“It’s almost become a way of life for me,” he said, “falling down stairs or slipping in the shower.”

Christopher Gomes at a rally held by Homes for Our Troops where community members were able to meet him and his family and learn about their story.

Two sets of stairs, sharp corners, and narrow halls and doorways make it nearly impossible for him to use his wheelchair, he said. Instead, he uses a prosthetic or crutches, alternatives he says are less cumbersome but far more uncomfortable — and unsafe.

After losing a leg in combat in Iraq in 2008, Army veteran Christopher G. Gomes returned to a Freetown home that had suddenly become a dangerous place.

But soon, thanks to the help of a national organization that happens to be based nearby, he’ll have a house he can feel comfortable — and safe — in.


Gomes said he and his wife, Leslie, had sought help from several veterans’ aid groups without success since his return from Iraq eight years ago. So when the couple turned to Homes for Our Troops, a national nonprofit based in Taunton about 13 miles from his hometown, it was “almost like a shot in the dark,” he said.

But that request led to numerous calls from the group and ultimately a video call announcing that he and Leslie would be awarded a mortgage-free house specially designed for a wheelchair-bound veteran.

That, in fact, is the group’s sole mission. Since 2004, the nonprofit has built more than 200 houses nationwide. This was its seventh in Massachusetts; the others include homes for two former Army sergeants in Middleborough and one in Plymouth.

More than 100 volunteers from Taunton-based Homes for Our Troops helped build a home in Plymouth in November 2007 for Iraq war veteran Army Sergeant Brian Fontaine of Hanson, who lost both of his lower legs in the war. Tom Herde / Boston Globe file

This spring, more than 300 people attended a ceremony at the Freetown site of Gomes’s new home to learn about the project and meet him and his family, said Homes For Our Troops spokeswoman Patty Catalano. Judging from past experience, Catalano added, many of those at the ceremony will support the effort in one way or another. She said that about 70 percent of the group’s funding comes from donations by individuals, the rest from corporate sponsors.


For Gomes, now New Bedford’s director of veterans’ services, the announcement represents just the latest step in a long road to recovery. He said he was injured in October 2008, when the Army Humvee in which the then-sergeant engineer rode in southern Baghdad was struck by four explosively formed penetrators — projectiles designed to penetrate armor.

“I felt my legs,’’ he said, “and my right leg was mush. That’s when I knew something wasn’t good.”

A Blackhawk helicopter flew him to Baghdad, where doctors amputated his right leg above the knee. But he said it was only several months later, when he was recuperating at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and saw his son, Blake, walk for the first time, that he began to feel he could truly recover.

“It was the beginning of the good feelings,” he said of his family’s arrival. “It gave me the courage to start pushing myself.”

The hardest thing to deal with, he said, has been navigating his home without a wheelchair. He intends to sell that house, on which he owes money, and hopes to break even. His new home should give him an incredible sense of freedom, he said.

“Having the ability to come home after a long day, take my prosthetic off, and be able to wheel around the house and still be an active member’’ of the household “is going to be huge for me,” he said.


To learn more about Gomes’s story, or to receive updates on the construction of his new home, visit www.hfotusa.org/gomes .

Bret Hauff can be reached at bret.hauff@globe.com. Follow him @b_hauff.