I don’t remember much. What I do remember is that my day started off pretty much like every other day had. It broke 100 degrees before nine a.m., I was sick of being told to cut my hair by my asshole Sergeant and my breakfast sucked. Three weeks. Not bad, despite the fact we were all trigger happy as hell. Nobody wants to be remembered as the unlucky bastard that “almost” made it home. I was already a hometown hero of sorts back in Indiana, earning the Purple Heart for my gunshot wound nearly six months prior and gracing the front page of my local newspaper. I couldn’t wait. A couple more missions, nothing major, and back to the States. I swore to myself I was going to kiss the ground the second my boots touched home turf. I wouldn’t have to worry anymore. I could let my guard down; I could burn away the death letters I had cried while writing to my family saying my final goodbyes in case I gave my life for my country. We had boarded a large troop-carrying truck, 15 of us in all, and headed thru that unforgiving country to relieve another platoon in the field protecting the roads. I checked my weapon, looked at my comrade sitting next to me, and tried to shield the sun from my eyes as my friends and I rode in the bed of our belching truck as it crossed the barren countryside. Then I woke up.
I didn’t know how long I had been out. I knew something bad had happened to me. God, I was in pain. I heard the voices of my parents telling me what had happened. A car bomb had driven up alongside my truck and detonated, killing 10 of my 15 friends sitting next to me. I was in a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland and it was a miracle I was alive. I had sustained massive head trauma, been severely burned over a large portion of my body, my spleen had been liquefied, my left kidney was destroyed by shrapnel, my left arm was nearly amputated and suffered severe nerve damage, my eardrums were blown out, my spine was fractured, my corneas were rippled from the concussion and I had metal shards embedded deep in my body. That’s a lot to take in. So set in motion the most trying time of my life, exponentially harder than any training or combat operation I had been involved in: the healing process. Military medicine is horrible. I have called on the help of my congressman numerous times, frustrated and irate at the negligence at what our government calls “medicine.” I have been forgotten about in solitary rooms with no one checking in on me, battled with drug addiction, forced to wait for months for surgeries dearly needed; the list goes on and on. The only thing I could confide in when I was alone and had no one was music.
