praised "the record time" at which the project "has gone from concept to reality." He credited "the dynamic leadership and support of congressional appropriations committees" along with individual senators and congressmen.

Farmer said the amputee center is a continuation of Army medicine's long history of "taking care of the nation's soldiers and wounded-in-action" that began during the American Revolution. He said Walter Reed has been a part of this history since it first opened its doors to 10 patients in 1909, and that the military "has played a vital role in advancing the art and science of medicine."

The amputee center will provide a place for the military's continued "innovative thinking and technological advances so today's wounded warriors can receive unprecedented levels of care that are the best that can be found anywhere," Farmer said.

Walter Reed patients continue to "amaze and inspire," Farmer said. Every day, he said, visitors come to Walter Reed to cheer up patients. "Every day, those visitors leave, having been cheered up.

"It is a soldier from this very mold I asked to be our guest speaker," Farmer said in introducing retired Army Gen. Frederick M. Franks Jr.

In May 1970, Franks was wounded in action in Cambodia. After having his leg amputated below the knee and rehabilitation at Valley Forge General Hospital, he was permitted to remain on active duty and returned to active service in early 1972.

Franks subsequently commanded 7th Army Training Command, 1st Armored Division, and VII Corps in Germany.

As VII Corps commanding general, Franks led the 146,000 U.S. and British forces during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm that attacked over 250 kilometers in 89 hours as part of the coalition that liberated Kuwait in February 1991.

Franks said the commitment of "wounded warriors" to their fellow service members and country "are striking." He also praised medics and corpsmen, who "stand between life and death" on the battlefield.

"They are the first of many who will reach out and help us back up again," Franks said of medics.

To troops injured and recovering, Franks said, "It's not getting knocked down that's important, it is the getting back up again and going on. It is the reaching inside and finding that steel in all of us."

Franks said the groundbreaking for the amputee training center continues to fulfill the military's promise to never leave a fallen comrade behind.