The Shame of Surviving

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:02]remember looking through my nods and seeing like, hey, the guys are right up close on target. I remember seeing Kurt pie something off that looked like some veg and some low ground. And it gave me a uncomfortable feeling and I remember hopping on my push to talk and saying, "Kurt, hold what you got." And I I I went down to him um and I'm like, "Hey, everything cool?" And yeah, I think everything's cool. I'm like, "All right, cool." But as he as he started taking off and going those last 40 or 50 meters to the objective, I pulled back to where he was pinging pying off at cuz I just had this this feeling that something wasn't right. But I think what I remember seeing was like a bit of an underground kind of bunker where there was a hanging light and I could have sworn I saw a chair and the only way to see it was to take another step down the terrain.

[00:01:04]I remember thinking, "Yep, I got blown up again." Because it was that same that same feeling that you get when you're in very very close proximity to that amount of over pressure. When that over pressure hits you, it to me it feels like there's there's a million a million needles that all of a sudden are going through every every square millimeter of your body. So when I got hit, I know that it must have flipped me up and, you know, flipped me around upside down and because when I landed, I landed back down on that slope. And when I came to the first thing I remember feeling was this new zone, this new spectrum of pain that I had never I never knew existed.

[00:01:58]Um I thought I knew what pain was up until that moment, but I didn't realize there's a whole other spectrum of it and I'm now kneedeep into it. I repeatedly kept calling out kind of the same thing, describing the objective, referring to that objective, and saying north side of the objective, suppressed north side of the objective. When you're in that kind of state, you like you just it's a bit confusing, but I figured, you know, there's got to be some other guys alive, and if they are, they need to be putting rounds on that target. And at first the intensity of my calls were, you know, amounted to not screaming but like yelling into the mic.

[00:02:46]And I was very cognizant that each and every time I I called out on the radio again, the energy it took to do that um was rapidly fading. There there's some phenomena I think that happens there on that line. You know, I call it the line between everything and nothing. You know, the line of departure.

[00:03:16]I don't think we're really meant to see what's on the other side. But over the past couple years, I've I've tried to go back and like make sense of what it was that I was experiencing in that moment.

[00:03:31]And I can't still there was seemed to be something that I caught a glimpse of a snapshot of.

[00:03:42]I I was about about out and and that's when I felt it. I felt the I felt the hand on my back, my kit, my carrying handle. And I just heard the words, "I got you, buddy."

[00:03:59]And I still remember the pain when he wrenched down on each tourniquet. It added to the nightmare level of pain that was going on through the whole body. And I remember this feeling of shame like like this isn't this wasn't supposed to be like this. It's like I was supposed to be able to take the pain and not compromise the other guys from screaming right next to all the bad guys. And I I remember feeling horrible about that. We we have some hero pilots in in that outfit. The thing that kept going um like a broken record was my kids.

[00:04:47]Sorry.

[00:04:50]It's like powerful images that uh run through your mind.

[00:05:00]Yeah.

[00:05:02]So, I kept seeing kept seeing my boys's face and my daughters like they're looking at me, you know, and that I had somehow failed.

[00:05:39]I think we were in the hospital for 2 months or a month and a half. I didn't know how long I had been there. Um, but I I knew things were bad. I took a little moment to just close my eyes and have that little conversation that we all have with ourselves, you know, in preparation of what you think you already know is is going on. And um you know, opened my eyes, looked down and just saw white bandages and no legs.

[00:06:18]It wasn't a surprise to see that, you know, it I wasn't shocked. Like I've seen that happen, you know, quite a few times. So seeing it um it was almost this immediate feeling that like yes, this is this is a challenge. This is going to be a challenge. And um and I accept it. Start living again. and I want to see my kids and they all came, you know, they all came to visit me and um both my exes came to. So I remember waking up remember waking up I opened my eyes and like first thing I saw was like first wife, second wife, Casey and they're all talking to each other and I I just remember closing my eyes and like like oh my god did they didn't see me.

[00:07:06]you know, I just closed my eyes and I'm like, "Oh my god, what am I going to say? These they're all together. Who knows what stories are they're cooking up and like there's going to be all kinds of like I was like, "Oh my god, well, hey, hey, I'm in a hospital. I'm missing both my legs. I think I can take this." So, you know, I opened my eyes back up and and it was amazing, man. Um for that period of time that I was in the hospital, everybody everybody put all differences aside and all my children came to my bedside. Um, I could see that, you know, there a bit a bit of fear about what had happened and that that gave me motivation as well to like to get out of that place and show them that like, hey man, they couldn't kill me and I'm still here and I'm still here to be your dad.