Charles Myers was under fire in a foxhole when something exploded in his face.

"It was our own grenade," Myers said. "As soon as the pin was pulled out, it went off."

It was 1966 and he was 26, about nine months into this first tour of duty in the Vietnam War.

"I never felt nothing," said Myers, who is now 68 and living in Salem, N.H.

The blast injured both his legs, his right hand and right ear, and blinded him in his right eye. He recovered from most of the injuries, but for more than 40 years he could see only from one eye.

Then a Lawrence doctor decided to take a chance on surgery, thinking he might be able to restore a little bit of vision. The outcome far exceeded his expectations.

At a Tuesday morning office visit, six months after his last operation, Dr. Kenneth Macoul tested Myers' vision.

"I'm going to push you today, Charlie," Macoul said.

He asked the veteran to cover his good eye and read increasingly smaller letters on an eye chart. Macoul was grinning by the time Myers finished.

"That's a boy, Charlie, 20-50 today," he said.

Immediately after the injury in 1966, Myers spent about a year in a military hospital undergoing operations and skin grafts. He almost had his legs amputated, but a visiting doctor delayed the surgery a week and it was enough time for them to show promise of recovery.

By the time Myers was released most of his wounds had healed. The only thing the doctors couldn't fix was his blind eye.

"I got used to it eventually," he said.

Myers chose to stay in the military and returned to Vietnam in 1970. He was there only a few months before his brother-in-law was killed and Myers escorted the body back to the United States. He intended to return to Vietnam but his flight out of Anchorage crashed on take-off, killing dozens of people. Myers walked away without a scratch.

He finally retired from the military in 1976 as a sergeant first class and became a police officer in Plaistow, N.H. In 1998, he retired from the police force.

In all that time, none of his eye doctors gave him hope that he would see through his right eye again. So he was surprised when he went for a routine eye exam at Macoul's practice and another eye doctor thought Macoul might be able to help.

Macoul took a look and thought the chances were slim, but told Myers about a series of surgeries that could restore at least a little of his vision.

"I explained very carefully to Charlie the small chance of success," Macoul said. "But I saw a light at the end of the tunnel and I thought if he was willing to take the gamble, I'd take the gamble to help him get his eye back."

Myers agreed to take that chance.

"I wasn't worried about it because I figured if it wasn't successful I wasn't losing anything," he said.

Macoul said there was no one moment during the surgeries when he thought they might not work. Rather, he said, it was constant worry from beginning to end.

Several parts of Myers' eye were damaged or destroyed by the grenade blast, he said - not only the internal parts but also the muscles that control eye movement.

"I understand why all the other eye surgeons told him nothing can be done," Macoul said.

Before the surgeries, Myers could only vaguely detect light through the damaged eye. Macoul said he was hoping the surgeries would make it possible for Myers to count fingers three, four or even five feet away. In a best-case scenario he thought the eye might reach 20-400 vision, which is still so poor it is beyond the test limits of standard vision charts.

"This guy went right down to 20-60 within a couple months," Macoul said. "I told him he is living proof that there is a God."

For a man who just had sight restored to one eye after four decades of blindness, Myers was nonchalant at his recent check-up.

"It's nice to be able to close my left eye and be able to see again," he said. "That's different."

Perhaps it's because Myers has had so many other lucky breaks in his life. Or perhaps it's because his brain adapted so well to having input from just one eye that his life hasn't changed much now that both eyes work.

"When I was cutting the lawn and there was a little divot in the ground, I wouldn't see it and I would stumble," Myers said.

Also, he said, when he was driving he had to turn his head further to the right to see. Otherwise his vision with just one eye was surprisingly normal. Even his depth perception was good, he said.

Since regaining his vision, Myers said he's mainly just been impressed that a surgeon was able to correct a problem that stumped doctors for so many years.

"I took the patch off and I could see," Myers said. "It worked. I'm still excited."

Inside the operating room

Eye surgeon Kenneth Macoul called it a miracle that Vietnam veteran Charles Myers can now see through his right eye. The grenade explosion caused so much damage that several things in his eye needed to be replaced or reconstructed.

1. The blast damaged the muscles that control which way the eye turns. As a result, Myers' right eye habitually pointed outward. Macoul's first surgery repaired those muscles and made the eyeball point forward again.

2. The explosion also scarred the back of his eye and damaged the clear, jelly-like substance known as the vitreous. Macoul did a second surgery about six months after the first to repair the internal parts of the eye, starting with removing the vitreous to fix the scarring.

3. The colored part of Myers' eye was mangled and he no longer had a functioning pupil, the black opening in the center. Macoul reconstructed an iris and pupil.

4. The lens of the eye was damaged so badly in the blast that doctors removed it in the military hospital shortly after Myers' injury. Macoul had to implant a new lens.

5. The blast scarred the cornea, the transparent shell that protects the iris and pupil, leaving it completely opaque. Macoul cut away a piece of the damaged cornea and stitched a donated cadaver cornea in its place. Myers still has some of those stitches in his eye. The doctor is removing them gradually over time with a laser to control distortion from the graft.