Giving thanks to heroes at Del Mar

This business is all about heroes, a timely home run or courageous golf shot sometimes remembered forever until Daleen Guest explains her unforgettable reaction after hearing her husband, a Marine in Afghanistan, has had his leg blown in half.

“I fell to the floor,” she says.

“But I got up because I’m a wife, a mother, and things have to be done. Then I did what any good wife would do, I went shopping. I went shopping for a recliner, figuring he might need it for his leg when he got home.”

Wait until you meet her husband — maybe as real heroes go, just as impressive as his wife.

It’s Labor Day, and the plan is to drive down the highway to San Diego to write about the Dodgers, and yes, what a depressing way to spend a holiday.

But fortunately, friend Mark Verge calls and suggests a stopover at Del Mar, where a group of horsemen, led by Bob Bone and Scott Guenther, is having a party for wounded warriors from the Navy Medical Center San Diego.

As part of the festivities, Del Mar officials allow the active military personnel, the wounded warriors and their spouses to walk single file onto the track after the second race with bagpipers playing the “Marines’ Hymn,” chills from the crowd’s ovation lingering on what is a very warm afternoon.

A few minutes earlier, Daleen and Staff Sgt. Gabe Guest are walking from paddock to finish line unnoticed save maybe for Gabe’s pronounced limp, worrying only about No. 5’s chances of winning the next race. A long, long way from Afghanistan.

The wounded warriors have asked if they might attend the Del Mar party without wearing their uniforms, and out of uniform there is no way of knowing Gabe has already spent three tours of duty overseas in combat, or sacrificed his good health to make sure every day is like the one folks are now enjoying.

Maybe Matt Kemp gets recognized because he’s seen on TV so often striking out, or Mike Scioscia because of his commercials. Kobe gets mobbed if he’s here, the Lakers, of course, everyone’s heroes.

Gabe, meanwhile, just hears his lieutenant yelling, “I need more ammo,” so that makes it very simple and nothing heroic, he says. He just needs to get his lieutenant more ammo, gunfire falling everywhere around him, the machine gun atop his vehicle shot up.

He decides to have his vehicle driven to the one with the working machine gun, 50 feet over wide-open ground, so off they go. Right away a mine goes off directly under Gabe’s seat. He’s ejected from the vehicle, his left leg mangled by the blast.

“I just laid there for what seemed like an eternity taking fire,” says Guest, one of his first thoughts the 52 men in his platoon. “I’m feeling guilty because I’m not going to be there for them.”

He has 18 to 19 surgeries now behind him, losing count but knowing the next one is scheduled for Sept. 27, every one of them with one goal in mind — returning to Afghanistan.

“I want to go back because I’m a Marine; that’s what we’re supposed to do,” he says. “You just have to keep fighting, and events like this make a difference. You realize you have people pulling for you. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s what makes it the best country in the world.

“Everyone likes to bitch or complain about this or that, but look around at everyone and how much fun they are having. This is America to me, people enjoying their freedom.”

As the day continues, Gabe is limping here and there, dismissing the suggestion, though, it’s too much by explaining he walks nine miles a day.

No mercy from the Marine wife, who teases, “You should hear him when he comes home, ‘my leg is so sore.’”

“Did I mention we’re getting a divorce?” says Gabe, as comebacks go, a pretty good “hoorah.”

This business is all about heroes, all right, football players telling their stories about overcoming all odds, but in Bob Bone’s horse racing planner, he has a picture of Marine Capt. Catalina Kesler.

“What this woman has experienced,” he exclaims. “It’s how she keeps it together. What an inspiration, the 80-20 rule, as she puts it. She takes the 20% of happiness she’s experienced, and uses it to deal with the other 80%.”

It’s Kesler’s job overseas to accept trash bags filled with body parts from the battlefield and put them together to best get them home, a woman serving three tours of duty over there, the final tour cut short when she learns her husband, also a Marine captain, has taken his own life.

She wears a wristband with her husband’s name and the date of his death in his honor. So how does she do it? “You don’t get anywhere curling up into a ball,” the Marine says.

A year ago after this day, a woman with tears streaming down her face approaches Bone and tells him her husband has left the house for the first time since January to be here, and he’s over yonder laughing.

“It’s so rewarding for everyone working on this; there isn’t a dry eye in the place when everyone leaves,” says Bone, americansoldiersnetwork.com accepting donations to help wounded warriors. “The level of loyalty and commitment of these young people and willingness to serve is just extraordinary.”

As if the day needs any exclamation point, American Story wins the third race, while down in San Diego the Dodgers are left searching for a hero to carry them.

t.j.simers@latimes.com