Good Life Project - You Are Worth It | Kyle Carpenter

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

When a stranger thanks Kyle Carpenter for his service as a U.S. Marine, his automatic reply is, "you are worth it." Enlisting in the Marine Corps in 2009, he served for more than a year in Helmand Province, Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, when he and his fellow Marines came under attack. In an act of extraordinary sacrifice, Carpenter threw himself on a grenade to save those around him. Regaining consciousness briefly and realizing the extent of his injuries, as he drifted back into unconsciousness, he was sure he was taking his last breath. Thankfully, he was wrong. Kyle woke up 5 weeks later at Walter Reed hospital, where he would learn that large parts of his face, head and right arm had been destroyed and needed to be reconstructed and he'd have a long road to recovery. Still, he was alive and grateful. Now the youngest living recipient of the US military’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor, in today's conversation, Kyle shares his extraordinary journey, his deep sense of service, love of people, family and his fellow Marines, what happened on that fateful day, along with his years-long road to rehabilitation, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually, his reclamation of life and hope, and the legacy of kindness and service he is working to build and his desire to help inspire people to embrace life. Much of this is also documented in his moving memoir, You Are Worth It.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So when a stranger thanks Kyle Carpenter for his service as a U.S. Marine, his pretty automatic reply is, you are worth it. Enlisting in the Marine Corps in 2009, he served for more than a year in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, when he and his fellow Marines came under attack. And in an act of extraordinary sacrifice, he threw himself on a grenade to save those around him. Regaining consciousness briefly and realizing the extent of his injuries, he drifted back into unconsciousness just a few moments later and was pretty sure he was taking his last breath. And thankfully,

he was wrong. Kyle woke up five weeks later at Walter Reed Hospital, where he would learn that large parts of his face and his head and his right arm had been destroyed and needed to be largely reconstructed, and he would have a long road to recovery. Still, he was alive and grateful. Now the youngest living recipient of the U.S. military's highest honor, the Medal of Honor. In today's conversation, Kyle shares this extraordinary journey, his deep sense of service, his love of people, family, his fellow Marines. What happened on that fateful day? Along with his years-long road to rehabilitation, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually, his reclamation

of life and hope and the legacy of kindness and service that he's working to build, along with his desire to help inspire people to really embrace life. Much of this is also detailed in a deeply moving memoir called You Are Worth It. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So you're coming up as a kid. I mean, what kind of kid are you? What moves you? What excites up as a kid. I mean, what kind of kid are you? What moves you? What excites you as a kid? A challenge. Just like broadly.

From sitting in the recliner with my dad way early on, trying to master blowing bubbles with gum, to making the biggest and best ramps I could construct in the front yard and driveway with whatever we had in the garage, to sports played a huge part in my life growing up. Just all of those things, I think, in the pursuit of perfection and always striving for bigger and better potential, not really for external factors but just for myself,

and taking on that challenge and then trying to accomplish that and then, you know, therefore showing and teaching myself either how banged up I could get from not doing those ramps so smoothly, but just trying to prove to myself and overcome, even if it's something simple, one thing at a time growing up. Do you have a sense for where that came from, like from your parents, or was it just something that was more internal to you? I think more internal. But with that said, I think it was very much nurtured by my parents being extremely supportive, encouraging me to go out and be ambitious and do good at sports and, you know, like all good parents, have good grades and all of these things that contributed to who I am and making me better one step at a time. Yeah.

So as you're coming up and you're in high school and you're starting to think about what's coming next, in your mind, what are the opportunities? What are the possibilities that you're seriously weighing? So I didn't have, you know, I can't say my plan to join the military following high school. You know, I wasn't 100%, you know, I'm going to do this no matter what before graduating high school. You know, really thinking about that next step and then starting to brainstorm on the military, multiple different options or paths I could have taken with my life. You know, when I really started thinking about the military, going back to growing up and the challenges, big or small, the military was appealing to me because I had never been pushed to the point of wanting to quit, or

I had never been pushed to a limit where I truly had to look down deep inside myself. And that along with wanting to do something bigger than myself or bigger than any one individual and just contributing myself and my life and now my body to something so much greater. You know, when all of those pieces kind of in my head fell in line, I knew that the military was my calling. And with my first point of wanting to be pushed and wanting as much of a challenge as I could get, I knew after going to multiple recruiters and talking to veterans, doing as much research as I could, I knew that the Marine Corps was the know, was the path for me, and it would give me what I was searching for. Yeah.

When you make that decision, when it sort of gets clear in your mind, at some point you share this with your parents who are, you know, as you shared, you don't come from sort of a military family where, you know, this is just sort of not necessarily expected, but completely kind of commonplace within the family. Curious what that conversation was like. It was extremely difficult. And it was weeks, arguably months of difficult discussions, seeing, you know, my mom very visibly upset, you upset, waking up in the morning and being able to tell that she had been crying through the night.

That was extremely difficult for me. But after multiple talks and just trying to convey that I wasn't doing it on a whim, I wasn't doing it for any external factors. It's what I truly wanted and needed to do with my life. And I don't think anyone that joins, especially if you get injured, I don't think anyone can confidently say, oh yeah, I know what I'm getting into.

So I couldn't say, you know, I'm not going to be put in harm's way. Everything's going to be fine. And I didn't make any false promises, but I wanted them to know that no matter what, I couldn't be talked out of it. But I talked through that process with them because even though I was old enough to just run off and join, never to be seen or heard from again, you know, I wanted their blessing. And I wanted them to be behind me 100%, which they always have been, always are, and always will continue to be. But, you know, I wanted them to say, okay, we're on board and we're joining with you. And they did that.

And they have been by my side since the second I joined and the second I woke up in the hospital. So this would have been when you're making the decision and making the commitment, late 2009-ish, mid-2009? Correct. Right. 2009-ish, mid-2000s? Correct. If we zoom the lens out a bit, so at that point, we're eight years post 9-11. What was your understanding of what was going on with our military and where they were deployed, and also whether you would or wouldn't actually be deployed or be in harm's way when you said, okay, this is what I want to do?

Right. So just for clarification, I want to do. Right. So just for clarification, I kind of jumped the gun. It was late 2008, but I went to boot camp in March of 2009. Cool. Well, I think obviously I knew what was going on. You could turn on the news and see that. And because we knew what was going on and information is so readily accessible, I think that was the thing that made it so difficult for my parents,

knowing that we were in two conflicts on two different fronts, two possibilities of deployments, two possibilities of being injured or killed. And honestly, that is not something that really was a factor or came into account with me wanting to do it or not. And, you know, like I said, I don't think anybody can comprehend or really know what's coming, especially to think, if I join right now, I might be dead in a few months or a couple years. So that's very surreal to think about that. Obviously, that is an option, and I knew that. But I think my drive and my wanting to not only serve, but like I said,

devote and commit my life and my path to a purpose greater than myself, that overpowered any thoughts of potentially being injured or killed. But this sheds light on how not only difficult it can be for military families when their loved ones join and when they deploy, you know, but to really think about, you know, I was the driven one. I was wanting to join the Marine Corps and go off and do great things. But they not only had to accept that I was joining, that I was potentially and probably going to be put in harm's way, but that they were just going to have to sit at home and live by the phone and hopefully never get that phone call.

So, you know, I'm so just completely forever thankful and grateful that no matter how the chips fell and turned out, that they have been by my side ever since because clearly it's been a difficult journey, a beautiful but very difficult journey. Yeah. So you end up joining, you're 19 years old? Correct. When you enter, spend about seven months prepping to head out, and then you find yourself in

boot camp. So that would have been like mid-late 2009. What was that experience like for you? Because there are a lot of stories, especially about like for the Marines. Boot camp was a wild ride for sure. It was extremely difficult, but it was amazing because, you know, every day getting woken up at 4, 4.30 a.m.,

you know, you're screamed at. You are kind of beat down, not literally, but just torn down and torn down every day. And you're pushed to your mental, physical, and emotional limit. So as hard as it was, it was amazing too, because I was finally getting that, that feel deep down inside that not only am I proud of myself, you know, wow, I really did this. I'm really doing this. But at the same time, it was fulfilling that want and that need to be just pushed to my limits or what I thought or knew were my limits up until that point. But, you know, boot camp is amazing. It started off very scary because even before you get to the gate of Parris Island, you meet up at the local recruiting station there in Columbia, South Carolina.

Mostly everyone's coming from all over this half of the country. Other half will go to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. But once you get to that recruiting station, it might be five of you, it might be 15, depending on the numbers at that time that the Marine Corps needs. You're roughly a mile or so outside of the gate. This bus driver who I hope he didn't get pleasure out of busing kids on a Ferris Island, but you're approaching the gate and he says, put your head in between your legs. You're thinking like, okay, well, this is not what I was expecting.

Come to find out, there's only one little windy road on and off Parris Island through the swamps. So if you do get to boot camp, and you go crazy, or you want to run away, you don't really know the way out. So that's the start of it. And then you get to the building, the receiving building, and the van door is ripped open by one of the scariest human beings I've ever seen in my life. And boot camp starts. And even though you all have different haircuts, you haven't got your uniforms yet, you know, you're straight from the civilian world, you know nothing about the Marine Corps. There's a famous yellow footprint,

and they're painted on the ground, and you get out of that van, and even though you have no idea what you're doing, you stand on those yellow footprints, and you're forced for the first time in your life to get in a structured military formation. And from that moment on, you're not only taught how to be a Marine, how to wear the uniforms, how to carry yourself like a Marine, but a crucial aspect, I believe, in my molding by boot camp, by my drill instructors to make me into the Marine that I am today, that I was in Afghanistan and while I was in and also recovering. Every single day, day in and day out, you're taught stories of Marines that have come before you, stories of courage, stories of sacrifice,

stories that are almost unbelievable. The Marines in World War II, you're told, hey, you're probably not even going to make it to the beach to even try to make it onto the beach and survive. And if you do make it to the beach, you might have 10 to 20 seconds before you're killed. To hear that as a 17, 18, 19, 20-year-old, and they still did it. They still charged forward knowing the consequences or what could be the consequences. You know, that the Marines that cover grenades for their fellow Marines in Vietnam, Korea, all of these amazing things and what makes the Marine Corps our legacy

and our history and traditions. So to hear those day in and day out, and at the very end of boot camp when you do what's called the crucible, a belief 54-hour culminating event, everything you've learned in the 13 weeks of boot camp up to that point. And you have to complete the crucible in order to earn your Eagle Globe and Anchor, which you hike back from the crucible, you haven't slept in three days, you haven't eaten really anything, you're completely miserable, probably bleeding from somewhere in pain. And the sun's coming up after you hike all the way through the night back to the barracks. And you're out on the parade deck, and the Iwo Jima Memorial is behind you.

The sun's coming up, and they put the Eagle Globe and Anchor in your left hand, and they shake your right hand, and they say, well done, Marine. And no one's not crying, and it's just you did it. But through that crucible, all of these obstacles, I think maybe 22 or something like that, obstacles, after every one you're beat down and broken a little more, a little more. And in that low point, every stop along the way is a different citation in the story of the Medal of Honor recipient.

I just remember being so, you know, locked in and just thinking, those Marines were like like, superhuman. I mean, how does one do something like that? Or, you know, thoughts of, wow, I mean, I don't know if I can, but I hope when my time comes, if I'm ever called upon to step up for my fellow Marines, you know, I hope I can do it as honorable and as courageous as they did it. And so that was really the, you know, along with my parents raising me well, loving me, and giving me the tools to succeed, you know, that really started my foundation and started to mold me

like they do everyone, you know, all Marines. Yeah. So you go from there, you are now a Marine, and then it's time to leave boot camp and open yourself up to very likely being deployed. How long does it take for that to actually happen? That's a great question. And after boot camp, the Marine Corps is kind of split up. If you're infantry, you go to School of Infantry. Everyone else goes to a few weeks of kind of an overview. If you're infantry, you go to School of Infantry. Everyone else goes to a few weeks of kind of an overview type infantry course, and then they go to their specific job school.

If you're a radio operator, you go to that school, aircraft mechanic, so on and so forth. I went to almost two and a half months of SOI, School of Infantry. And then after that, right after graduation, Camp Lejeune, which is where myself and my unit were stationed in North Carolina on the coast, Camp Geiger, where School of Infantry takes place, is just a few miles down the road. So they take the entire SOI class and they split you up, say two or three different Marine Corps infantry units. And they say, okay, they read off these names. Hey, you're going to 3-6. You're going to 2-9. Split up. You get on the bus, and you go straight to the barracks where you, I'll say, unfortunately, as the new guy and straight out of boot camp, you meet the lovely platoon who mine had just got back from Iraq. We open the door to the barracks. I'm thinking, okay, you know, we get off the bus, make it to the barracks. There's not

many guys standing outside. You know, where is everyone? Okay, well, at least maybe they're gone for a few hours and then we'll wait and get destroyed later on this afternoon. They were all lining the halls and waiting on the inside of the barracks when we opened the doors to give us our welcome. But, you know, that was tough as well. You have to earn your place. But at the same time, it was interesting because at the end of the day, like a good Marine would as your fire team leaders who are in charge of a few Marines, and then you have your squad leaders who are in charge of three fire teams.

And a fire team is about four, and there's, so, 12 Marines in a squad. So, you know, you have this chain of command, but at the end of the day, you can tell they sit you down, they talk to you, hey, this is why we are hard on you. You know, you need to learn your nine line, which is what you call in by radio to give the nine lines of information it takes to spin up a medevac bird to come get a casualty. You're sitting there in the barracks hallway, taking on and off tourniquets, learning how to apply those, and just these courses that they were hard on you for, but they also respected you because you didn't have to be there. You didn't have to raise your right hand, and they knew that when it was time to deploy, we would, you know, be having their back

just as much as they had ours. So tough, but mutual respect. Just a few weeks after I got to the fleet and assigned to my unit, we went on our first deployment, which was not a combat deployment. It was a three-month deployment on a Navy ship down through the Caribbean. Some of our unit got off in the Dominican Republic to help train their forces, while the rest of us went down to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And this is early October of 2009. So we got back from that. Actually, when we were on the way back from that, we were all huddled around in the bowels of this Navy ship looking at this little TV with a faint and struggling cable signal, and we were watching President Obama at the time. And we were waiting to see, essentially, if he gave a thumbs up or thumbs down to send a significant troop surge into Afghanistan. And sitting there, all the guys knowing that if he approved, gave the thumbs up, we would be one of the first combat units in line into southern Afghanistan to go fight the Taliban.

He gave the thumbs up. And so cruising back through the Caribbean Ocean on that ship, we knew that in six, seven, eight months, you know, we were going to be boots on the ground in Afghanistan. So that, you know, we got back, I believe Christmas Eve, we got back, we had a week or two of leave to go home with family for the holidays. But we knew that when we came back to Kentwood Zoom, reunited as a unit, that we were going to be fully immersed into what's called a workup. And a workup is something you start, you know, it could be, you know, say, because like some of my buddies from School of Infantry, they got put and assigned to 3-6.

So the second they hit the fleet, instead of me and my 2-9 guys going on this three-month float, they were the first ones in line to go to Afghanistan. So a guy that I was with, he slept on the bunk above me in school of infantry. He was the first casualty in 3-6. You know, he had been out of boot camp just a few months before he was killed in Afghanistan. So it all depends on your unit and your timeline to ship out. But 2-9, we didn't leave until July of 2010. And so for seven months, we trained day in, day out, sun up to sundown, and all the time at night to get not only trained up individually, to get as efficient as possible on our weapon systems,

to learn those medical life-saving techniques, to learn how to talk on the radio, but also with seven months of intense training together, no, it wasn't real combat, but it helped us become more cohesive as a unit. So when we got over there, we were operating as comfortably and efficiently as we possibly could. And so, you know, following that workup, July of 2010, you know, for a few weeks, maybe even a few months, you get told back and forth, okay, we're leaving second week of July. All right, now it's August 1st. And really until probably for security reasons, so no one knows our movements,

but also just the probably insane logistics to get an entire battalion of Marines over to Afghanistan. It was a 10-day journey, multiple bases, multiple types of aircraft. You know, you don't really know until it gets much closer. So we got word specifically exactly when we were leaving. And I gave my mom a hug and I eerily got on the bus thinking, you know, is that going to be the last time I ever hug my mom? And I remember looking out the window of the bus

and I didn't know if I regretted doing that because of how much it tore me up to see just such a look of despair on her face, but also to know that I actually might not come back. Of course, I wanted to see her for the last time or what could have been the last time. But yeah, we got on those buses, and 10 days later, I was sitting in the back of a helicopter getting handed belts and machine gun ammo on the very last leg of our journey and being told that we were going to take

contact the second we touched the ground, probably before when we were still in the air. So that was extremely surreal to, I think, for finally to, everything to finally be happening. But also just to be told, like, it's guaranteed we're going to, we're not even going to touch the ground and we're going to be under fire. And so that coupled with, I vividly remember the back of the helicopter was open because there has to be a door gunner back there in combat environments.

And I remember looking out the back and just seeing different shades of green and patches of farmland. And I remember thinking, you know, am I going to get hit or get shot in that field or that canal? Am I going to bleed out in that tree line? And it wasn't a crippling fear or anything. It was just, I think everything was just so surreal. You know, just trying to, as best as I could in that moment, process it all. Yeah.

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previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised The pilot's a hitman I knew you were gonna be fun On January 24th Tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die

Don't shoot him, we need him Y'all need a pilot Flight Risk So once you're on the ground What was the sort of the early mission for you? What was your day-to-day like for the first part? Because we were one of the first units in, we were leave 3-6, the unit that my buddy got killed in, unfortunately.

But 3-6 was the first ones into that area of operation in a very, very, very long time, pretty much since the Soviets. And we're talking about Afghanistan. Correct. In a farmland area called Marja. And because we were one of the first units in, that kind of dictates your mission. You know, if you're there years after there's been a significant presence that's already created stability in the region, help build schools, help dig wells, pave roads, you know, that makes the mission change because at that point you're kind of holding ground and just keeping the locals safe and holding that stability.

But if you're one of the first ones in, every job, every branch, everyone has an extremely important job, and we all raised our right hand to give up to our lives if our country called upon it. But if you're one of the first ones in, it's more of the you're taking casualties, you don't have a shower for seven months, you know, you're way out behind enemy lines and territory to where only helicopters can get to you. So essentially our mission was every day go on patrol and pick a fight with the enemy and draw them out and try to eliminate them or just push them out and just continue to push out and push out. Therefore, months later, years later, units and deployments later,

you know, you have to create a stable region where the people aren't scared of the repercussions of wanting to read a book, to go to school, to have freedom of speech. You know, the local population is so terrified of the Taliban and so oppressed, it's going to make your mission so much harder to, you know, create that stable environment. So we had to go in and just fight for seven months and try to survive. We were living at a, not a mud hut, but a mud compound. And that was our patrol base.

That's where we lived and operated out of for the whole deployment. It was just me and my platoon. You know, we started out going over as a whole unit, but once we got in Afghanistan, all the platoons throughout 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, our unit split up to take a platoon as roughly 60 Marines. So you had multiple groups of 60 Marines spreading out over square miles of an area of operation. We were at a mud compound known as Patrol Base Beatley. And our 60 Marines were broken down into four squads. Every day, we pushed out an early morning patrol, a late morning to early afternoon patrol, late afternoon patrol, and a night patrol. And we did that, dispersed like that,

so you always kind of have a Marine presence outside the wire. You want to not only show the enemy that you're not scared, you're not backing down, but you want to show the local population that you truly are there not only for them, but their well-being. And you're really trying and giving effort and always giving that presence to hopefully assist in not only making them comfortable not backing down and that you're here because they are evil people. And these people deserve better. Yeah. You mentioned how the locals feel about their relationship with the Taliban.

What was the dynamic between you and them? The local population? Yeah. Because it's got to be this really weird blend of they're sort of caught between two worlds to a certain extent. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So at least for when we were there, it was very tough. You know and understand that the vast majority of the population wants

to help you. But the Taliban, they wear civilian clothes. They all have beards like every male over there. They will salute you and shake your hand one day. The next day, you'll have a Marine get shot. You find the same guy. You test his hands, and he lights up for gunshot residue or explosive material. And so it's so easily to not only blend, but to shoot at us, to plant an IED. And then after you hit one of us, throw your rifle down or bury it in a field really quick. And that wasn't me. I wasn't shooting at you.

I was shooting at the Taliban for you to try to help protect my family. And, you know, they know the ways of what to say and around everything. So it just makes a very challenging environment when you are really trying out that local population, but they're so terrified of the repercussions. I mean, you know, people need to understand that they don't really care, have any regard for human life. I talk about this in the book, two stories actually.

One, we are on a patrol, my squad and I. We are heading towards the Eastern Village, and the Eastern Village was bad news. Now, every single day, no matter where we patrolled over there for our entire deployment, it was never a matter of, I wonder if we're going to get shot at today. It was just a matter of, I wonder if we're going to get shot at today. It was just a matter of when. But certain areas we went to, the fighting was much more intense. And we're in this firefight with the Eastern Village. We're not too far away. But what the Taliban will do is, you know, they will punch out crawl holes or little doorways that they can run through within the walls of compounds. And then they'll punch out barrel holes in the walls. So,

I mean, pretty much they can sit there and shoot at you all day long and never expose themselves. And so we're getting shot at, we're getting shot at, and finally I see dust kicking up from where these rounds are coming from. And the guy is kind of blindly shooting and taking pop shots out of a doorway. I see this dust kick up, and I tell my lieutenant, hey, I see where the guy's coming from. I'm seeing his AK kick up this dust. When he pops back out, obviously, so none of us get killed. We're not proactively doing anything over there. We're waiting for them to try to kill us.

And so I told my lieutenant, hey, I'm going to shoot this guy when he pops back out in the doorway. And he throws what I assumed to be his wife in the doorway. Thankfully, I had triggered discipline. I was looking through my scope. I did not fire any rounds. But after we got back to base, I reflect on that moment, and it was just so sad that he would do that, probably with the idea of, oh, well, hopefully they'll shoot and kill my wife. I can go to the village elders who will make a big deal to the American troops that shot this poor innocent lady. And that will give fuel for hatred throughout that area. And it will just do a lot of little different things to just make our job that much harder.

And then we might not patrol for a day or so to appease the village elders who kind of run everything. Then the Taliban can regroup. And there's probably a bunch of different objectives for doing that. But that was just hard for me to comprehend. And then another story I talk about in the book is there was a kid and he loved us. He would always salute us when we'd walk out of the base, him and his younger brother. You could tell that they longed for to wake up

in a better life. And, you know, not only at one point in the deployment did the kids ask me through an interpreter, is everywhere in America like Disney World? And can you really go into a room and turn a magical knob and have cold, fresh, clean drinking water come out of it? You know, not only did I hear that, but these kids saluting us, this kid loved us. One night, and this was a couple weeks after I had been injured on November 21st, 2010. So beginning of December, this story was told to me by my Marines who thankfully did not get injured and that were still there after I got medevaced. But a grenade comes over the wall of our compound, middle of the night.

Thankfully, the Marines that would have got injured or killed by it were out on night patrol. Don't know who it is. Fast forward a couple of nights, and that kid shows up at the gate of our base. He comes in the middle of the night because if you're caught not only communicating with the Americans, but if they find out you are helping us and telling us where IEDs are, passing information, I mean, you're as good as dead. You either flee to another village or city, but I mean, your whole family is in jeopardy at that point. Kid comes in the middle of the

night. He's hysterically crying, begging us not to hurt him if he tells us something. Of course, we would never, ever do that, no matter what he told us. He proceeds to tell us, and this kid, 12, at the very, very, very most 13 years old. He tells us that because he was suspected of telling American troops where IEDs are, which he had told us where, I believe, two were during that deployment, Taliban came to his house in the middle of the night, jerked him out of bed, took him to the wall of our compound, put a grenade in his hand, pulled the pin, and gave him an ultimatum. Essentially, his life or ours. Throw the grenade.

And of course he did it, and thankfully he did it because he was an amazing kid but that just shows you just that insane dynamics over there and what what we're working against and not only that but just how evil the taliban are and how oppressed those people are. You've mentioned your injury a couple of times, so take me to that day. It was November 21, 2010. Now, Patrol Base Beatley, where we had been living and operating for the four months up until that point, we had three villages to the south of our patrol base. And just like the Eastern Village, the further south you went, the worse the fighting got.

So we, my squad and I, got tasked with a mission to push down into one of these southern villages, take over a new compound, and hold it. Just establish a presence, put our foot in the ground, and try to survive and don't give it up. Now, we're doing this because, at least at the time, Marines were deploying for seven months at a time. So we were over the halfway point in our deployment.

And when you're looking ahead to that next unit coming in to relieve you so you can go home, their seven-month starts, you want to leave your area of operation better than you found it. So looking ahead to getting relieved in that next unit coming in, the only thing we were doing was pushing south, taking over that compound to expand our area of operation. So when they take it over, it's a little bigger than we found it. And if you keep doing that, deployment to deployment and year to year, hopefully, and looking at it in textbook way,

you're going to eventually keep just pushing out and making everything more stable and safer. And so November 19th, we made the movement down there. And from the moment we took that compound over, it was a fight for survival. The first grenade attack came immediately, and we only had one squad down there with a few Afghanistan National Army members attached to us because we were also training and operating with them throughout that deployment

them obviously trying to make their own country better the first grenade attack we had two Marines injured and an Afghanistan National Army soldier injured. So right there, down three bodies. The next day and a half, roughly, grenades and the vast majority of the attacks

were small arms fire AK-47s November 21st the only thing I remember besides physically how I felt after the grenade

hit me which I will get to but up until the moment of detonation the only thing I remember is around 7.45 that morning, we started getting attacked. Surprise, surprise, like every day, our alarm clock was AK-47 fire. I remember getting woken up by that, rolling over, unzipping my sleeping bag,

and thinking, here we go again, another day in Afghanistan. Fast forward to that afternoon. Myself and one fellow Marine, an amazing Marine, one of my best friends. We were on top of a roof, and we were on what we refer to being on post, which most people would know as just a lookout position. We're on this elevated position. The rest of our Marines are in the compound. And anybody can Google Earth, Marsha, if you kind of want to get a better picture, mental picture for what a compound is.

But, you know, this roof we were on was just a small room and roof and walls built into the corner of this bigger compound. And the rest of the compound is just one big open courtyard where many family members, along with their farm animals, their crops that are drying out, all kind of in this compound. So the roof was really the only thing that we had to get on to stand that post and to look out those walls of safety not really because we had been getting grenades lobbed at us but you know what i mean because all of the marines within the compound are eating resting cleaning their

weapons and they're obviously not vigilantly on watch. So me and Nick were on this roof, and there's always a Marine on post, and we stand four-hour shifts at a time. And we were towards the end of our four-hour shift, and I don't remember anything from the attack. Everything I'm about to say is from a 250-blast analysis team in to do forensics on my gear and everything like that, the roof. And so three grenades were thrown to initiate the attack. Two exploded within the compound, the third was a dud, and I don't remember any of the first three grenades but the fourth one was thrown onto the roof

in very close proximity to me and Nick like I said I don't remember anything but from all of that evidence and eyewitness testimony, I covered the grenade for my fellow Marine that was up there with me. Like I said, I don't remember anything before, but after the grenade detonated, I couldn't see anything. My vision was like looking at a TV with no static or no connection. It was just white and gray static.

My ears were ringing extremely loudly, just like they are at this very moment. And I was extremely disoriented. And my first thoughts were, okay, I think I was in Afghanistan. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was in Afghanistan. Something must have happened. So I tried to push myself up and kind of shake it off, which gave me the realization that I couldn't feel my arms. So that was another piece of the puzzle which made me realize,

okay, wow, you know, this is not good. So I couldn't feel my arms. I kept trying to put the pieces together. I still couldn't, still couldn't. And that was interrupted by, and this will just allude to Marines humor and how much we love each other. My next thought was, is someone pouring warm water all over me? I'm like, guys, in this messed up, banged up state I'm in,

you're messing with me right now. But after a couple of seconds, that sensation along with the other few pieces I had gave me the surreal and unfortunate realization that what I was feeling was not warm water, that it was blood and I was profusely from head to toe bleeding out. So thankfully, I was able to put those pieces together because it allowed me to take advantage of the last few seconds that I thought I was going to have on this earth. My first thought is I was just so sad and I felt so guilty and just upset that my family and specifically my mom, how devastated they were going to be and she was going to be that I did not make it home. I said a quick prayer for forgiveness in anything I had done wrong in my life. And that was followed by a tiredness that I can't even convey,

just to my core, just such exhaustion. So with that final moment of realization and knowing how I felt and the amount of blood that I had felt come out of me, I knew that this was it. And I closed my eyes and faded from consciousness for what I thought was going to be my last time on this earth. And I woke up almost five weeks later on the other side of the world with snow outside on my hospital window pane with my first sight was five Christmas stockings hanging on my

hospital room wall at that military hospital in Washington, D.C. that my mom had hung on my wall, hopefully and lovingly preparing for me to wake up and have life again. And she had prepared my room for the Christmas holiday. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. So you, in that five-week window, I mean, immediately that day, your team took you, got you, I guess, called back a helicopter also, who essentially came into heavy fire. Correct. Brought you back out, and then through a series of transfers and intense emergency medical work and teams of doctors, you land five weeks later in the hospital and for the first time open your eyes and you're completely somewhere else and you see your mom.

When that moment comes and you regain consciousness, you said that you don't have any recollection really of what happened from the roof from the moment the grenade went off until anything afterwards. But there's a very detailed investigation. That moment, though, so you wake up, you have no idea what actually happened. But you're looking around this room.

And you also, I'm guessing, you have no idea where you are. You have no idea you're looking around this room and you also i'm guessing you have no idea where you are you have no idea you're actually in washington dc and i'm freaked out do you no one's wearing white doctor coats everyone's in camouflage right you know being a young marine that had never been on a combat deployment um you're so focused on the workup and what you're going to do, you're just not educated that there's even a thing such as military medicine. You know, besides your corpsmen who give you ibuprofen, give you your shots and vaccinations you need, you know, check out injuries, you don't really think of some of the best doctors, surgeons,

medical teams in the world being in the Army, Air Force. Have you, since that time, spoken with Nick about what happened that day on the roof? Of course we've spoken, but it's hard and sad for me to see Nick injured as well, but it also gives me an opportunity in situations like this to tell people that

not only are service members getting severely injured, but not everyone has scars from head to toe like me there is a huge population that the wounds are just as bad if not worse but you know they can be that bad and they can be life-altering and you might not have a scratch on you yeah You know, the human brain is a very delicate, a you know, even if it would have meant not waking up, wishing I could have taken the entire blast. But unfortunately, Nick was affected and not only affected, but seriously injured with a traumatic brain injury. And with that, the brain can heal in a few days, but it can also take a few years. It can also take a lifetime. But I talk about this in the book,

and one of, if not the happiest moment of my entire three-year recovery is a few weeks after I woke up, Nick was a few rooms down from me in the hospital. And neither one of us could do really anything but lay there. But we passed a whiteboard down the hall back and forth to each other. And the first thing he ever said to me was he wrote on it, what's up Kyle and sent it down to me. So there's not a day go by that I don't wish he wouldn't have been injured, but, you know,

trying to always look for the silver linings and things. And I think, you know, a little bit of, a lot of bit of conditioning through the hospital, you know, during those long, dark, hard and painful nights, you know, being forced to search for silver linings. I'll just say that I'm, I'm thankful that we're both still here and we both had and have a fighting chance at recovering

and regaining our new 100% in the life that we have now. Yeah. When you think back to that single action that you took. And again, knowing that you can't move yourself through that moment through your own memory because it's not there. But knowing who you are as an individual, knowing how you felt about your fellow Marines, knowing in that moment,

do you have a sense for what feeling, what emotion would have led you to take the action that you took? Well, not only was Nick a fellow Marine and going, really going back to bootcamp, what I was talking about earlier, to be told those just countless stories of courageous, incredible, just superhero-level stories of Marines that came before us. That coupled with the fact that Nick was a fellow Marine and we're taught to value and care about and take care of the Marine to the right and left of us just as much as ourselves and our own lives,

if not more, going back to that greater purpose, that purpose that's bigger than any one individual. All of that. Also, Nick was and is a best friend. We went on every single patrol together. Even though he was more junior of a Marine than me, he came after we got back from that three-month deployment. So, you know, he was one of those that graduated SOI. And within a few months of graduating soi he was headed to afghanistan and so even though he was such a and you know going into it inexperienced junior marine just

like all of us were yeah he led point walked point on every single patrol. The second we stepped out of friendly lines, Nick was up there. Just an incredible feel for direction, for, okay, there's not that many people out right now. Kind of like a spidey sense tingling. And even though he's that junior Marine, never been on a combat patrol, all the combat veterans were behind him and trusted him to, when you're walking point, all the guys behind you are kind of relying on you to spot that disturbed dirt that could be hiding a buried IED or spot those wires coming out of the wall that where a booby trap is set. So we're not only all trusting you kind of with our lives,

but obviously if you're walking point, especially in a combat environment that was that hostile at the time, you're obviously taking a much greater chance and risk of stepping on the IED first and before all of the Marines behind you. You know, so with all of that said, we did everything together. We took care of each other like we all did over there. So I think the foundation and the molding I had as a Marine, along with the fact that I love Nick as a person and as a Marine, taking care of him, I believe if I had to guess, would have been my last thought. Yeah. So as you find yourself waking up five weeks later and then have a long road to recovery, it takes another three years or so, 40, 41, somewhere around there, surgeries. Correct. You realize you have been profoundly injured

physically. Lost your right eye. Your jaw was essentially blown off of your face and most of your teeth gone and damaged your right arm. So it's a long, long recovery window for you, just physically, let alone psychologically. Yes. And you commit to that. And the fact that you're sitting here you know, like here in this studio

with me today is a testament to your, your willingness to, to wake up every day and go through some just incredibly brutal, hard trying emotional, physically and psychologically emotional times. You get to a point where you're sort of ready to step back into life. And you had made a promise, I guess, to your mom before leaving about college. Yeah. So I told my parents and I very much meant it. But at the time, I think it was just to comfort all of the, not maybe,

of course, an easiness about me getting injured or be put in harm's way, but one of the things before, you know, we sat down and they said, hey, we're on board. We wholeheartedly support you, and we'll be here no matter what happens, or whether you stay on four years or 20 years. But one of the things that they argued was, why don't you go to college? You can go to any school. We'll send you on a trip around the world. You can do anything you want. And of course, I don't blame

them. I mean, it's very scary what I was contemplating doing. So I understood their arguments and I understood why they were presenting those. But would accomplish school and I would make that happen one day, whether it was four years from now or 20. I did want to make that promise to him and most importantly to myself. I knew that if I survived, and I didn't really think about it that way, but at the time, I knew that I would go to school one day and that I would earn that degree and I would walk across that graduation stage. When? Who knows? state that and emphasize that and wholeheartedly believe that deep down inside, someday I would go back to school. And now after graduating December of 2017, I'm so thankful that I did that and I kept that promise to myself and that after everything I've been through, that was by far the most

proud moment for me. Yeah. When you emerge from this year as a rehabilitation and recovery, 41 surgeries, working with the team of miracle workers for a bunch of years, and you walk across the stage for graduation, who else is joining you? I had staff from Walter Reed there, fellow Marines, my family, of course, my grandmother, and just a few of the people, very important times, but just help me get back to who I was and help me get back to being at a point of knowing I was going to be okay, whatever stage of the journey that was, and just getting back to loving life. And, you know, from my doctors to my college professors who supported me and talked about me to the class at the end of every semester

and read my citation and just so many. I couldn't have done it on my own. I just also can't say enough about how much and how many people just did, just, I mean, thank you will never be enough. I just can't even convey how many people not only stepped up, but truly recipient of Medal of Honor, President Obama, going out into the world and starting to contribute in a very different way, and running a marathon. Three. Three, sorry.

Don't want to shortchange you there. You know, as we sit here today, having this conversation, reflecting back on what you've been through how it has shaped or changed you and looking forward to sort of where you want to go if if i offer up this question in the context of this you know this is the good life project so if i offer up the phrase to live a good life what what comes up for you? Well, in the big picture of life, that's what I want not only one of my final thoughts to be before I really leave this earth, but also my legacy and what I want people to think and say about me, that above all else and everything he encountered, he lived a good life and he tried to help people and tried to do good things. You know, going back, a story that was the hardest part for me to write in the book. Before I woke up five weeks later, I briefly woke up right around the time of critical

brain surgery that I had. And through the disorientation, machines breathing for me, a million tubes connected to me, I briefly wake up for, I believe, what was just hours. I mean, time was non-existent. In those few hours, it was the scariest few hours of my life because I think the medication combined with the disorientation of not only knowing where I was, not knowing what happened, not knowing who these people were around me, I completely dove into and could not get out of a period of multiple, very intense, terrifying.

I mean, they're as real as me touching this table right here and sitting with you, hallucinations and crazy stuff. I mean, crashing a plane in the Turner Field I grew up, going to Braves games and giant spiders and the Taliban attacking my hospital room. My dad, me and my crazy head and thoughts thinking that my parents had sold our house,ent every penny they had because, again, we don't know about military medicine. So through all this craziness and disorientation, thinking that my parents sold their house, they can't feed my younger brothers because they've spent everything for my health care. My dad trying to get me this life-saving surgery storms the ICU and emergency room with a shotgun demanding that I get these surgeries. SWAT comes in, shoots him, and kills him right there in front of me.

And it was so real. When he fell, I heard the shotgun clinking across the floor. And the one that still chokes me up, if I really think about it, is I'm standing on this hill and I'm in the middle of this field. It's a massive field and it's like the sky is gray and dark and just like very movie like. And there's only one tree in this entire field and it's right behind me and my feet are planted and I can't move and I'm super confused. Like, what am I doing here? And I look way down in this field, down the hill from me, and there's a funeral going on. And the only one person there, as far as I can see besides me, is the pastor or preacher standing at the open hole in the ground where this casket is. And my confusion just continues. And I'm thinking, first of all, obviously a funeral is going on, but what's really going on?

Because there's not even a headstone. No one's here. And I'm struggling, trying to put the pieces together, and finally I realize that I'm watching my own funeral. And no one is there, and no one has came. And my buddies didn't come because they said that they were mad at me and they were disappointed in me that I left them early in Afghanistan. And, uh, I just remember like standing there crying, watching my own funeral. And, you know, I think a little bit I was sad because I thought maybe I survived for a little while.

I thought I was maybe waking up in the ICU and going to make it. But maybe this is what death is like. Maybe I'm really watching my own funeral or maybe I'm really not on earth anymore. And that extremely tough and surreal hallucination, you know, when I finally woke up for real and I was more with it than not and I knew kind of what was going on, you know, that was a very difficult but impactful lesson. And it made me really think about, reflect what legacy do I want to leave? What type of people and how many people do I want to care about me to where they come to my funeral? And what am I doing to impact and make a difference on other people's lives? And so going on a little tangent, backtracking a little bit.

But to live a life well lived is, I think, something that, you know, whether it's backpacking Europe, jumping out of a plane and running a marathon or thinking about my entire life and the impact I want to make. I think just to live a life well lived is, you know, when I'm gone, I think that will be the best compliment that anyone could give me when they think about me. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do.

You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.