152: What if you were a human shield? 53:23

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My happiness or this fake face I was putting on for everybody was my only sense of normality when my whole life has already changed. I didn't want to admit that stuff was wrong, and I did it in such a convincing way that the majority of people believed me. Welcome to the Permatemp Corporation, a presentation of the audio podcast, This Is Actually Happening. Episode 152, What If You Were a Human Shield?

This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24/7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. I had a fairly rough childhood. My mom was on drugs a lot, so it was very hard for me to do anything. She didn't really notice us too much.

Like, our electricity would continuously go out because the bill wasn't being paid. I don't know what drug specifically she was on, I never asked, but she slept a lot. A whole lot. I thought that she died a couple times. I called my grandparents, told them that she's been sleeping all day, but she always woke up. She was just high. So much to the point when I was eight, I moved to my grandma's house and she took me in, took care of me, but it was eight months before my mom even knew I was gone.

When I moved in with my grandma, a lot of that changed. We had consistent electricity. She was always taking care of me. Anytime I needed clothes, I'd get clothes, shoes. My grandma was a wonderful lady that helped raise me. She was absolutely amazing. Both my parents were on drugs at different points, but I know that my dad left when I was seven or eight. He went through a rough time, but has since done unbelievable for himself.

I always sought my dad's approval on things, and that never changed even after I moved to my grandma's house because I wouldn't see him for years at a time. Then he would come back into the picture, and I'd be really excited to see him, and then I wouldn't see him again for six months, eight months, a year. Like I said, during that time, he was rebuilding his life, so I understand why he wasn't in mind too much. It didn't mean it didn't hurt. It hurt a lot, but I understood why he had to.

I never really got what I wanted from my mom emotionally. I got that from my grandma a lot more than I did my actual mom. But we've been trying to like rebuild our relationship lately. It's been a lot rougher than rebuilding with my dad, for sure. I was always a mama's boy when I was younger. And I guess, you know, seeing her on drugs all the time and moving to my grandma's house really like hurt our relationship more than it hurt the relationship with my dad when he left.

Cheryl and Jim are, were the parents of my best friend as a kid. And he's still my best friend now, but they helped raise me as well as my grandma. Any support I needed from a father figure, Jim was able to provide it. Any support I needed from a mother figure that my grandma just wasn't able to provide, Cheryl was able to provide.

Taught me the difference between right and wrong. Anytime I got into a fight at school or got in trouble, Cheryl was always there to tell me that what I did was wrong. My high school years were a lot more stable. I was coming into my own, living with my grandma and doing the different sports I did, track and football, basketball.

My grandma took me to every single practice without complaining. She went to every game, whether it was an away game, a home game. And that really helped keep my mind off of everything else going on with my family. I was able to focus on sports, put all my energy into sports. I didn't get in trouble one day in high school compared to being in trouble almost every day in elementary school.

I really got into computers in high school. I was the computer administrator's assistant at my school all four years. That was a lot of fun. When I was 13 years old, I joined a youth organization called D-Malay. It's the youth group to the Freemasons. And that helped a lot too. Like we went to dances, we went out of town to different lodges or different chapters to their meetings. Went all across the state.

which was really nice and really cool because I made a lot of friends in different cities. They helped me forgive my parents a lot because when I joined, my mom actually, believe it or not, got me into it. It was one of the best things that she ever did for me ever in her life. My interest in the military started when I was young. I saw old pictures of my dad in his army uniform and I wanted more than anything to be in the army and be in the military as well.

I got real serious into joining when I was probably about 13 years old. I started researching the different branches, researching the different jobs within the branches and see what fit my personality most.

When I was 17, a friend of mine was joining the military under their early enlistment program for the army. And we got a really good deal if we joined at the same time, we can go through the same basic training. However, he got hurt in basic training and had to effectively retire. And I continued on with my career. I fell in love with the military and that way of life and got addicted to it really.

When I was going through basic training, I never had doubts, nor AAT. I never had doubts on my career in the military. I was very excited about it, very excited for the future. I started having doubts when I went into the reserves and I worked for Apple. I was content with my job at Apple. Apple was a very good company to work for. It just, it wasn't for me.

But it was for me enough to where I was content and worried that the military life wasn't for me. That maybe I should settle down, you know, get a place, an apartment, get a house and like try to set roots. But after a year, year and a half of doing that, being in the reserves, I hated it. And then my grandma passed away during that time as well.

My grandma was my world for a very, very long time. She died when I was 19, but I never really recovered. So I was really looking for an escape to get out of the United States to get away from everybody I knew in a way to get away from everything, my life. So that actually led me to going to Guantanamo Bay as a prison guard for a year. The deployment to Guantanamo Bay came up in 2013, and

I think I left in May 13, came back in May 14, and I heard about it like the last day of April. And I had literally a single day to respond. I've known about Guantanamo Bay for a long time. Before we had a prison there, it was an active duty base in Cuba. There's a golf course. There's sailing, diving. I got my intermediate and advanced diving certs there with open water, wreck diving, cave dive.

There's a movie theater, outdoor movie theater. It's beautiful. There's a couple bars. It was a very relaxing place except working in the prison. Working in the prison was so unbelievably stressful. I had no idea, no idea going into it. You know, I'm trained to do the job. It'll be fine. But it was unbelievably stressful.

The actual prison they had there was beautiful. It was modeled after a prison that's in Houston. Like think of Orange is the New Black and that is very similar to how theirs is like their common area. And then they all have individual rooms. They never had a bunk with anybody. The hours weren't so bad. It was 12 on 12 off. So I mean, normal hours. It really was just the job.

because of what happened in the beginning years of Guantanamo where they had that really unkept prison, that awful, awful outdoors prison. And

And what happened in Iraq with those infantry guys when they're watching the prison guards, how they had them like do the pyramid naked and stuff like that. We were under a lot of scrutiny. If you laughed at the wrong joke that they said, you would get questioned by the FBI. And I'm talking about laughing, not making the joke, just laughing at the joke. If it's an inappropriate joke that you shouldn't be laughing at and you laughed, guaranteed questioned by the FBI.

Everything we did was watched. They didn't want any prisoner abuse at all. Even defending ourselves when they would throw poop on us and other feces and bodily fluids, all we could do is defend ourselves in a non-violent way. So if they're throwing it out the door handle where we put in food, all we could do is shut the door handle as quickly as possible without injuring the detainee.

If they had their hand, like, wrapped around it, and you slammed up and broke their hand, there's a very good chance that you would get your rank taken away and you would get in a lot of trouble. Even though they're attacking you because of what everybody else has done in the past. The feces being thrown around, after a while you just get numb to it, unless you're not in, like, gear to soak it up. So if it gets thrown onto your clothes, that kind of, that's annoying.

There are some detainees that were picked up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe they were with their uncle or father or something. They weren't doing anything wrong when they got arrested, but they also as well got taken until they can get proven innocent. So those detainees are really, really good. Really good people. But the other guys...

There's one detainee that had over 800 kills by chemical warfare and you had to walk him to the bathroom. You had to walk, get his food for him. And he made you know that you served him.

There are so many other detainees like that. There is a few that was released under some plan. One of the detainees that was released had quite a few hundred confirmed kills under his belt and he was still released. Back to start doing whatever he did and he did start doing it again. It's just dealing with people that are like that, the select few that are, was very, very stressful.

So when I was in Guantanamo Bay, I applied for a position that allows reserve active duty and National Guard members to apply for open positions on deployments. I found out two weeks before leaving Guantanamo Bay that I got the position. It was the best email I've ever gotten in my life. I'd much rather go to Afghanistan any day, any day, than spend another day as a prison guard in Guantanamo Bay.

I had two weeks to get all my affairs in order. I slept at Jim and Cheryl's house in their sped bedroom, which was nice. And I just hung out with my friends and lived it up. Party every night, went out with my buddies and stuff just in case because I know how Afghanistan is. It's very, very intense.

I knew I was working for USACE, the United States Army Corps of Engineers, as a PSD op. I just didn't know where in Afghanistan I was going. A PSD is a personal security detachment personnel. Anybody that USACE sends along, whether they're a civilian ranked individual or a military ranked person. If USACE sends them along for our protection in our zone, we would protect them and they are our primary objective to make sure that they stay alive. So we call them primaries.

As a PSD Husky, that was our team name, we were in charge of moving USACE personnel from job site to job site so they can check it out, check on the locals. And our area of operation was all of Kabul plus everything north of it. Our group was specifically in charge of driving the engineers to the furthest out sites that could take a couple hours sometimes to get there.

We're there as bodyguards, kind of like how celebrities nowadays hire bodyguards to walk around with them. That's basically what we were there for. Typically, it was very uneventful. We made sure that they got there safely, that they toured the site safely. When they were surrounded by locals, we made sure that the locals weren't going to try anything. And if they did, we were there to stop them. Luckily, we never had issues from locals.

One job of the PSD member is to go into a building before the main party comes in and check the rooms that they're going to go into to make sure there is no ambush waiting or anybody there that's not supposed to be there. We're hired to make sure that the primary stays alive.

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The day of August 5th, 2014 started out as any normal day. I woke up at 05:30 in the morning, went to the gym, ate breakfast, and showed up to my duty station at 08:00 like normal. I sat down and I was actually going to take out my side plates because most of all other PSD do that because it's so hard to get in and out of the vehicle otherwise.

and I actually got lazy. I decided to take a phone call instead of doing that because it would take about 10 or 15 minutes to get the side plates out and I had about 10 or 15 minutes so I wanted to make a phone call before I left instead of taking them out. I was like, I'll take them out tomorrow. It's not a big deal. You know, the mission started just like everything else. The team leader told us it was a pretty big one that day. A lot of different countries, a lot of different primaries.

We visited this base quite often, actually. Andu, the Afghan National Defense University, we visited quite often. Everything went well for the first few hours of the mission.

When we got there, we were ordered to downgrade all our gear and take off our vests and everything. Which, luckily, my team leader was very not cool about. Made it known that PSD, we should always be ready just in case something happened. Not that anything was going to happen, but just in case it did, we should have our weapons and our armor on us. So they made a compromise and we took off our ACH, our helmets.

Because Afghan National Defense University was ran by the Afghan army. So they didn't want us to make them think we didn't trust them. The first two locations went perfectly fine. The third location is actually where things got a little hairy.

I asked another PSD group from another country, I can't remember exactly which one, if they were going to check the building directly in front of us, or if they wanted me to go in and check it real quick before catching up on the primaries. Because, I mean, even though the Afghan army checked everything, it's always good to double check. At least you have eyes on it, you know for a fact it's clear. They said that they would get it, that it wouldn't be a problem, that they're setting people up on the top anyways. I was like, alright, dope. They never actually checked it? No.

Not really sure what happened, but nobody ended up checking that building or that bathroom. I caught up with my primaries and they went underground to check some water thing that they're building down there. I'm not an engineer. I'm not really sure. Outside the walls, I was very aware of the protests that were going on, not necessarily for us, but they were going on for something else. So there's a bunch of people marching down the road protesting. So I was very aware of that.

but I was not aware of anything going on inside the walls. However, there was more people there that day than was originally expected by the people that were putting on this tour. So they couldn't stay underground to do their presentation because there's too many people. So they had to do it upstairs, which we were not expecting. We all planned for everything to be underground and only PSD to be upstairs in this open field.

So while this was going on, I was keeping a watchful eye. I had my weapon on fire. I didn't have, I had around in the chamber, like I was very ready for something to go on just in case the protest turned ugly.

And we had a gate that literally led right out to the outside. And the only person there was an Afghan soldier with his weapon. So I had my eye on him to make sure nothing was going wrong. And as soon as I turned to go walk around the back of everybody to get a better look at the guy, I got shot in the shoulder by the ambusher, the actual assassin inside the bathroom. Knocked me down, knocked me out. I woke up. I thought we were getting mortared. So I threw my hands above my head and realized I couldn't use my left arm.

So I looked at my shoulder and it was my whole arm was mangled a different way. So I knew I got shot in the shoulder. My very first thoughts after getting shot was, oh, my God, my primaries, my guys, getting them out was the only thing I was thinking about. Only thing once they were safe. Then I started looking around. I saw General Green on the ground. Come to find out later he was killed.

And then I saw the other guy kneeling down and I saw nobody around him. So the next thought in my mind was get everybody out of the firing zone as I can, then return fire. So I jumped up, ran over to the guys right in front of me, told them to run. They ran and got behind cover. I turned around, returned fire with my rifle. Three rounds went out, it jammed.

Then I ran over to get another primary, another PSD's primary. He was kneeling on the ground. It turned out to be a British colonel. I ran over to get him, but I got shot in the leg on the way over and on the back. So I went down. He got behind me. I pulled out my 9mm and I started returning fire. And then the shooter, I guess, apparently saw me shooting at him.

So he started aiming right at me and got me wide a few more times. Two more times in the right leg, once through the left foot, once in the elbow that came through my left forearm, and then one, two, three more times in the vest. If I didn't have my vest on, it would have been deadly.

But what's even more miraculous is if I would have taken the side plate out like I wanted to in that morning, I would have been killed in some of the first rounds because it was a direct hit to my side plate. As soon as I got shot in the leg and I sat up and I told the dude to get behind me, I was more or less a shield, a tank taking the rounds in the brunt of the force. I figured if he wastes time shooting me, then somebody else can kill him.

And then I might die, but nobody else will. And it turned out it was not only him, but two other people, another British soldier and an American that got behind me. So I had three people behind me that I was blocking bullets for when I was getting shot.

So I was returning fire and it was the weirdest, weirdest thing in the world because I'd feel the rounds hit me. And it was like I was in a boxing match again. And every time I got punched in the face and like kind of took a step back was how it felt when I got shot. Like I got shot and then I had to re-center myself before returning fire.

The only thing I could see when I was returning fire was his muzzle flashes coming at me. I couldn't see anything else. I was very blurry. I could barely even see the aiming point on my pistol. It got to the point at the end where I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't see anything outside of that window. So I just raised my pistol and I looked and put my arm as far forward as possible and I returned fire.

After the shooter got killed, I noticed that the firing stopped coming from the window and I laid back. When I laid down after getting shot and after the firefight ended, it was very much a sense of calm. I knew that I was going to die. I had nothing going through my head except, you know, oh, hey, I'm going to die. It's okay. I started hearing birds chirping. And I was thinking to myself, like,

Alright, well, my time's up. This isn't a terrible place to die, at least I'm dying on grass. Because I was on a little piece of grass, which was the only... One of the only pieces of grass in the whole field. Most of it was dirt. I was like, this isn't so bad. It felt like it went on forever. Laying there, staring at the sky. It was nice. It was very nice. I was not in physical pain when I was laying down. I was...

I didn't feel anything at all. Everything was just numb. I felt okay. Like I felt like I did what I needed to do and that I feel good about what I did. I didn't regret anything. Nothing else really was going through my mind. I was assessing my situation, where I was at, what was going on, what my future is about to be. Okay, I'm dying. I know that, but not quickly. So I was more or less preparing myself for whatever comes next.

Right when I was thinking that my team leader or my squad leader comes up and smacks me hard in the face. Oh, man, I've never been hit so hard in my life. He smacked me hard in the face to wake me up to like get my senses back. And then he asked me where I got shot at what's going on. And I told him my shoulder, my leg, my hand, like I can't use my left arm. I got shot in the leg.

He threw a tourniquet on my leg. He put a bandage on my shoulder. The doctor said if he was 10 seconds later, he would have been too late to save me. So he saved my life. My primaries, they both made it out alive and fine. The guys I was protecting while sitting in front of, from the best of my knowledge, they made it out fine, but I don't really know who they were. One of them was Colonel Tom.

from the English Corps of Engineers. And he helped my team leader get me situated and like save me, which was nice. It was, I took rounds for him. He saved my life. It wasn't until I actually got into the med vac vehicle when my adrenaline started dropping a little bit that I started feeling the pain.

After I got into the med vac vehicle, the tunnel vision ended, which was nice because I was fully aware of my senses. But my heart did stop multiple times. My heart ended up stopping three times before getting to that mash tent, which is only a five minute drive. Every time my heart stopped, they would bang on my chest to get it back up and running. And I heard everything.

This was the longest drive of my life. It was super bumpy because the vehicle had to go over some very bad terrain because the roads have not been built yet. So they're blowing through the checkpoints and they're going as fast as they could over uneven terrain. So I was bumping all over the place, all over the place. The pain was unbelievable.

I was fighting my best to stay alive. Like I didn't want to die. Even when I was laying down, I didn't want to die. I was just accepting what I thought was an inevitability. And now I was shown that like, I can live, I'm getting help. Like all I have to do is just hang on and fight. And that's what I did. Every time my heart stopped and I could hear him like, oh, he's gone again, he's gone again. And hear him banging down. Like I tried my best to open my eyes.

And every time I felt like I was like wanting to go to sleep, I would say something like, hey, hey, hey, help, help, help, help, help. And then it would happen and then I would have to try to open my eyes again. But like I fought really, really hard, really hard. Like I started thinking about all the different movies I saw, oddly enough.

I mean, they don't teach, the military doesn't teach you how to, like, survive after you've been shot. And my understanding before this point is either I'm going to come back perfectly fine or I'm going to come back dead. Like, there was no in-between. There was no, like, surviving while losing blood type of thing. Because you can't train for that. It's just, it's instinct.

So I started thinking back to like all the different movies I watched where people were getting shot and like people were helping them. All the different like doctor movies and stuff where they're like, stay awake, stay with me. And I was like, okay, I got to stay awake. I got to stay with him. Like that's how I'm going to, I got to, I got to be conscious. Like I got to breathe. I got to remember to breathe.

We pull up to Camp Karga and they throw me onto a stretcher and get me inside the mash tent. They pumped me full of, it was some sort of pain reliever. It worked really, really well. But it made me too relaxed on the helicopter ride over, which stopped my heart a couple times, which was not good. I still didn't know if I was going to die or not.

the medics they got me stabilized enough for a flight from karga to bath the bagram air force base i went straight into surgery and the last thing i remember before being put under was the surgeon saying don't worry and if i'm missing a piece or two when i wake up he's just adding it to his collection i woke up because he put me under right then and i woke up a few hours later or the next day

Time, time after I got shot is all kinds of screwy. But I woke up, I was very, very, very high from the medicine still. I had both arms, both legs. I had all my fingers and toes. And the nurse came in to give...

like to give me the phone so I can make a phone call, right? Like inform my family what's going on. And I couldn't understand the numbers. Like I didn't know what like the numbers meant. It was weird. It couldn't dial, couldn't call. So my nurse called my mom and dad. I told them what happened. They called Jim and Cheryl.

After that, I got interviewed by a lot of people, all the different branches. Some when I was very, very high and I had no idea what was going on, let alone what just happened. That actually got me in a lot of trouble later on because I was talking about purple elephants and people holding me up. It was weird. It was just like I read the transcript of what they said I said, and it was just the weirdest thing.

Most of the information I have is from other people that were there because my memory is affected really, really badly from being shot and all the adrenaline and the blood loss. The doctor said I did a brain dump. Apparently that's a thing where the brain is in like, oh shit, oh shit, crisis mode. Like my body is about to die. I got to do what I can to make sure that the basic functions are still working and

So that's why I couldn't use the phone when I first woke up. My brain literally just dumped all information. For instance, I knew three coding languages before I got shot. I learned them in when I was in Bahrain. I learned them in when I was in Guantanamo Bay because I wanted to code. That was like what I wanted to do. Since I've woken up, since I've gotten shot, I don't remember anything. Like I recognize what's in there, but I can't write it anymore.

I was shot, from what I've been told, 11 times. Twice in the chest, once in the abdomen, once in the side, once in the back, all taken up by my vest, thank God. Three times in my right leg, once in my left foot, once in my forearm, once in my shoulder. And those all consisted of a mix between ricochet, direct hits, and hits that went through me and hit somebody else.

Turns out that I lost part of my bone in my right shin. It fell out in the vehicle that took me to the mash tent. The driver of the vehicle hit me up a few weeks later saying they found my bone. Everybody thought I was going to lose my arm and my leg. And I got, I came to terms with that. I was like, okay, I'll lose my arm and my leg, but I'm alive. So I'm, I'm, I'm okay with that. I put on a very good face, a very good face.

I was smiling in all my pictures. Everybody thinks I'm so happy and just so relieved to be alive. That wasn't really the case. I was scared, more scared than I've ever been in my life. But I figured if I gave in to my fear, then everything in the world is going to be awful. But if I smile and have a good time about it, then it's not as bad.

I had my whole PSD unit come, had guys that I served with my whole career that just happened to be in Afghanistan at the same time, talk to their commanders and get special permission to take a convoy down to see me. Even now, it gives me goosebumps seeing their faces because I never thought I would see them again. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they're walking into my hospital room and they're stationed on the other side of Afghanistan.

The generals that were in the attack as well, the Afghan generals that were getting shot at with us, they came in to say hi. And nobody else that got wounded wanted to give them the time of day. Nobody said hi. Nobody would talk to them or even look at them. I told them I was sorry about the attack and that I couldn't do more than what I did.

One of the generals started crying because he was super sorry the soldier was under his command. So he felt like he let us down. And I told him it wasn't his fault that he can't control everybody under his command. It blew me away. This wasn't their fault. They were getting shot at with us. But everybody blames them. It makes no sense. No sense at all. My primaries made it out perfectly fine.

One of them sent me a wallet from, as a thank you gift, is the same wallet from Pulp Fiction, the bad mofo wallet. And another guy sent me drawings that his kids did to thank me for what I did, which was super tear jerking.

I was supposed to be going to Texas after going to Germany for a few days because I had to go to Germany to get surgery to be stabilized for the flight home because the flight to Germany was only six hours I think but the flight home was like 12 or 18 hours so it was a big difference away from the doctors in case something goes wrong. The whole time after I got shot before going to Germany everybody else was really scared around me. Everybody else was crying or like everybody was really angry

And I was angry too. And I was scared. More scared than my whole life. I was super angry at that guy. I was super, super angry at myself. I blamed myself for the whole thing. I thought that I caused this whole thing because I didn't check that room. Like not checking that building stuck with me. It was pretty much the only thing I thought about when people weren't around.

When people were around, I was too busy putting on like a happy face and smiling and talking with everybody. When I was alone, all I could think about was not checking that room and how I killed the general and how everybody in here is here because I screwed up my job. My job was to protect my people. That was my sole job, protect my people. I had one job to do and I didn't do it.

Because I didn't double check when I had the gut feeling to double check. Like I had a feeling like I should go in there and check that. I should do that. I should do that. Why aren't I doing that? Like this was my fault. If I had a little bit more work ethic, a little bit more professionalism for my job, I would have gone on there, found the shooter, probably would have been hurt all the same, maybe even died, but the shooter would have been done and nobody else would have got hurt.

Every single time I closed my eyes, that's all I thought about. Every time I went to sleep, that's all I dreamt about. Every time that I didn't have someone else there, that's all I thought about. So that's literally all I did was stew and stare at all the people that got hurt because of something I blamed myself on. So I was surrounded by what I thought of at the time was my victims because of my incompetence and my stupidity.

This hospital room was a joint room, so everybody that was in the attack was in this one room. And then all day just staring at these other people crying, staring at this guy who can't walk ever again, this lady who's probably going to lose her leg, the general who I saw dead on the floor, and it took a while to get over. Every day, I wish I would have died in that field for a long time.

I started having night terrors. Had them just about every single night from that point on for a long time. Awful, awful PTSD. The night terrors every night were different but of the same subject. One of my reoccurring night terrors, I was standing there, everybody that was wounded

was laying around me screaming for help and then everybody was dead. Not even the people who were just wounded but everybody in my unit, everybody I've ever known were dead laying all around. And then like I was covered in blood. I'd never seen a picture of the shooter so he was just some random random guy. Would step out and then I would see him over there laughing

That was just one of the dreams that I had. And they're all variations of me being fine when everybody else is hurt or dead. It was crippling. It was nice seeing the overwhelming support I got from my brothers and sisters in the military. That was really, really cool. But I mean, it was all like shadowed, you know? You can host the best backyard barbecue.

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Germany was really, it was a quick trip. I never had, I didn't have any issues going over on the plane. I slept the whole time. They gave me some sleeping pill, which is nice. But I went through a few surgeries. They sent all my, all the surgery information, all that stuff to Cheryl. She was on top of everything. Anything and everything that happened, she knew exactly what was going on. Because I think she wanted to be prepared for when I got back in the States.

Germany was really, really hard on me mentally. It was more of just the same of what was going on in Afghanistan, just the night terrors every night. I was by myself pretty much the whole time, so it was very hard to escape when people came through. I didn't have that escape like I did in Afghanistan, but I also didn't have everybody in the same dang room with me, so I didn't have to stare in their faces every day.

My PTSD was getting worse. The night terrors were the same, but I started jumping a lot more. I started being fearful of anybody that I didn't know. If there was a new nurse or anybody else, I had no clue about them. I always was skeptical and fearful. I didn't know if they were going to try to hurt me, which was totally illogical and not going to happen. But at that time when I was just...

hurt by someone who was supposed to be on my side. It was very hard for me not to think about that. I dwelled on how would I defend myself if somebody did try to come in and hurt me. There was no good way I could. I was bedridden. So like that was all very, very hard going from being able to instruct boxing on the base to not being able to defend myself if somebody wanted to, you know, smother me, for instance. Like I wasn't strong enough to even stop that.

you know, happy-go-lucky, like I can pretty much defend myself in any situation, so I'm not afraid of any situation, to I can't defend myself even against a kid, so now I'm literally afraid of every single situation. I was a warrior, and now I am crippled.

Before I got wounded, I thought of myself as a warrior, as a soldier, and not just one that is only in for a couple years. I was a lifer at this point. I wanted to be in forever. That's how I viewed myself. I am a soldier. I'm a warrior. I can surpass anything. And if I die in battle, then I die honorably. I never even thought about the whole being wounded aspect.

So after I got wounded, all that was gone. I'm done. I'm useless. Now I'm just a bag of meat hanging around. I'm worthless that, you know, they're helping take care of me mainly just because I'm still a sentient being and I'm alive. But realistically, I don't offer anything else because my whole adult life is

From the time I'm 17 to when I got shot at 24 is it's all being a warrior, all being a soldier. And now it's like all my training in my whole adult life is for nothing. And I have to start over and nothing transfers in my state. So I'm nothing.

I went from Germany to DC and I was supposed to go to Texas and Jim and Cheryl was told I was going to Texas and they had all their plans and everything for that. But one of the privates that was helping me onto the cot, there's four people because I'm the, I'm, I was a pretty big dude. I was really buff. I was about 220 pounds with about five to 10% body fat.

One of the privates that was lifting me up dropped me onto my shoulder. I just got shot in. So dislocated all the surgery that they did in Germany and screwed everything up. So they rushed me emergency to the Walter Reed hospital. And when I got there, I met my surgeon. He was an amazing man. He was about to retire. He actually extended his retirement to handle my surgeries and stuff like that to see me through recovery.

They ended up keeping me in Washington, D.C., and they put me through an experimental surgery on both my leg and my arm that he was developing that ended up saving my arm and my leg from being amputated. My leg and my arm are both in medical journals now. Jim and Cheryl came over immediately. They came immediately to take care of me, which I was not the best mind to

At the time, they went with me every day to physical therapy. They helped with my memory with all the visitors. When I started getting overwhelmed, they really, really stepped up in a huge, huge way, huge way more than I could ever really like ask for. They're amazing people.

So my PTSD symptoms were not well known with Jim and Cheryl. I hid it from them very, very well, as most veterans do. And I felt like my happiness or this fake face I was putting on for everybody was my only sense of normality when my whole life has already changed.

I didn't want to admit that stuff was wrong. So even though they made me talk to therapists and stuff, none of it helped because I lied. To all the therapists, I lied to Jim and Cheryl, I lied to everybody. And I did it in such a convincing way that the majority of people believed me.

It actually wasn't until a couple years later when I found a therapist that called me on lying and he knew I was lying because he's been in scenarios like that so he knows exactly what I was going through and he knew the lies I was telling because he told them himself.

So after I met him, that's when I really started getting better. But for the few years before that, until I met him, it was lying every day, having nightmares every single night, hating myself, wishing I was dead. It was awful. I had bad anger issues because of it. Bad anger issues.

My memory was all kinds of Huey. I was on so much drugs that they weren't sure if it was the TBI because I had a TBI from the blood loss or if it was the amount of drugs pumping through my system. But I would forget what I had for breakfast at lunchtime.

let alone stuff that I've known forever. It's only the stuff that really stuck with me as like automatic that really like stayed. Like being able to draw my weapon, all my maneuvers, that stuff is all like muscle memory. So I remembered how to do all that. But other things like math, I didn't really know how to do. I couldn't read anymore. Like I could read the words, but I can only read like a sentence or two before forgetting what I just read.

So I'd have to reread the same paragraph over and over and over again. I couldn't concentrate on anything at all. Anytime I'd watch a TV show, I would have to rewatch it multiple times, like same episode. I would always forget like halfway through that I'm watching a show, which was so, so annoying.

I couldn't drive in cars at all. I would go in a car, we'd get a block down the road and I'd be puking into a bag. My nightmares were so awful that they gave me medicine to get rid of my nightmares. But those medicines had side effects. If I do sleep, I shake all night from the side effects. So I had to stop taking those. So my nightmares came back.

One night, the pain got so terrible that they had to give me so much pain meds that I stopped breathing. I had a hard time. Anytime Jim and Cheryl wanted to go out to dinner or something, I had the worst anxiety of the world about being left alone. It was the worst. I dreaded it every day. It was scary, unbelievably scary. They're humans. They obviously need to go sleep. They need to go shower, go eat, and stuff like that.

But in that time period, like I didn't want them to ever leave like a child. That's so that's needs their mommy and daddy. It was very much like that. There's a lot of anxiety period with when I was going on from everything from the cognitive issues to being left alone, to lying to everybody about my PTSD, trying to keep up that lie was awful.

Because I would always have to be happy anytime anybody was around when I was never happy at any time ever. Oh god, I got so many visitors, way more than anybody else because of what I did. But every time I got a new senator, every time I got a new congressman coming and visiting me, it was awful. Like, it was awesome meeting them and the cool people. They're really nice people, but it was awful because everybody was calling me a hero. And at that time, like, I blamed myself for the attack.

So, essentially in my mind, they're calling me a hero for something I caused. And in my mind it didn't make sense and it made me angry and it made me hate myself even more. And it made me hate all the awards and all the little accolades and all the, you know, coins and everything everybody was giving me. Like, I wasn't mad at the people giving me the awards by any stretch of the imagination. And I was honored to receive the awards. I just didn't believe I deserved them.

One of the things I did is I was dating someone at the time and I pushed them away as soon as I got shot because I didn't want them to see me. The person they known was gone and dead. That's still true. The person I was before the attack is dead. The person I am now is a completely different person and the person that they were dating was gone. So I pushed them away. I left them.

I gave them no excuse why and I felt awful about it, but I felt like that's what I needed to do because I didn't want anybody to get close. I didn't have a choice with Jim and Cheryl. I needed them. I needed to be close to them. But everybody else, if I could push them away, I did. I wasn't strong-willed. I wasn't smart. I didn't want to be around people if I didn't have to be. I was just, I was a completely different person.

And then now, even today, I've gotten some of my self-confidence back, but I'm still not to that level I was before. I'm still not the same and I will never be the same. And it's not that I can't be active, like my body can't physically do it because I know I can get my body to do whatever I need it to do. It's still that mental hurdle I'm still fighting with today. Like, I don't believe I can do it.

For the first like three or four months of getting shot, I couldn't use my left arm at all. My whole left hand was completely dead. At that time, the mobility in my legs was nothing. I couldn't put weight on it. I couldn't walk on it. We're doing physical therapy to try to get it, but like every step was torture. They didn't think I was going to be able to walk much without my wheelchair. They thought I was going to be in my wheelchair the rest of my life. They wanted me just basically get strong enough to where I can take care of myself without other people.

It wasn't actually until I got to the outpatient rehabilitation clinic at Walter Reed that I really started to believe I could actually walk without a wheelchair and stuff because the trainer I had was amazing. He never let me think that I wasn't going to do something. Every time I did something, he'd be like, all right, cool. So next time we're going to do this. And he kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And without him pushing me all the time, then I don't think I would have

I know for a fact I wouldn't be walking now. Admitting to myself the issues and what was wrong helped out a lot with getting over it. So my therapist, I met him about a year before I left Walter Reed. And he was like my seventh or eighth therapist I went through at that point.

He made me tell him the truth because he knew what I was saying was false because he was saying it himself when he first got off his first tour. He helped walk me through and helped me really understand that the attack wasn't my fault. Talking to him was the first time that it really like dawned on me that I'm not the cause of this, that somebody else decided to do this, that I was just there and I helped end it.

He really helped me understand that and really helped me see that there is a light on the other side of my depression and my anger and my anxiety, that I could be happy again. It was still a long, long road. It's still something I fight with today. There are some days I get really depressed, really sad, but then I remember everything we talked about and it helps out a lot.

Since I've been shot, I've done a lot of soul searching. Like I really taken time and thought about what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't want to retire at 25 or whatever my age was 26. So I decided to go to film school and that's what I do now. And that's,

I found out I love that more than I love the military because it blows my mind. Like all I ever wanted to do was be a career, career military. And now I found a career that I actually truly love doing, you know, being on set and working grip, uh, G and E. And then, uh, also working with the camera is just, it's amazing. I make a good living with it, but if I would never have gotten shot, never gone through what I did, then I wouldn't have been, I wouldn't be here today for one, uh,

And I wouldn't be as successful as I am either because getting shot and going through that traumatic experience, going through therapy for it has led me to be the leader I am today and led me to work as hard as I do because I work unbelievably hard, unbelievably hard nowadays. And it's all because I know that one day I could not be doing this. Something could happen. I could get hurt again.

And I want to make sure that I live it up every moment that I can now. Before I was this warrior guy. After that, after I got shot after the incident, I was this like waste of space, waste of human space. Like I didn't want to be around even myself. But now it's like, like I know I'm not crippled. Yeah, I have a disability. Yeah, it slows me down and it's harder for me to do stuff that other people find immensely easy now.

I have pain every single day in my arm and leg, non-stop. But I'm a better human being in my eyes than I was before I got shot. It has turned me into who I am today, and I couldn't be happier. I don't know what I am anymore, but I know it's not bad, and I'm happy. So whatever I am, man, I mean, it's me.

Today's episode featured Will Hoover. To find out more about Will, he's on Twitter and Instagram at WillHooverTV. Or you can check out his own recently launched podcast about film and technology called Uncovered Cinema. This Is Actually Happening is brought to you by me, Witt Misseldein. If you love what we do, you can join the community on our official Instagram page at ActuallyHappening.

You can also rate and review the show on iTunes, which helps tremendously to boost visibility to a larger community of listeners. Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay tuned. ♪

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