Marine’s gritty account of being shot in Afghanistan goes viral
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Version 0 of 1. Marine veteran Matthew W. Mcelhinney was patrolling through Afghanistan when the rifle round hit him. Fired by a Taliban insurgent, it ripped into his back just below his body armor and tore through his internal organs. He’s one of thousands of Americans who have sustained gunshot wounds in the Afghanistan war, but Mcelhinney’s gritty first-person account of the day he was shot — March 10, 2010 — has gone viral online this week, capturing the attention of thousands of readers on the Web site Reddit. In words both profane and touching, the infantryman recounts how he was rushed to a hospital in Afghanistan and cared for by his fellow Marines on the battlefield. Here’s an excerpt: I can’t make you really understand the feeling in my body that day, the best I could do would be to tell it to you like this. I tried to hop a gap to gain a better angle on this hole in a compound wall, every other movement is this risky. It seemed clear, it wasn’t. First you feel the round hit. It feels like a sledge hammer hitting you in the back, my stomach felt like the worst incontinence imaginable. Then you paradoxically try to resume your task in the fight, until you realize your own bodily dysfunction. I started flailing and screaming as horribly as you could possibly imagine. I could hear people directing fire when someone saw me on the ground and started screaminlike a banshee for a Corpsmen. I could hear the corpsmen call booming through the school house as I laid in the dirt writhing in agony and crazily pulling at the grass surrounding me, feebly attempting to displace the unmitigated sensation surging through me. I can’t make you really understand the feeling in my body that day, the best I could do would be to tell it to you like this. I tried to hop a gap to gain a better angle on this hole in a compound wall, every other movement is this risky. It seemed clear, it wasn’t. First you feel the round hit. It feels like a sledge hammer hitting you in the back, my stomach felt like the worst incontinence imaginable. Then you paradoxically try to resume your task in the fight, until you realize your own bodily dysfunction. I started flailing and screaming as horribly as you could possibly imagine. I could hear people directing fire when someone saw me on the ground and started screaminlike a banshee for a Corpsmen. I could hear the corpsmen call booming through the school house as I laid in the dirt writhing in agony and crazily pulling at the grass surrounding me, feebly attempting to displace the unmitigated sensation surging through me. McElhinney’s post, titled “Almost,” has resonated with Reddit’s broad readership. Some questioned the legitimacy of his account, though, so he followed up by releasing a video on YouTube in which he shows a photograph of himself in the hospital with Gen. James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps when McElhinney was shot, and the round that hit him. The day he was wounded also was covered by an embedded Stars and Stripes reporter in 2010. McElhinney, now 25, says in another post on Reddit that he has been frustrated by his care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. And in a third post, he recalls a recent interaction with his now-retired sixth grade teacher. He was in the man’s classroom when the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, occurred. Here’s an excerpt from that one: About a decade later I got a knock on my door, so I got my cane, stood myself up of the couch and hobbled over to the door. When I opened the door up the last thing I expected to see was my retired 6th grade history teacher in a biker jacket. He told me that he had heard I had been hit and was following my story really closely. He asked how I was doing and made a lot of small talk about the news articles on me he had read. The whole time I remember him being really emotional and heavily studying me and things I said. He kept asking me “How I felt” and “What it was like being back.” I kinda struggled with the answers, it was too soon for good hindsight. As he left he shook my hand, pulled me in for a hug, told me how proud everyone was of me and then rode off on his Harley. He saw who I was at the beginning of my path into this war, I think he just wanted to see who I was at the end. About a decade later I got a knock on my door, so I got my cane, stood myself up of the couch and hobbled over to the door. When I opened the door up the last thing I expected to see was my retired 6th grade history teacher in a biker jacket. He told me that he had heard I had been hit and was following my story really closely. He asked how I was doing and made a lot of small talk about the news articles on me he had read. The whole time I remember him being really emotional and heavily studying me and things I said. He kept asking me “How I felt” and “What it was like being back.” I kinda struggled with the answers, it was too soon for good hindsight. As he left he shook my hand, pulled me in for a hug, told me how proud everyone was of me and then rode off on his Harley. He saw who I was at the beginning of my path into this war, I think he just wanted to see who I was at the end. Checkpoint has reached out to McElhinney to see if he’d like to share more. |