No Turning Back

by Bryan Anderson

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  Chapter 1 - ALIVE DAY

  Chapter 2 - IF YOU’RE NOT FALLING, YOU’RE NOT TRYING

  Chapter 3 - USE THE TOOLS YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN

  Chapter 4 - WE’VE ALL BEEN HURT

  Chapter 5 - GIVE IT ALL

  Chapter 6 - CHANGE CAN BE GOOD

  Chapter 7 - THERE IS NO BOX

  Chapter 8 - HOW WE SURVIVE

  Chapter 9 - LIVE, LOVE, THRIVE

  Chapter 10 - KNOW WHEN TO WALK ALONE

  Chapter 11 - DREAM BIG

  Chapter 12 - TALKING ABOUT IT

  Chapter 13 - I’M NOT SPECIAL

  Chapter 14 - SEVEN STORIES

  Chapter 15 - IT’S ALL ABOUT HAVING FUN

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE COAUTHOR

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  NO TURNING BACK

  “Survive” lyrics and music written by Rise Against: Timothy McIlrath, Christopher Chasse, Joseph Daniel Principe, and Brandon Barnes. © 2006 Rise Against. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Sony ATV Music Publishing.

  Copyright © 2011 by Bryan Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55877-5

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity.

  In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers;

  however, the story, the experiences, and the words

  are the author’s alone.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my family and friends, who were, and are always there for me. Especially my mom, who spent thirteen months by my side at Walter Reed. To the people of Chicago who warmly welcomed me at my homecoming and accepted me as I am and continue to support me. To the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hope that they may find some little bit of wisdom in these pages that may help them in some small way.

  Life for you has been less than kind

  So take a number, stand in line

  We’ve all been sorry, we’ve all been hurt

  But how we survive is what makes us who we are

  —Rise Against, The Sufferer & the Witness, “Survive”

  FOREWORD

  By Gary Sinise

  I first met Bryan Anderson in 2006, not too long after he arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I have been visiting the hospital regularly since 2003, and over the years have met many severely wounded warriors. Bryan was the second triple amputee I had met there and when I walked into the physical therapy room there he was, up on his legs and smiling, eager to tell me his story and with the most amazing and upbeat attitude.

  It turned out that we are both originally from Illinois and we shared stories of familiar places where we had grown up. His spirit was infectious and I was immediately drawn to him. In the picture included here, you can see that smile—a smile that immediately put everyone he came in contact with at ease.

  Bryan knew that for most visitors to the hospital, coming in contact with someone who was missing both his legs and an arm might be difficult, so he went out of his way to joke and laugh and go on as if nothing was different. He had begun to accept what had happened to him and was looking toward the future—a future of what he could do, not what he couldn’t do.

  That positive attitude of living each moment of one’s life for everything it’s worth is at the core of who Bryan Anderson is.

  After that first meeting, I would see Bryan from time to time back at the hospital or at other events around the country—like the Friday night dinners for wounded warriors at Fran O’Brien’s restaurant, hosted by Vietnam veteran Hal Koster, or back in Illinois at the USO gala or at a concert I was playing with my band, the Lt. Dan Band. Whenever I can, I try to let Bryan know where I am going to be and am always thrilled to see him at an event or concert.

  And then, in January 2007, there he is on the cover of Esquire magazine! Clearly his story caught the attention of the national media, and for good reason. It is a harrowing and inspiring story and Bryan is an exceptional individual. The Esquire story also caught the attention of my fellow producers on CSI: NY and they asked if I knew him. Boom! Bryan was featured as a murder suspect in one of our episodes. He’s a natural.

  In April 2009, on another visit to Walter Reed, I met Brendan Marrocco, the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in a bombing in Iraq. As I drove away from the hospital, I called Bryan and told him about Brendan. I thought perhaps he could help and asked if there was any way that he could visit him.

  Within days, Bryan was at Brendan’s bedside and I know that for Brendan, having Bryan there at that critical stage was extremely helpful. To Bryan, this was a no-brainer. Of course he would go, as he has taken what has happened to him and turned it into motivation for others.

  Whenever I see Bryan, he renews my faith that anything, no matter how tough it is, can be overcome. It is because of men and women like Bryan, those who have given so much in service to our country, that I am constantly energized to keep up the important work on behalf of our service members through the Gary Sinise Foundation.

  Bryan Anderson is just simply a great American who inspires me and I am proud to call him my friend. It is an honor to know him and I am thrilled that he has decided to share his story in this wonderful book so that more of our fellow citizens will have the chance to know him as well.

  God Bless.

  Gary Sinise

  July 27, 2011

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Hi, I’m Bryan Anderson. Before you dig into this book, there are a few things I think you should know. First, I was a soldier, and I still talk like one—in other words, I swear. So if bad words bother you, just squint and pretend you don’t see them.

  Second, I know that some people see a book by a triple-amputee veteran and make a lot of assumptions. I want you to know this book is not about the war in Iraq, and I’m not pushing a political agenda. This book is a
bout my experiences and what I’ve learned from them.

  Third, I know what I believe about God, but this book’s not about that either. I’m not trying to sell you on religion or talk you out of it. I’ve got no ax to grind there.

  Fourth, even though I’m going to tell you about the day I was wounded and what I went through during rehab at Walter Reed, this book is not just some war memoir or a pity party. I’m not looking for praise or sympathy. I just want to share some of my stories with you.

  This book is not about being wounded. It’s not about struggling.

  This book is about living.

  It’s about life.

  1

  ALIVE DAY

  On the day I got blown up, it was hot as hell. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning on October 23, 2005, in sunny downtown Baghdad, Iraq, and if I had to guess, I’d say it was a hundred and thirty degrees in the shade.

  I was a specialist in the U.S. Army, 411th Military Police Company. Me and my guys were on our second tour in Iraq. We’d been designated as the “commander’s escort.” We were like a personal security detail for our commanding officer, who we’d nicknamed “Captain America” because whatever happened anywhere in Baghdad, he just wanted to be in the thick of it. Whenever anything happened, he was like “Let’s go! I want to do this! I want to get involved! I wanna conquer the world!”

  Before you get the wrong idea, let me just say that I think his attitude was not a good thing. In my opinion, he was putting our lives in danger for no reason, just because he wanted people to think he was a “hands-on” kind of leader.

  The reason we’d gotten stuck on that crap detail was that we’d worked with him once, and he’d said, “You know what? These are the people that I want to come out with me. They know their shit, they know what they’re doing.” Our punishment for being competent was getting to babysit him everywhere he went for the next year. Lucky us.

  It’s not like he didn’t have plenty of other people to choose from. A company is roughly 150 soldiers, divided into four platoons, all doing a variety of missions. As MPs (military police officers), we had several tasks: We were training Iraqi police officers at the police academy. We were also going out to the police stations and teaching them basic upkeep; we taught them to maintain clean jail cells and how to stock enough food, ammunition, weapons, vehicles, and other supplies. We made sure they knew how to do a patrol and how to do a raid.

  Other MPs handled transport security, such as MSR patrol, which is guarding a main supply route. In other words, if there was a main road that our troops traveled on a lot, we’d drive up and down it, making sure people weren’t laying IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and stuff like that. Some folks manned the gate and guarded the base. Everybody had a job to do.

  For me and seven of my buddies, our job was driving Captain America through downtown hell.

  Every day we would go and visit the Iraqi police stations. If any of our guys got hit by an IED, or if there was an attack, we would divert and respond to that, but the bulk of our work was a daily tour of the Iraqi police stations. We didn’t understand why we were going there; there were squad leaders and platoon sergeants who were designated to supervise those operations. If the CO had wanted to go out there once a week just to make sure nothing had burned down, that would’ve been okay, but every day? The noncoms manning those stations knew their jobs, and they were doing them just fine. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to say to Captain America, “There’s simply no reason to go out there every day. You’re not the one that’s doing the job. And by going out there every day, you’re pissing off your sergeants by making them feel like you don’t trust them. Plus, you’re putting nine lives in danger that you don’t really need to.”

  That’s how I felt, but I didn’t get a say in the matter, so that morning me and my guys saddled up for another tour of Baghdad’s police stations. Every morning, we would get up about an hour before we had to leave. That morning we got up around ten because we’d been on a mission late the night before. My team and I were wearing DCUs (desert camouflage uniforms) with long sleeves, and we had our Kevlar helmets and twenty-five-pound body-armor vests with shoulder pads and kidney pads. I was wearing my nine-millimeter pistol in my right thigh holster. I also had a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun (for entry through locked doors; you’d blow the lock—BOOM!—and then kick the door open) and a SAW (squad automatic weapon) M249, a fully automatic belt-fed machine gun. Because I was the driver, I got the M249, and since I was also an entry man, I got the shotgun, too. Being an MP, I carried my nine-mil—not everyone gets nine-mils. Not everybody gets a lot of things, but because of my multiple jobs I was all weaponed up.

  As the driver, I had to make sure my truck was good to go. It’s called a PMCS, which stands for “preventive maintenance checks and services.” I checked the oil, the tires and the air filter, and then I made sure there was gas in it. Of course, after every mission you always top off—always. You never know when you might get sent out again, so you’ve always gotta be ready. Next, I started putting my gear where I needed it to go. The gunner, Brad Gietzel, started mounting the gun on top of the truck. Me and my pal Kenny Olson were sitting up front, setting the radios, making sure that they worked and that we had communication with the TOCC (Tactical Operations Command Center).

  At around eleven o’clock, we headed out.

  Inside the truck, it was really hot. Most of the trucks had air-conditioning, but in half of them it didn’t work. When it did, it wasn’t strong, and it didn’t cool the truck down. My truck—and once you’re assigned a truck, it’s your truck—had working a/c, but to be honest, it didn’t do shit. At the end of the day, when I’d get off mission and take off my body armor, my DCUs would look like I’d just jumped in a pool. I mean, they’d be drenched. From the moment I stepped outside in Iraq, I was sweating my balls off. The only time I was comfortable was when I was back at base and in PTs—a T-shirt and shorts. That’s it. When I didn’t have body armor on and could just walk around the base in DCUs, it wasn’t so bad either. But being on a mission, all suited up in the heat, it sucked.

  My Humvee’s interior was a cramped, green oven. It stank of diesel fumes from the engine. The housing for the drivetrain ran up the middle of the cab, and it got really hot. If my leg was up against it, it’d cook to medium rare in about a minute. And there was always dust from the street everywhere—up my nose, in my throat, coating my teeth with grit.

  The other thing I noticed inside the truck was the hum. When the engine was running, I felt it—not just with my hands on the steering wheel but in the seat of my pants. Near the end of my first year and the start of my second year in Iraq, that hum and the feeling that went with it kind of made me feel comfortable—safe. I could fall asleep inside or on top of my truck, no problem. I came to think of my truck as a safe place—maybe the only safe place I had.

  You see, I thought the protection on my Humvee was pretty good. It was an up-armored model already, with added steel plating and ballistic-resistant windows, and then my squad and I had put some soft armor—aluminum plates—on the truck ourselves. We put plates on the turret guard, the gunner’s shield, and the extra plates that go on the doors. So we thought we had a pretty good ride. Whenever I did my services-and-maintenances, I was sure I had a pretty kick-ass truck.

  But it wasn’t just about the armor. My truck was like my home. When I was in the driver’s seat, I had everything I needed. On my right, I always had a Pepsi and a bag of sunflower seeds. Kenny, who rode shotgun, always drank Dr Pepper. There was a lot of space between all of us inside the vehicle. The radio mount separated me and Kenny, and Gietzel was well behind us in the middle of the truck. Behind Gietzel, at the back of the truck, we had a cooler in the middle on the floor, and it was stocked with water and Gatorade.

  My M249 and my shotgun were lying on the floor to the right of my seat.

  Slung from the top in the back, tucked into the back corner of the overhead,
we had our M136 AT4 cannon—an antitank weapon. We’d set it up so that all Gietzel needed to do was pull a string. That would undo a slipknot and drop the weapon right into his hands, so he could just pick it up and open fire, if he’d needed to.

  Over my head, by the visor, I’d made a mesh web out of 550 cord, which looks like green rope but is actually a multipurpose nylon cord. If you cut 550 cord, inside it has a bunch of smaller white fibers braided together, and you can pull out individual strands if you need to do something small. I’d tied some of those white strands into a net so I could store stuff above my visor. I had a little notebook with nine-line medevac instructions. For a medevac, there are nine things you have to say when you’re calling in a helicopter to come pick up a wounded soldier—What’s the injury? How bad is it? Where are you? Is it coalition forces or Iraqi forces? and so on—so it’s nice to just have that book right there and be able to follow the steps and not have to think about it.

  I also kept a pack of gum up in the net, and my gloves always went up there. So did my goggles, glasses, sunglasses, or whatever. I also stowed my iPod up there, in the corner, along with a pair of sports earphones. Those always stayed in the truck. I’d made it so I could just pull one earphone down and put it on my left ear so I could hear everything that was going on to my right inside the truck—my buddies, the radio, and all that—and still, at the same time, rock out to my music. I also had speakers up there, for times when all of us felt like hearing some tunes, such as when we were hanging out in the motor pool or elsewhere on base. The best part? As the driver (and owner of the iPod), I got to pick the music. We’d listen to rock, punk, and even some soft stuff. One of our favorites was Linkin Park.