Moving forward after a serious injury
Bobby:
I was wounded on 21 August 2006. I was conducting one of the first police recruitment drives outside of a forward operating base. So, it was within the population. I was pretty much responsible for everything that happened in security, how it went, operations, and things like that. There was suicide truck bomb with about 200 tanks of propane. It was drove to the front gate of our entry control point to the location, and there was a suicide bomber who self detonated it. Well, I was severally wounded. I sustained burns of 40% of my upper body. I was evacuated to Brooke Army Hospital here in San Antonio, and that pretty much ended my Army career. I spent the next three years recovering before I was medically discharged in um Christmas of 2008.
I think the hardest thing was that I was still on active duty, and it was difficult for me to grasp the fact that I was the one wounded and trying to figure out like where my purpose was in the Army, in the service, and there was nobody who could really answer those questions. Not too many people in the entire military that could relate, because usually once you get hurt, you’re totally segregated from the entire population. So that was probably the hardest thing for me, you know, the two years leading up to my retirement. That culminating with dealing with my family and being able to adapt to my situation, as well as trying to decide what I was going to do with my future. Again, the service didn’t have any idea how to handle us, what to do, how to deal with us, how to help us, and it was more of a trial and error type thing for most of the soldiers. So I came here with five of my soldiers, and three of them ended up staying here, because they were also severely wounded, so it was kind of difficult for me to deal with my situation as well as take care of them at the same time, because I had an obligation to do it.
