8 Seconds of Courage

by Flo Groberg

  Once again, my racing mind was interrupted by what seemed to be a person staring down at me. Suddenly, the hazy, long-haired figure spoke.

  “Hey man,” he said in a familiar voice. “We’re so proud of you.”

  Suddenly, my eyes stopped moving and met his. Hold on, is that who I think it is? No, it can’t be.

  I recognized the man’s face. He didn’t look like a doctor or nurse, but exactly like Jonathan Davis, the lead singer of Korn, the alternative, heavy-metal-type band that I’d been listening to since high school. Even in Afghanistan, I would listen to head-pounding songs like Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” to get fired up and focused before a mission.

  I started to smirk through the mask that was helping me breathe when I realized that I had to be hallucinating, much like the night I saw Mickey Mouse running next to me at Ranger School. Why the hell would the lead singer of one of my favorite bands be in my hospital room?

  Just as I started drifting back to sleep, the man spoke again.

  “What they told me you did over there was incredible,” he said. “You saved a lot of lives.”

  As soon as my eyes reopened, I asked him where I was.

  “You’re at Landstuhl [Regional Medical Center] in Germany,” he said. “The doctors and nurses here are taking good care of you.”

  His explanation made sense, which caused me to ponder the possibility that I wasn’t hallucinating after all. My eyes narrowed as I took another look at the guy’s face.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You look like the dude from Korn.”

  “You’re right, bro,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m Jonathan Davis.”

  Still not completely sure whether I was dreaming, I asked him why an American rock star was visiting me at an overseas military hospital. He said that Korn was on a USO tour to entertain American troops stationed abroad.

  After a five-minute conversation, I realized that the lead singer of Korn really was in my room. In addition to being an unlikely coincidence, I was greatly appreciative for Davis’s visit.

  “Take care, Flo,” Davis said upon leaving my room. “We’ll be rooting for you.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I said as loudly as my weak voice could manage.

  What I didn’t know at the time was that Davis’s paternal grandfather, who served in World War II, had lost a leg while fighting in Germany, the very country where we had just met. His mother’s father fought in the Pacific and miraculously survived the infamous Bataan Death March, which resulted in the tragic deaths of hundreds of American troops and thousands of Filipinos.

  While Davis might have been an intense performer and an eccentric celebrity, the heroism and postwar struggles of his grandfathers had made him a genuine supporter of our nation’s troops and veterans. Amid my confusion and throbbing pain, Korn’s lead singer managed to put a smile on my face.

  After spending the next minute or two thinking about how I couldn’t wait to tell my friends about meeting Jonathan Davis, my thoughts returned to the friends I had just lost on the battlefield. The pain—both emotional and physical—was overwhelming. At the same time, I was still trying to piece together how I ended up in Germany.

  Then my senses suddenly became overwhelmed by terrible smells of blood and burning flesh. Within seconds, my mind wandered back to the chaotic aftermath of the explosion two days earlier.

  • • •

  Never in my life had I felt so much pain as I unleashed a blood-curdling scream in the back of an Army M-ATV in Asadabad, Afghanistan. There were two separate backseats in the truck, which was not designed for evacuating casualties. My head was on the passenger’s side while my legs—one of which appeared to have a giant hole where the calf muscle was supposed to be—caused blood to pool all over the seat behind the driver.

  Luckily, the two soldiers responsible for taking me out of the city—Sergeants Jensen and McCain—were outside the truck when I yelled in agony. I was in shock when they carried me into the vehicle, propped me up on the two seats, and slammed the M-ATV’s huge door. Even though I was probably bleeding to death, I didn’t want anyone to think I was weak, especially after four good men had just been killed and many more wounded. I was glad that they didn’t hear me scream.

  Jensen would be the driver, with McCain acting as the TC, or truck commander. As soon they jumped into the M-ATV, though, McCain looked at me in the backseat and reacted with disgust.

  “What the hell, sir?” he said.

  “What?” I said through heavy breathing as blood and sweat poured from my body.

  “You’re bleeding all over my truck, sir!” he said.

  Even though I was in shock, I was nevertheless baffled by the soldier’s comment, which I perceived as inappropriate and insensitive. As my incredulity morphed into anger, I released a tirade of profanity directed at McCain.

  “Sir, you’re about to go home, get fed meals, and be able to go to McDonald’s,” McCain continued, undeterred by my anger. “We’re going to be here for the next three months smelling your blood in the back of our truck.”

  I couldn’t have realized it at the time, but McCain was intentionally riling me up to ensure that I would stay awake.

  “I don’t give a shit about your truck,” I yelled. “Give me water!”

  “No, sir,” Jensen chimed in. “They told us not to give you any water before surgery.”

  I had never been so thirsty in my life. My mouth was utterly dry, and I felt like without some water I would almost certainly die. The result was another steady stream of profanity; this time directed at my driver, who was just doing what he’d been told by our superiors.

  The drive from the blast site to Asadabad’s FOB Wright usually took about eight minutes. This one had already taken fifteen due to the many locals who had gathered to see the explosion’s aftermath, as well as Afghans going about their everyday business as lunchtime approached on a busy Wednesday morning. Frustrated, I ordered Jensen to drive faster.

  “Run all these trucks off the road if you have to!” I shouted.

  Fortunately, the two soldiers knew that I was in no state of mind to give a serious order.

  “We’re going as fast as we can,” Jensen said while managing to stay calm. “Hang on back there, sir.”

  After another five minutes or so, Jensen and McCain—who had succeeded in keeping me awake and diverting my attention from the searing pain—pulled me out of the truck headfirst. The M-ATV had arrived at FOB Wright’s field hospital, where doctors and nurses who had heard about the suicide bombing were waiting outside near the flight line where helicopters would usually land. Several nurses joined the two sergeants in helping me stand up on my right leg as the blood that was still gushing from my left caused puddles to form and bubble on the hot concrete.

  As soon as I stood up, I pulled a release latch on my vest that instantly disassembled my armor plate carrier. More blood splashed on the concrete as my heavy body armor fell to the ground and took me down with it. I didn’t have a single ounce of strength left, and if someone didn’t get me inside the field hospital soon, I was going to die.

  After pulling me up and helping me get back on one foot, Jensen, McCain, and the nurses teamed up to drag me out of the brutal summer heat and into the hospital, where I finally collapsed on an operating table. After bleeding nonstop for about an hour following the explosion, I still hadn’t been given a sip of water or received a single painkiller. The unrelenting combination of pain, thirst, and exhaustion was overwhelming.

  Everyone on the twenty-eight-man patrol except Sergeant Brink, who was the first to spot the suicide bomber stumbling toward us, had been wounded or killed in the massive explosion. I would find out later that there had actually been two blasts. There was another suicide bomber that no one in our patrol had noticed at the time. As it turned out, the first explosion had caused the second bomber’s vest to prematurely trigger. Other than blowing himself up, the second suicide bomber had caused minimal damage.

  The hos
pital was already full of victims from the powerful first blast, including another high-ranking member of our patrol, Army Colonel Daniel Walrath, who was unconscious. The colonel also suffered severe injuries to his left leg and was bleeding profusely. All of us were covered in dust and had suffered wounds all over our bodies from metal ball bearings and other shrapnel. Many of us, including me, also suffered concussions and damaged eardrums.

  My left pant leg and boot had already melted away, but the nurses still had to cut off what was left of my blood-soaked combat fatigues. I couldn’t have cared less about that, but when a nurse took a pair of shears to my right Army boot and started putting it in a trash bag with my uniform, I almost lost my mind.

  “Hey, what are you doing with that boot?” I said.

  “It has to go to the incinerator since it’s bloody,” she said.

  No way. That boot had made it all the way through Ranger School and two tours in Afghanistan, including the explosion that killed four of my brothers during my first day as a captain. I had always planned to keep my boots as a treasured memento, but now my only surviving boot had even more significance.

  “That’s my boot,” I said while trying to lift myself up off the stretcher. “Please give it back. Please!”

  As several nurses held me down, the supervising nurse calmly explained that she had no choice.

  “It’s Army protocol, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  I felt utterly defeated upon hearing that my boot could not be saved. As I watched a soldier quietly pick up the trash bag and take it outside, I felt like my entire US Army career would be incinerated along with it.

  After a few minutes, I finally received an IV and the anesthesia that would ease my mental and physical anguish while the nurses cleaned my wounds. When I blacked out, I truly did not care about my badly damaged left leg. All I could think about was that boot, and much more important, the great men who made the ultimate sacrifice during my last day wearing it.

  • • •

  When I woke up a few hours later, the situation was worse than a nightmare. I was aboard a helicopter headed back to Jalalabad, with the covered body of a fallen American soldier right next me. I quickly realized that it was Command Sergeant Major Kevin Griffin.

  I was too drugged up and confused to cry, but nevertheless I recognized that I was only inches away from a fellow soldier whom I had grown to deeply respect and revere. Lying next to the body of my mentor and friend was a devastating and dreadful scenario that I couldn’t believe was real.

  As a soldier serving in combat, impending peril often loomed. In my mind, the worst possible outcome of a suicide bombing or ambush was not losing your own life but failing to save the soldier next to you. As my eyes wandered up and down the blanket covering a true American hero, I was consumed by dejection and grief. I would have given anything to trade places with CSM Griffin, who had so bravely volunteered to put himself in harm’s way.

  I couldn’t feel anything—literally or figuratively—by the time we landed at FOB Fenty in Jalalabad. Upon arriving at the hospital, I was thankful to see Sergeant Mahoney, who had bravely slammed into the suicide bomber after I had made my final push. He was severely wounded, particularly on his arms and hands, but had somehow survived the blast. Mahoney and I were among nine soldiers whose military careers essentially ended on August 8, 2012.

  As the two soldiers closest to the first explosion, it was a miracle that we had both made it. Yet as Mahoney and I lay a few feet apart in hospital beds, I don’t think either of us felt lucky, knowing that four of our brothers were dead. Distraught, I fell back asleep while experiencing a profound sense of loss.

  • • •

  When I woke up, every soldier from the patrol who could walk and was not in surgery was in our room to see how Mahoney and I were doing. They were joined by many other friends I had made while stationed at FOB Fenty for the past six months. While grateful to see so many friendly faces, there was someone that I wanted to speak with who wasn’t in the room.

  “Where is the boss?” I asked. “I want to see Colonel Mingus.”

  A few minutes later, in walked the colonel, who was already back on his feet after suffering a concussion. After so much misery in the hours following the attack, knowing once and for all that the boss had survived was an emotional moment.

  At the same time, I was still a soldier. I wanted Colonel Mingus to know that I was ready for my next set of orders.

  “Please don’t let them send me home, sir,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, Flo . . . you did your part,” he said. “You’re getting out of here.”

  That was my last memory from the short stay at FOB Fenty’s hospital. By the time I saw the colonel, the drugs had really kicked in. The next time I was conscious, I had been flown about seventy-five miles west to Kabul, where I would be cared for at the much larger Bagram Airfield.

  By this point, which I think was about twelve hours after the explosion, the blowtorch-like pain had returned. The intense burning caused me to yell at a nurse as she tried to wrap my left leg, which I was seeing for the first time in good lighting. The hole was substantial, and as I suspected, what remained of my calf muscle was a mangled mess. My left foot was also covered with blood and bruises, and riddled with metallic shards.

  A few hours later, a general and several other high-ranking soldiers came into my room. After seeing how I was doing, the general approached my bed with something in his hand. Just as I began dozing back to sleep, he pinned a Purple Heart to my hospital gown.

  • • •

  My blackouts continued, and the next time I woke up, I was in a room with about twenty wounded service members. In addition to Purple Hearts, each of us had been given iPads connected to Wi-Fi, which allowed us to access email and Facebook.

  In a somewhat comical scene, twenty guys under the influence of heavy painkillers were busy having online chats with perplexed family and friends back home. Even though I have no memory of what the heck I said during Facebook chats that day, I was able to inform several people—including Army buddies who had heard about the attack—that I had survived.

  In North Carolina, where my parents had recently moved, the two most important people in my life didn’t even know that I had been hit.

  A few minutes later, someone handed me a cell phone.

  “Call your family, Lieutenant,” a soldier said.

  “Mom?” I said a few moments later.

  “Hey, Flo,” she said in a happy tone. “How are you?”

  “Okay listen, I don’t want you to freak out, because I’m alive,” I said. “But I got hit.”

  “What?” she screamed, shouting to my father that I had been injured.

  “Mom . . . it’s fine,” I said while preparing to hang up. “I might lose my leg, but I’ll be home in a few days . . . don’t worry.”

  Click. My drug-induced mind prevented me from comprehending how much the news—and our conversation’s abrupt conclusion—would terrify my mother, who proceeded to make about two hundred phone calls to find out where I was and what had really happened.

  After spending the night at Bagram, I was put on that giant C-17 bound for Germany.

  • • •

  The day after my unlikely encounter with Jonathan Davis of Korn, now the third day since the explosion, I woke up to a wonderful surprise. My cousins, Anthony, Thomas, and Alexandra Stein, had made the long drive to Germany from France to see me. Even while I was hopped up on medication, their five-hour visit meant the world, and put another big smile on my face.

  After a few blood transfusions later in the day, my smile began to fade when a surgeon entered my room with grim news.

  “Look, I’m going to be real with you,” the doctor said. “You’re having surgery tonight, and when you wake up, there’s a seventy-five percent chance that your left leg will be gone.”

  Instead of panicking, I simply shrugged my shoulders and thanked the physician for his candor. Compared to
the sudden, crushing grief that had been sprung on the Griffin, Kennedy, Gray, and Abdelfattah families, the fate of my leg meant nothing.

  When the doctors put me to sleep to operate that night, I was at peace with my leg being amputated. To be completely honest, I didn’t care.

  • • •

  Surprisingly, my leg was still attached when I awoke on day four. While doctors would continue trying to save it when I got back to the United States, the likelihood of losing my leg or foot due to infection would remain high.

  My next journey was to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where you will often see Air Force One take off and land. During the long flight, I stayed awake long enough to start writing letters apologizing to the loved ones of those killed and wounded in Asadabad. Since I was in charge of security, I felt responsible for each death and injury. If only my eight-second sprint could have been faster, I thought.

  When I was wheeled off the plane at Andrews, a colonel directed half the wounded service members to a bus bound for the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Maryland. The other half stayed in the airplane to be flown to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

  I was told to remain on the airplane, which confused me. The colonel must have been mistaken, I thought, because he didn’t seem to realize that I was supposed to be sent to Maryland, where my mom and dad were waiting.

  “Sir, with all due respect, I need to be on the bus headed to Walter Reed,” I told the colonel.

  “Negative, Lieutenant,” said the colonel.

  “But sir, I am from here,” I pleaded, referring to the Washington, D.C., area. “My family drove up from North Carolina and they are at the hospital.”

  “Son, your unit is based in Colorado,” he said, referencing Fort Carson. “That means you go down to Texas.”

  My boss, Colonel Mingus, had stayed in Afghanistan and in fact was already back on the battlefield by the time I returned to Maryland. The other colonel wounded in the attack, Colonel Walrath, was on the same C-17 flight as me. Because such a high-ranking officer was among the wounded, the commander of the Special Operations Command, Admiral William McRaven, was there to greet Colonel Walrath as soon as we landed.