WOODLYN, Pa. (AP) &#8212 For years, Pisey and Dara Tan had barely spoken to each other as they went separate ways – Pisey to the Army, Dara to college.

Today they share a home and are as close as two brothers can be, reunited by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2004 that reduced Pisey’s legs to bandaged stubs.

It’s been a long, agonizing three years. Dara, now 22, has carried, pushed, encouraged and sometimes fought with his brother, who has learned to walk with ease on prosthetic legs.

“He thinks I’m a psychopath maniac sometimes and I think he’s a stubborn hardheaded dude sometimes,” says Pisey, 26. “It’s brotherly love, though.”

Their reconnection started while Pisey was still recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Dara had gone to Penn State University’s Abington campus while Pisey joined the Army at age 21, but didn’t think twice about dropping out and moving into Walter Reed for nearly a year to help his brother.

“He’s family,” Dara says. “It’s a given.”

It helped that Dara – his brother affectionately calls him a “freak” – is a very big guy at 6-foot-4, 340 pounds. He had no problem lifting Pisey, who is 100 pounds lighter.

Pisey says he became the envy of other patients at Walter Reed.

“That was the fastest way I could get things done. My brother pushing me around in my wheelchair,” Pisey says.