Kyle Carpenter

Yeah, which is, you know, can be daunting at times, but just got to remain focused.

And, you know, every day is driving on for the mission.

But after I felt like I got hit really hard in the face, that was followed by extreme confusion and disorientation.

So much so that I was trying to just to get a grasp of where I was and what happened.

And I've been in Afghanistan for over four months now.

And so my first thought was, OK, I'm pretty sure I was in Afghanistan.

The last thing I can remember, I was on a roof.

But what could have injured me this bad on a roof?

And then I thought maybe I got off of the roof, went on a foot patrol because I

The vast majority of our injuries over there, at least for my unit at the time, was stepping on IEDs because we were so far out in rural territory behind enemy lines.

We had to get helicoptered in and we had no vehicles.

So everyone thinks military nowadays, we always have vehicles to roll around in.

But very few roads to where we were.

And the roads that were there were more pedestrian walkways, paths for livestock.

So you don't have to go through the fields and damage crops.

And they wouldn't support heavily armored vehicles.

Right.

Before we got there, they had tried that and the banks of the river would collapse and Marines were drowning from being trapped in these armored vehicles.

So we only had feet everywhere we went and, you know, traditional Marine style.

Part of the tradition also.