JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas – Poking, prodding, patching and splinting – the doctors were doing everything they could to assess and treat Staff Sgt. Bryan Nelson.
Just days earlier, Nelson was out with a convoy near Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. Now he found himself lying in a hospital bed at the San Antonio Military Medical Center.
One doctor walked over, carrying a card with the outline of a human body on it. He wrote a number, crossed it out, wrote another number and repeated the process several times. Each time, the number got larger. Finally, he stopped around 50.
“What are you doing?” asked Nelson.
“This is the percentage of your body that’s burned,” the doctor said.
Dec. 21, 2015
Nelson, a security forces defender, described that Monday in Afghanistan as “just like any other day.”
He went to breakfast, went to the gym and showed up for work.
While on deployment, he was tasked with tactical security element, working hand-in-hand with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. When OSI went out to gather intelligence and contact sources, it was Nelson’s job to look for outside threats and ensure they were safe.
That Monday, his convoy left the entry control point and drove towards a nearby village.
“The one thing we noticed right away was there was nobody there,” Nelson said. “We drove a big truck, so when people see them coming, everyone goes to them, especially when they’re parked because they try to get free stuff from you.
“There were no kids, no nothing, so that struck us as a little bit odd,” Nelson continued.
The convoy pushed through on foot to the other side of the village and hit the limit of how far they wanted to go. Still, there was no one around, so they decided to turn back toward the trucks.
On the way back, they ran into a group of people – maybe three to four – who told them no one was around because there was a funeral going on and directed them to where the village elders’ house was located, which was about 100 yards west.
“We had parked right by the cemetery, and there was nobody there, so there wasn’t really a funeral going on,” Nelson said.
At that point, they split up in to two teams, red and gold. Nelson’s team, gold, held tight to the current location while the red team went ahead to meet with the village elders. After about 45 minutes, the red team was wrapping up, so Nelson’s team made its way to a street location just north of the village elders’ house to wait and rendezvous with the red team.
“Everybody was conducting their checks making sure nobody had lost anything and all sets of items were accounted for,” Nelson recounted. “The OSI agents were comparing their notes, and the next thing I know, all I hear is a loud boom and everything just went black.”
When he came to, Nelson said he instantly felt pain in the lower part of his body. He looked down to find his legs engulfed in flames.
“I tried patting them out, but that wasn’t working, so I went ahead and rolled on the ground and extinguished the flames,” he said.
The squad leader began conducting an accountability check to see who was hurt and what everyone’s status was. Some people answered. Some didn’t.
A quick reaction force was called for assistance, which was comprised of Georgian military members with a Marine detachment of joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, and a Marine medic. The QRF responded in about 15 minutes, but he said it felt more like an hour.
Nelson said the medic took a look at him, told him to lay on a stretcher and not to move anymore. He said he still remembers looking up and seeing UH-60 Black Hawks come in with AH-64 Apaches flying cover to transport them back to base.
The Road to Recovery
That seemingly normal Monday, one single Taliban suicide bomber rode in on a motorcycle and set off an explosion, killing six Americans. Nelson survived the “deadliest attack that year,” according to a New York Times report.
He was transported back to Bagram for a day before he was taken to Germany where he met the SAMMC burn team, who brought him back to the U.S. He had sustained second and third degree burns to nearly 50 percent of his body, a broken tibia, a torn Achilles tendon, a traumatic brain injury and shrapnel wounds.
To date, Nelson has undergone at least four surgeries.
“[The doctors] said to be 100% again, it could take up to two years,” Nelson, now an 802nd Security Forces Squadron training NCO, said. “I still have, that I know of, another two surgeries to go.”
Nelson said he doesn’t like to look back on that Monday and talking about it isn’t easy.
“Am I grateful to still be here? Yes of course,” Nelson said. “At the same time, I’m sad because you have that survivor’s guilt; you have the knowing that six of your friends didn’t come back with you. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions.”
Nelson credits his family for the success he’s had in his recovery. His wife, Tech. Sgt Anastasia Nelson, 433rd Training Squadron instructor and Nelson’s caregiver, their 4-year-old son, Christopher, both his parents and grandmother all live in San Antonio.
“It helps keep things in perspective, and it helps give me drive,” Nelson said. “There are some days when I don’t necessarily want to do things, but just seeing them pushes me and makes me want to be better.”
Wounded Warrior
Nelson said he would like to make progress in being able to open up and talk more about what happened. One way he’s making strides is by attending the Air Force Wounded Warrior (AFW2) Warrior Care event Jan. 9-13 at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.
“I didn’t really know what to expect,” he said. “But then you have all these people coming up to you and talking to you, and you break out of your shell really quick and it definitely helps.”
Nelson said he hopes to gain perspective from attending the AFW2 Warrior Care week.
“You think you have it bad, but then you hear some of the other situations that people are going through, and you’re like, ‘I really don’t have it that bad,’” Nelson said. “If they can face every day with a smile on their face, and if they have the motivation to go ahead and push, then there’s no reason why I can’t do the same.”
One of the most helpful parts of the Warrior CARE week are the instructors assisting the wounded warriors in different sports activities, Nelson said.
“The coaches and the people instructing make everything, not easy, but doable,” Nelson said. “You can tell they definitely enjoy their job, and they definitely want to be here, which in turn, motivates me to want to push myself that much harder.”
Eyes on the Future
Since the incident, Nelson has pushed himself to beat every date the doctors set for him.
“My first goal was I wanted to get out of the hospital earlier than what they told me I would, and I did that,” said Nelson. “I wanted to get back to work earlier than what they told me I would, and I did that.”
Now he has his eyes focused on making technical sergeant and getting cleared to run again so he can complete a physical fitness test.
“I’m looking forward, as weird as it sounds, to taking an actual PT test,” he said.
Perhaps Nelson’s biggest goal is to one day run the Styr Labs Badwater 135 race, or “The World’s Toughest Foot Race,” as the Badwater website refers to it as. The race entails 135 miles non-stop on foot from Death Valley to Mt. Whitney, Calif.
“The doc said to go big,” Nelson said. “Eventually I’d like to get there. I don’t know how I’m going to go about doing that, but I think if I push myself hard enough, anything is possible.”