A Mission Unchanged

I wanted to go into combat. After all, that’s what Marines are expected, trained and prepared to do. I wasn’t prepared to lose my legs, though.
I grew up on a horse farm in Lovettsville, Virginia. I had a pretty normal childhood — had chores to do, had friends, went to school. I was 20 when I joined the Marines in 2005, and it was a completely different journey than I had originally planned for myself. I didn’t grow up in a military family, per se. My father was drafted during the Vietnam era, but he never actually had to go over there, so I didn’t hear much about it.
My inspiration to join the Marines came from the book Brotherhood of Heroes, which is the story of a group of Marines toughing through World War II. They had traits that I didn’t possess that I wanted: courage, respect and a sense of purpose.
So I left college during my junior year at Virginia Tech and enlisted. Two years later, when my reserve unit asked for volunteers to be shipped to Iraq, my hand went right up.
I remember when they were reading the names of the people who were going on the platoon, I was nervous — like the kind of nervous when you’re nominated for an award and don’t know if you’re gonna get it or not. Then they did call my name, and I was excited and happy about it.
But nothing really happened that tour. And even though by that point I had gained most — if not all — of the traits I wanted when I enlisted, my mission as a Marine did not end. We were still at war, and there were more battles to be fought. And because I’m a Marine, my purpose was to fight those battles.

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Rob Jones (second from left) joined the Marines to develop courage and a sense of purpose.

It was during a tour in 2009 when things changed for me.
My team and I were going to Afghanistan, when it was kind of heating back up. We were clearing safe routes through danger areas — areas that had a high likelihood of containing improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
If we were gonna cross a bridge and we thought there might be IEDs on either side of the bridge, I would go clear the bridge of IEDs and then everybody would follow me across and continue on.
As we were doing a push into Taliban territory, there was an area we needed to check for IEDs. I ended up stepping on one.
After I woke up — about 20 seconds later — I realized what had happened. The other Marines ran over and applied tourniquets. The corpsman came and gave me morphine, and they loaded me onto a stretcher, took me to a tank and then the corpsman there gave me another shot that made me unconscious. I went from the site of injury to Maryland, all within five days.  
It’s a weird feeling to think you’ll never walk again, and to know you’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
But sitting there and wondering whether or not something was fair or deserved didn’t really matter. I realized, kind of instinctively, that just because I was a double amputee didn’t mean that I didn’t still have a mission or purpose in life, which was to make it enjoyable and meaningful —  and to get back on my feet and get my self-reliance back.
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Even after losing both his legs in Afghanistan, Rob Jones maintained his sense of humor and positive outlook on life.

My overall mission, to fight America’s battles, didn’t change. It just shifted.
You look at any Hollywood movie about a veteran, and I’d say there’s about a 100 percent chance it features a vet who came back broken and nearly destroyed his family. It’s an important story to show — and it’s a true story that does happen — but it’s not the story of all of us. And I want to show that.
Since my injury, I’ve received the USRowing Man of the Year award in 2012. In 2016, I was a bronze medalist in the triathlon at the Paralympics. I’ve been invited to throw out first pitches at major league baseball games. Last year, I ran 31 marathons in 31 days.
I did all of this not just to prove that I could do it, but to show America how strong our service members are.
There are plenty of awards I’ve won as a disabled athlete to prove I’m worthy and still a strong Marine. But I think the most rewarding thing I get is when people come up to me and tell me that I made a difference for them. Because at the end of the day, I do this to show others what’s possible, and to show people this journey that I’ve created despite the obvious shortcoming of losing my legs.
There are plenty of us in the military who have lost our legs — especially in these past few wars — but we’re not broken. We’re Marines. Oorah!

As told to staff writer Joseph Darius Jaafari. This essay has been edited for style and clarity. Read more stories of service here.

The High-Energy Activity That’s Healing the Invisible Scars of War

Jeremiah Montell, a Navy petty officer with 17 years of service, takes out his frustrations at his UFC gym. “He can knock the heck out of a boxing bag,” says Lynn Coffland, founder of Catch a Lift Fund, a nonprofit that funds a gym membership or home workout equipment for 2,500 post-9/11 veterans, including Montell. In the past year, Lynn witnessed as Montell lost 70 pounds, stopped taking medication and began crafting homemade American flags — all signs of healing.
Lynn has seen firsthand how physical activity and healing go hand in hand. Her brother Christopher J. Coffland, a fitness enthusiast always heading out to “catch a lift” — his term for hitting the gym — enlisted in the Army one month before he turned 42 years old. Dropping him off at the airport, Lynn asked through tears, “What do I do if you don’t come back?” After cracking a joke, Chris got serious, saying, “I probably won’t come back, but I’ve had a great run and I’m ready to meet Jesus. If I can put myself in the place of another man that has family back home, I will.” In 2009, two weeks after being deployed to Afghanistan, a roadside bomb killed Chris and injured two other Marines. As Lynn pondered how to memorialize her brother, messages from people who’d lifted weights with him in boot camp started flooding Lynn’s inbox.
“There was no program that the VA had set up yet for fitness,” Lynn remembers. “Every active-duty service-member has to be physically fit…Many men and women I talk to, they say [exercise is] their happiest memories. If they’re on base or out in another country, they work out. They have lots of laughs, a lot of friendship and bonding. They come home, and everything’s different. They don’t even know who they are anymore, they say. We get them back to that very basic core that they know existed, which was fitness.”
Catch a Lift Fund started by gifting gym memberships to three veterans in February 2010. The soldiers could pick any spot they wanted: 24-Hour Fitness or Crossfit, a place with pilates machines or a pool. Recovery and reintegration started almost immediately.
To find more participants, Lynn’s father wrote letters to every Veterans Administration hospital nationwide. Today, the group has a waiting list of more than 300 veterans. For those who find a gym stress-inducing, or those in rural areas, the fund pays for home systems.
“The culture has taught them that you have to push through,” but trauma “never goes away,” Lynn says. “You have to work on it so it stays at bay. Through fitness, through friendship and camaraderie, that’s how they’re healing.”

Why Immigrants Are Necessary in Order for the American Dream to Exist

Like many other veterans, Minnesota’s Mike Dukart credits his time in the military with giving him the ability to persevere as a businessman.
Dukart is a Marine Corps veteran who became an entrepreneur, founding Illusion Systems, a company that sells hunting call devices, including the “Extinguisher Deer Call” and the “Goose Flute Calling System,” racking up millions of dollars in sales each year.
“If it wasn’t for the training I received in the Marine Corps I wouldn’t have made it through the difficult times,” Dukart tells Daddyhood.Net. “When it comes to tough situations, the word ‘can’t’ isn’t in a Marine’s vocabulary.”
Many members of Dukart’s family have served in the Armed Forces, developing that toughness he credits with his success, and he’s especially thankful his relatives that emigrated from Germany to North Dakota in the early 1900s. “It was really amazing to listen to how they would flip the wagons over [to] survive the winter. If you think about what they endured. It’s pretty amazing, the culture they created and what’s been achieved in west and southwest North Dakota today.”
Dukart believes that new immigrants — regardless of where they come from — can make a similar contribution to America through their hard work and service, which is why he made the film “Serving America: Putting the American Dream to Work.”
“So many people forget that they too are products of immigrants,” Dukart says. “I hope this film awakens Americans to reconnect and understand what immigrants bring to the table and their contributions.”
In the film Dukart explores how immigration previously benefitted America. “It’ll touch on our military — how we as patriots have stood up to protect this country,” he says. “These hot button issues aren’t leading to the left or to the right. It’s about dealing with issues and problem solving.”
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Overcoming a Difficult Childhood, This Former Marine Is on a Mission to Help Others

After growing up near Chicago and bouncing around five different group homes and 13 foster families, Tina Thomas found the stability and sense of belonging that she lacked by enlisting in the Marines when she was 18 years old.
“Growing up in the foster care system left me feeling empty and incomplete,” she tells Rich Polt of Talking Good.
Thomas was inspired to serve after working as a peer mentor at a summer camp for children who’d been victims of abuse. Thomas, too, suffered physical and sexual abuse during her years in the foster care system, but she never lets it define her. “If I’m a victim of sexual trauma and foster care, the statistics say I’m supposed to be a certain way. But I’m me…I’m not a number,” she says.
Thomas mentored kids at the summer camp every year until its funding was eliminated, an experience that made her realize, “I wanted to make an impact on people’s lives.”
For four years, Thomas served in the Marines before struggling to find a civilian job. Finally, she landed in Washington, D.C., where she works for the Federal Aviation Administration as an administrative assistant.
The 34-year-old Thomas has never stopped serving others and is now a member of The Mission Continues’ DC 1st Service Platoon, a nonprofit that organizes veterans to solve problems and help others in their community. “All of this service work provides me with structure and growth. It keeps me motivated and gets me out there so that I can continue to make a difference,” she says.
Even though she had little support growing up, Thomas continues to be a shining example of the impact one individual can make through a commitment to service. She tells Polk she hopes her legacy will be “that even at my lowest points in life, I’ve still reached out to help others to lift them higher.”
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After Losing Her Marine Son to PTSD, This Mom’s Mission Is to Save the Lives of Other Veterans

Wendy Meyers’ son Brandon wanted one thing in life: To be a Marine.

Once he graduated from high school in Plainfield, Illinois, Brandon immediately enlisted and soon deployed to Iraq for nine months. He briefly returned home and then returned to Iraq for 19 months.

When he came home a second time, in 2012, Meyers knew something was deeply wrong with her son. “My husband woke up one night and heard him on the roof,” she told Fox 17, “He went out and talked to him, and he was doing sniper duty in the middle of the night on our roof. He never left Iraq.”

Brandon sought help from the VA, who judged him 70 percent disabled due to PTSD. The VA prescribed him medication and gave him counseling via teleconference. Still, things weren’t improving. Meyers said that Brandon told her, “When he died, just scatter his dust back in Iraq, because that’s where he died anyway.”
Sadly, Brandon took his own life in June 2013, becoming one of the estimated 22 veterans a day who commit suicide.
Meyers has turned her grief into a new mission. She aims to start a charity called Bubba’s Dogs for Warriors, which will provide service animals to veterans suffering from PTSD — a treatment she thinks might have helped her son better than the therapy he did receive. “We have lost more men and women to suicide than the wars themselves from start to today,” she told Brad Edwards of CBS 2 Chicago. “We can help. Every penny and dollar we give can save a life. They have done this for us. Let’s not forget.”
Meyers launched a GoFundMe campaign with the target of raising $30,000 to fund two service animals. So far, she’s collected more than $7,000. On the page Meyers writes, “We’ve poured our broken hearts into research and found the highest degree of treatment success can come in the form of a constant companion — a dog, a service dog. Training these PTSD dogs is expensive, up to $15,000 each. In our son’s memory, we’d like to save lives.” She notes that service animals are not covered by the VA, which is why so many nonprofits are stepping up to provide them.
Brandon achieved his goal of becoming a Marine; now, his mother works toward her mission of helping her late son’s comrades. If you’re interested in helping Meyers hit her target, click here.
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Hero You Need to Know: Kyle Carpenter Receives Medal of Honor

Medal of Honor recipients have a way of winning our hearts with their extraordinary bravery and heroism.

And while Marine Corporal Kyle Carpenter has that in spades (he’s being honored for actions such as throwing himself in front of a grenade to protect a fellow Marine in Afghanistan; both men survived), he’s got other qualities that may make him one of our most memorable heroes yet: Humor. Wit. And a powerful resilience that’s likely to inspire everyone he meets.
Carpenter, who’ll be given the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obamais only the second living Marine to receive the award for actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Now 24, he’s endured challenges that would make the average person ready for retirement. At 21, his body was destroyed by the grenade attack, which caused doctors to label him a PEA (patient expired on arrival) when he got to Camp Bastion, in Afghanistan. He flatlined at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
But Carpenter endured, recovering to accomplish more remarkable achievements, like finishing a marathon and attending the University of South Carolina on the G.I. Bill. And he’s doing it all with a sense of humor (jokes about helping his Mom with Twitter, where Carpenter’s handle is @chiksdigscars) and optimism that’s led the veteran-focused website Task and Purpose to deem him “an unapologetic badass.”
And as the young hero tells it, “I won’t ever quit. I am just getting started.”
Watch Carpenter tell his full story below:
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MORE: 6 Facts About Medal of Honor Recipient Kyle J. White

You Won’t Believe What This Veteran Received Upon His Homecoming

After serving overseas in Afghanistan as a Marine and sustaining a serious injury, 25-year-old Christopher Holcomb recently returned to his hometown of Taylor, Michigan, to be reunited with his wife, Darcy, and their 3-year-old daughter, Veyda. Little did he know that his community had planned an extra special homecoming for the military family — emphasis on the word “home.”
Last week, the Holcomb family showed up to a house that they thought they were finalists to win through a local contest. But when they walked through the door and saw family pictures hanging on the wall, they discovered that it was theirs.
For weeks, volunteers from various organizations gathered together to get the house ready for the big reveal. The Taylor Veterans Home Program awarded the home and allowed for structural improvements, such as a new foundation, a new roof and a hot water system. Volunteers from the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights handled the renovations, using funds from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program and donated materials from the Home Depot Foundation and its local stores. Enchanted Makeovers furnished the home and added the final touches, such as personal family photos.
MORE: This Innovative Program Found Housing for 200 Homeless Veterans in 100 Days
But the house wasn’t the only surprise in store for the Holcombs. A local construction company, Barton Malow, gave Chris something he truly needed: a good job. Through the national organization Helmets to Hardhats, Holcomb will soon begin a paid apprenticeship where he’ll be trained as a carpenter. Darcy received a closet full of new clothes, thanks to CAbi Clothing. And for his young daughter? She received a chance at a promising future, with full-ride scholarship to Schoolcraft College.
“It really feels good to have the community you grew up from since a little kid, to have the community reach out like this and help your family like this,” Holcomb told the small group gathered at the home. “It really is truly amazing, and I truly am blessed.”
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Thousands of Strangers Made This War Veteran’s 90th Birthday Extra Special

Harold Krueger served as a Marine for 44 years, fighting for the U.S. in three wars — World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He even earned some medals for his service. But his greatest prize of all was his wife, LaVina. Together, the couple of 63 years moved around the country during Krueger’s military service — from San Diego to New Orleans to Port Royal, SC, to Jacksonville, NC — before finally settling in Wishek, ND, in 1986. They were partners, in bridge games and in life. So when LaVina passed away last month at the age of 86, Krueger was devastated. “She was the one I wanted. And I got her,” Krueger told KFYR. “It’s very hard. Yeah, I still miss her very much. I tear up fast.”
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Since LaVina wasn’t able to throw her husband the 90th birthday celebration that she had planned, their daughter, Debra Turner, stepped in with an idea to make the day extra special. She took to Facebook, asking her friends and acquaintances if they would send Krueger a card or letter for his birthday. She included some background about his military services, and of course, about his beloved LaVina. Her post ended up being shared more than 650 times. “All I meant was for him to have a couple letters,” Turner said. But the former mailman received a lot more than that. Every morning, Krueger goes to the post office and pulls out stacks of letters, cards and gifts. He has received more than 1,000 well wishes thus far, from 48 states and Canada, according to Turner’s Facebook post from February 23, two days after his official birthday. And they keep coming.
You can write to Krueger at: Harold Krueger, PO Box 176, Wishek, ND 58495.
MORE: This Air Force Veteran Couldn’t Fix His Roof, But He Still Had A Reason To Smile

Bravery After Battle: How This Navy SEAL Uses His War Wounds to Help Fellow Soldiers

A year after he was ambushed by machine-gun fire in Fallujah, Iraq, Lt. Jason Redman was still missing his nose. The bullets that showered his body also hit his cheekbone, leaving the right side of his face caved in. And he was wearing an eye patch to conceal a crusty and mangled sight. Returning to his life in Virginia, Redman says it was as if he had become a target all over again — this time to questions and stares from strangers.
The questions themselves — were you in a car accident? a motorcycle crash? — didn’t bother Redman. The fact that no one ever asked whether he’d been hurt in combat did. “It really started to make me bitter,” Redman, 38, says. “We’d been at war in Iraq for six years at that point and I thought, ‘Wow does the average American that I fought for recognize the sacrifice that I’ve made and that others have made?’”
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Redman’s irritation began to fester, and after a particularly bothersome gawking session at the airport (“It’d been culminating, and I’d just reached my breaking point”), he took to the Internet to vent. Instead of angry Tweets or passive aggressive Facebook messages, Redman decided to wear his defense. He began designing T-shirts featuring slogans like, “Stop staring. I got shot by a machine gun. It would have killed you.” An American flag adorned the back of each one. As he started wearing his designs, strangers began to nod in appreciation, even thanking him at times. Redman knew he was onto something — that there were countless other wounded warriors who felt the same way.
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So in 2009 he created Wounded Wear, a nonprofit that donates clothing kits to warriors hurt in combat and their loved ones, as well as to the families of fallen soldiers. The kits contain jackets, workout gear and T-shirts that read “Scarred so that others may live free,” a toned-down version of the original slogans Redman used to print. His organization also accepts existing clothing from service members, which the nonprofit modifies to accommodate short-term rehabilitation needs or permanent bodily damage: One of the most requested alterations comes from amputees, whose prosthetic limbs make it difficult to put on regular pants. Wounded Wear provides everything to service members free of charge, raising money from donations as well as apparel sales on its website. So far, they’ve donated nearly 2,000 kits.
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