Tough as They Come

by Travis Mills

  Josh knew he wasn’t allowed to phone any family members yet. The army needs to report the initial act of wounding officially to next of kin. But Josh knew he was going to be in an extremely vital position over the next few days. After official reports are made, the army typically calls with updates every twelve hours. Josh would be allowed to call with updates, and he could provide these sooner—and in more detail—than the army could. He knew our family would want those updates as soon as possible.

  He ran to his commander, explained the situation, and jumped on the next helicopter heading to Kandahar.

  —

  Kelsey received a call at 11:53 a.m. her time, while standing in her parents’ kitchen in Dallas, Texas. She was making lunch, a tuna fish sandwich.

  Chloe, then six months old, was happily playing in her walker nearby. Kelsey had taken Chloe to her first Easter egg hunt a few days earlier and had shown the video to me the evening before. It was nearly the time in the day when I usually called, and Kelsey was looking forward to saying hello.

  The caller ID indicated the phone number was from North Carolina. Kelsey didn’t recognize the specific number, but she reasoned it might be someone from the base. She answered the phone. It was my commander back at Fort Bragg.

  The caller said straightforwardly that he had bad news: I’d stepped on an IED in Afghanistan. Kelsey reeled, then thought to ask, “How bad is he?” The commander told her that I was a triple amputee.

  Kelsey never hung up the phone. Her knees gave out. She fell to the floor, screamed one long continuous wail, and shouted, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  Here’s how she described the moment later in a journal:

  I could not wrap my head around the pain my husband must be feeling. I was all alone in the house, and my actions upset my daughter to the point where she was screaming.

  I could do nothing to soothe her. I couldn’t pick her up. I couldn’t look at her.

  My body felt like it was being torn in two. I wanted so badly to be able to talk to Travis and to let him know I love him and that I thanked God he was still alive.

  Kelsey called my dad in Michigan, but when she tried to tell him what had happened, little would come out. My dad knew something was wrong and he kept repeating, “Is he alive? Is he alive? Is he alive?”

  Kelsey couldn’t answer. The call dropped. She phoned her mom, and Tammy rushed home from work to comfort her daughter and take care of Chloe.

  All the rest of that day Kelsey stayed glued to the phone. Calls came and went. For the time being, army officials told her to stay where she was. They might bring her over to Germany. They might not. I’d be brought stateside soon, and probably then Kelsey could travel to where I was.

  Kelsey later wrote,

  I don’t know how to explain this feeling. I didn’t sleep for a week. I didn’t eat. I lost ten pounds the first week, because I was just sitting, waiting for phone calls.

  —

  My dad had spoken to me the day prior to my injury. I knew my parents were really concerned about this deployment because it was in such a hostile area. For that reason, I’d phoned them more often than I had on any other deployment, although I never said anything specifically about what was going on.

  During my first deployment, my dad had a job driving a truck. His shift started at midnight, and he’d turn on the news and drive into the early morning. He’d hear reports, like three troops had been killed in Afghanistan, and it would be a long night for him. When no one knocked on their door the next morning, it was a good thing. He told me later that he just learned to live with this tension. He just prayed it wouldn’t be his son.

  On my third deployment, when the call came, my dad was with two of his friends loading up some scrap machinery into his trailer. Kelsey’s voice came on the phone, but my dad had bad cell service in the area, so it was hard to hear. Kelsey was hysterical, saying she was so sorry, so sorry. But he couldn’t get any more information out of her. He knew something very bad had happened, but he didn’t know initially if something had happened to me or maybe to Chloe. When the call dropped, he yelled to his two friends, “Unhook that trailer and winch. I need to go now!” And he took off like a flash.

  He raced over to the supermarket where my mom works. On the way, he was able to reach Kelsey again by cell. She got out the word Travis and that I’d been gravely injured, but she couldn’t say much more than that.

  —

  My mom was at work when my dad burst in, pulled her aside, and told her I’d been hit. She remembers standing on the floor of the supermarket with him, as they hugged each other in a tight embrace. My dad’s reaction was that he was badly shaken up, while my mom was nearly in shock. He rushed home to wait by the phone, while my mom went into the store’s business office, filled her supervisor in, and asked the supervisor to put me on their church’s prayer chain.

  When my dad reached home, he saw that the army had called and he’d missed it. Soon another call came in. It was the army again, and a military official reported that I’d been hit by an IED and that I was gravely injured. The caller asked if my mom and dad had passports so they could fly to Germany if needed. My dad said they did. The caller told them to pack light and to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

  My mom went home and called my sister and her husband, and my brother and his wife, so they could hear before the story hit the news. Then Mom called her neighbor and asked her to put me on another church’s prayer chain. I think before long I was on the prayer chains of all the churches in Vassar and Millington and all the surrounding communities.

  From that point on, everybody at home lived by the phone.

  My dad described it this way:

  Until you go through something like that yourself, it’s hard to describe the feeling. There’s no eating anymore. You don’t leave the house. There’s a lot of pacing around. You just wait.

  Whenever the phone rang, we jumped. You look at the phone and don’t know if you want to answer it or not.

  —

  I wasn’t the only man in my squad who’d been hurt that day.

  PFC Ryan Theriot, my soft-spoken gunner with a shock of dark hair, had also been hit. He loved the 82nd and was a tremendous soldier. When the blast went off, he initially thought he’d stepped on the IED himself. The blast knocked out his hearing momentarily, blew the lenses out of his sunglasses, and knocked him down. He also had some big chunks taken out of his legs.

  When he came to and his hearing returned, he heard me yelling for him, looked around, and saw me on the ground nearby. By that time medics were already working on me. Riot was bleeding from the face and body and legs and he started to yell because it hurt so much. Another medic tended to him.

  PFC Brandon Fessey was also hit. He’s young-looking, with sort of an all-American boyish face with a quick smile and a low voice, another tremendous soldier. Right after the blast, he didn’t realize he’d been hit at first. He was also bleeding from the face and he noticed blood on the front of him, but he wasn’t sure if the blood was his or not. He ended up with a concussion and some other injuries, although fortunately he wasn’t hurt as badly as Theriot.

  Fessey was the mine hound for the mission, but I don’t blame him for anything that resulted. Mines can be as unpredictable as a shark, and we were swimming in an ocean full of them. It’s not hard for a mine to fool a minesweeper. Ultimately, the safety of my men was my responsibility. If I blame anyone, I blame myself.

  Sergeant Daniel Bateson was one of the first medics to work on me while I was still on the ground. Normally, he has a low voice and a quick laugh. That day he was all business. While he was still on the run over to me, he opened his bleed kit and an airway kit and got out a tourniquet. His first thought was that what he was seeing was not real. I looked like a mannequin amputee that the army might use in a training exercise. “Nobody lives from this,” he whispered to himself. But his training kicked in and he went right to work. Sergeant Hambright also rushed over and s
tarted working on me, as did Sergeant Bruner and Sergeant Voyce. My torn limbs were as raw as hamburger, and I was covered in dust and blood and grime. They slowed down my bleeding and packed me up good and tight.

  Then the Blackhawk came. They loaded Fessey and Riot on the helicopter first. Then they loaded me on. Riot and I were on the floor. Fessey was sitting up. At that point, one of my legs was still attached to my body by a few strands of skin and ligaments. The medics had flopped it over and wrapped it underneath me so I wouldn’t stare at it anymore.

  After the helicopter took off, Riot was in a lot of pain, and I was ordering the medics in the Blackhawk around, trying to make sure my guys were cared for. Fessey was saying something like “Dude, I’ll be fine.”

  Later, Kelsey received the following private message via Facebook, describing the events of my evacuation from the perspective of one of the flight medics who worked on me in the air:

  To Kelsey Mills,

  My name is 1SG Waite. The other flight medic was SSG Hockersmith. You belong to a family of warriors. Other wounded soldiers in the aircraft were injured and screaming. But your husband was more worried about them than himself.

  It’s very noisy in the aircraft, and you can’t hear without a flight helmet. SSG Mills made SSG Hockersmith take off his flight helmet so he could hear his questions about his men and get an answer. He then apologized to him for making him take his helmet off. I couldn’t believe it. Here he was severely wounded and apologizing to us for the inconvenience.

  His face was dirty and there was dust in his eyes but he never shed a tear. I replay in my mind a moment when he looked at another wounded soldier and winked to reassure him that all would be okay.

  My crew is still on duty in his unit’s area now. We go back to Kandahar on Monday, but we won’t go back the same way. I am an E8, but this E6 is the example for myself and others to emulate.

  Respectfully

  1SG Shane A. Waite,

  C 3/2-5 Lightning Dustoff

  —

  The injuries to myself, Fessey, and Riot hit everyone in our platoon hard. About a week after the blast, our lieutenant, Zac Lewis, wrote a bulk letter to his family and friends. Here is part of his email:

  As [my wife] Tori mentioned, this past week has been one of the most challenging of my life. I want to say thanks to my friends and family for your support. You really have no idea how much a few words of encouragement can mean when you are at a time and place like this. Thanks again.

  My platoon is in a very active area of operations in southern Afghanistan. Our mission is to close with and destroy the enemy. There is no “outside the wire” here, because there is no wire. My boys are simply always on alert. We haven’t had a shower since we’ve been in Afghanistan. We’ve run nonstop missions and have been very successful at accomplishing these without experiencing any injuries to our own.

  I’m just trying to paint a picture of life here, and not trying to make you feel sorry for us. Trust me, I belong here with these guys, and we are a family. Rather, I want to paint a picture because I’d like to tell you about Travis Mills. I know you don’t know him, but it would mean a lot to me to be able to spread his story.

  My platoon’s string of missions without injury came to an abrupt and violent end last week when we hit a dismounted IED during combat operations. I had three paratroopers injured from the blast. One injury was minor, one was severe, and one was simply beyond words.

  The most severe injury was sustained by my weapons squad leader, Travis “Big” Mills. I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you about him. Even under the conditions that I’ve described, he is the best of us. He was the biggest guy in the platoon and has the biggest heart to go with it. He was eager to please and always cheered us up. He led from the front and was injured because of it. He preferred that he take the injury over any man in his squad. He was the most fearless person I have ever seen in combat.

  When we weren’t in combat, he was great to have around. He woke up every morning and sang a bunch of different songs to us…usually Kesha or Britney Spears or the songs of some other girl band. We had this ritual. Anytime we finished a patrol where we’d had a firefight, once we returned to the strongpoint, he would run to the front of the formation and sing songs about the 82nd Airborne. He would do dance gestures and all. He even did it for the brigade commander when he came to visit. It was a big hit.

  He laughed at how serious I am and how I don’t like to be touched. So he made it his personal mission to make me laugh. Usually this involved an overly aggressive and a little-too-intimate man-hug followed by a middle school style dance where he’d grind on me. He kept me sane. I laughed at his antics constantly. In combat, there is no one we would have rather been with. He risked his life to save others constantly, and I can recall two times specifically that he literally saved me.

  Needless to say, I took his injury hard including the personal guilt that a leader feels when he is responsible for his men. So, I wanted to tell you these things.

  Everyone is asking how I’m doing. Yes, I am hurting, but you know I am going to be ok. More importantly, Travis is going to be ok. The truth is, I’ve seen things here so terrible that I’ll never be able to put them into words, Travis’s injury being at the top of the list.

  But I’ve also seen things here so wonderful that I’ll never be able to put them into words either. I know that it sounds crazy, but it’s true. How do you put into words the spirit like the one I’ve just described in Big Mills?

  The reality of it is that I have the honor of leading people like Travis. There are many more in my platoon just like him. So, while I’ve seen some things I’d like to never talk about again, I’ve seen just as many things that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to explain to anyone who will listen. I’ve seen a tremendous love and care between brothers that have only each other to rely on, and have only one care…to bring each other home.

  It’s a selfless, deep, everlasting bond that I consider myself lucky and absolutely privileged to be a part of.

  Thank you so much again for your support, but know that I am fine. I am exactly where I need to be right now. My family here is taking care of each other, and we will persevere as one.

  Josh Buck arrived in Kandahar before I came out of my first surgery. My blood type is A positive, and I’d required so much blood during this first surgery that they’d needed to rush back to the nearest FOB and solicit donors.

  Josh was still bombarded by strong emotions. To hear him tell it, he basically walked into the hospital, grabbed the first guy he saw, and blurted out, “My brother-in-law is here. You need to take me to him right now!”

  The dude told him to cool down and pointed him in the right direction. Eventually Josh found where I was, and a nurse told him to wait in the hallway. That same nurse had treated me before I’d gone under, and she told Josh that I’d been strong and had kept asking about my guys. The last thing I’d said before I went under was that I just wanted to hold my baby girl again. The nurse was in tears as she recounted this to Josh—the severity of my injuries had shaken up even the medical staff—and Josh said it was good to have somebody to cry with. He was taken to a holding area, and he was able to connect with Riot and Fessey to see how they were doing. They were going to be okay.

  Josh saw me right after I came out of that first surgery. He described how the sight of a big guy like me not filling up a hospital bed was a picture that just about killed him. Immediately, the medic in him went to work. He checked out my bandages and examined the tubes running in and out of me. He saw the remains of my right arm bandaged high, nearly at my shoulder, and thought, “My God, are they even going to be able to attach a prosthetic to that?” The remains of my legs were bandaged where my knees used to be. My left hand was still attached at the time, and Josh thought, “Well, at least that’s better than nothing.” In Kandahar, I wasn’t put in a private room, and across from me was a wounded Afghan. Josh needed to consciously catch himself becaus
e he didn’t want to direct any of his anger toward this person, but he remembers thinking, “Dude—was this worth it?!”

  I was still unconscious and would be for some time. Josh contacted hospital administrators to get them to check with the army’s casualty affairs notification program to ask if Kelsey or my parents had been notified. Josh learned that no family notifications had been made yet, and that it might take two to three days. He furrowed his brow at the length of the timeline and said, “Then you need to change your process, because his family needs to know.” The people he talked to were helpful, not policy pushers, and said they would speed things up. A few hours later they tracked Josh down and indicated that Kelsey had been notified. They let Josh use an office and a private phone. Josh first phoned Deanna, his wife, to relay the news. She’d already talked to Kelsey and had heard. Then Josh phoned Kelsey. She was sobbing, wailing. Josh swallowed his own surging angst and tried to stay calm for his sister. Kelsey was just inconsolable.

  “I need you to settle down and listen to me, because I need to tell you what’s going on,” Josh said. “What do you know so far?”

  “I know he’s a triple amputee,” Kelsey said, and lost it again.

  “You’re right,” Josh said matter-of-factly. “He’s also missing fingers on his left hand, and the doctors aren’t sure yet if they can save that hand. They think they can, but they don’t know for sure.” He relayed that my kidneys had initially been failing but I was on dialysis now and my kidneys were improving. Trying to be reassuring, he said, “You know, Kelsey, if a wounded soldier makes it to the hospital in Kandahar, then the hospital has a ridiculously high survivability rate. Something like 99 percent of the wounded soldiers who make it to Kandahar end up leaving the hospital still alive.”