After Cpl. Jake Hill stepped on an improvised explosive device during a chaotic battle in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, the young Marine radioed his squad leader.
"This is Hill," he said. "I just stepped on an IED, but I'm fine."
Through a dizzying haze of dust, smoke and ongoing gunfire, the Rapid City, S.D., native looked down at his feet.
"What I saw was a really badly broken left ankle," Cpl. Hill told The Unknown Soldiers. "I was like 'OK, this is fine, people break their ankles all the time.'"
Hill was later shocked when a doctor presented him with two difficult choices: replace his shattered foot with a cadaver bone or amputate his left leg just above the knee.
"The heel bone was gone ... just pulverized," Hill said from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. "I kind of made up my mind right (there) that I wanted it cut off."
Few are forced to make such excruciating decisions, especially at age 19. But Hill, who was in elementary school on 9/11, later chose to join the Marine Corps because he believes it's noble for young Americans to serve their country.
"In the World War II days, everybody thought that was something you had to do, and it was, but nowadays it really is not," he said. "Not a lot of people do that anymore."
About two years after graduating high school and leaving South Dakota, Hill was guiding Marines through Afghanistan as a team leader.
"It's an odd thing to have to tell your friends to go get in combat and get into danger," he said.
On Sept. 16, 2010, Hill could have been at the movies, playing video games or hanging out with friends. Instead, he was on patrol in the rugged district of Sangin, one of Afghanistan's most dangerous places. Hill said nearly half the American and Afghan troops battling the Taliban were struck by bombs or bullets during the day's patrol.
"There were two (Afghan soldiers) who died and everyone else was wounded and taken back," Hill said. "We couldn't land (helicopters) because the fighting was so heavy out there in the combat zone."
As soon as members of his patrol were hit, Hill, who was serving with Company L of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, took it upon himself to tend to the wounded.
"With one of his team members injured by a rocket-propelled grenade, (Hill) exposed himself to enemy fire a second time and ran to aid his Marine brother," a Marine Corps citation said.
"He applied first-aid and led the rest of his team through 200 meters of fire-swept terrain to extract the casualty."
Like so many combat veterans I've spoken with, Hill skipped over his gallantry during our interview. He is too humble to take credit for his courageous, life-saving actions.
"Three or four days after my injury, my platoon commander told me that he was going to be putting me up for an award," Hill, now 22, said. "I said 'no, I don't want it.'"
In October 2011, Hill showed the world that no matter the challenge, Marines will never quit. On that chilly Washington, D.C., morning just before Halloween, the wounded hero ran the Marine Corps Marathon.
"It was awesome ... it made me realize that I really, really wanted to be a Marine again," Hill said. "I was always a Marine, but I wanted to do Marine things again."
Even though his lower left leg is now metal instead of flesh, Hill ran 26.2 miles in less than four hours.
"I was ecstatic," he said.
On June 14, 2012, Lt. Col. Clay Tipton, Hill's former commanding officer, presented him with the Silver Star for his heroic actions in Afghanistan.
"Everybody did things equally as brave," Hill said. "It's an award for the whole unit."
Cpl. Jake Hill's award should also serve as an example for young Americans, especially after the horrific terrorist atrocity in Boston. The next time you're presented with a seemingly impossible challenge, think of what a 19-year-old Marine said after stepping on a powerful roadside bomb.
"This is Hill," he said. "I just stepped on an IED, but I'm fine."
U.S. Marine Cpl. Jake Hill's left leg was amputated just above the knee after he stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on Sept. 16, 2010. He has since ran the Marine Corps Marathon and been awarded the Silver Star for bravery in combat. Image courtesy of the website Ossur.
To find out more about Tom Sileo, or to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
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Sir;... The age of profit did long ago a little dance of triumph on the poxed body of nobility; but when it comes to getting young men to die, they never trot out profit, and always ride nobility to death...
What do we die for is as much an essential question for a society as what we live for; but for us, those are questions we dare not ask... If you beat on them with a hammer and say: Give me an answer; all you will get is an echo... We are a hollow society empty of hope, promise and meaning... After a while, things do not make sense, and people go through the motions, waving the flag on the fourth, celebrating christmas; but the meaning of it all has gone, turned into profit...
If you read history as I do, you can learn about the Spartans... They were brutal... They killed Helots, who were other Greeks they had made their slaves, as sport... They had to be tough and cruel, even to each other... They were surrounded by enemies, and had ten Helots for every man, woman, and child Spartan... Everyone knows about Leonidas, and the pass at Thermopylae... In thousands of battles they held tough; and then, at a later point, none of it made sense to them any more, and they ran rabbit...
Is it inevitable that people should have to ask what they should know the answer to all along???... What is it all for... What is the meaning of it... What is my meaning and purpose... You see so many people coming home from war really beaten by it, destroyed in the process of destroying humanity, and they look around, and nothing makes sense to them...
My main Mechanic is in the Army, soon to be cashed out, a veteran of Iraq... He has lost men to suicide... One he told me about was in love, and all his friends said: No Way, man; because she had no faith... But he thought love would save her, and it destroyed him... When he went back home, and needed a shoulder to cry on, and found his money was all spent, and her boy friend was calling her on the telephone, and she was gone for days at a time, he got drunk on the last money he could find, and put a bullet in his brain...
What was it for??? His friends lost him... He could count on them, and they could count on him; but back from war they lost each other, lost their support, found a good nights sleep too rare, and the nightmares too real...
It is true that people go to war inspired by the dead nonsense of nobility... Too often they need -with a desparation unknown in America before this time- to have the door of opportunity cracked open just a little...
Heaven for the ruling class is people dying for a better life...Beating down other people used to be a ladder to a better existence for some... Be a cop... And now even that door is closed to vets... It is as though the only thing the government learned from Vietnam was not to expose so many people to combat that the stress of war infects the generation... Instead; they put only a few in harm's way, and kept them there until broken...
They still want their wars on the far side of the earth with as little purpose as their chances of success... What are they for??? I mean; just as the poor soldier must ask after his meaning and value; the whole of society should do so as well...What are we pissing away the life of this nation for??? What do we think the payout will be of so much talent and energy waiting on non-existent opportunity???...
Whether you know it or not; all societies reach that tipping point when they get too top heavy with money and too stuck in the muck without progress... Societies; even quasi democracies like our own survive because the promise of success is there for all... Once the profit is gone, so is the meaning... All the things that are supposed to mean something to us, law, labor, religion, government, education, nation have the money taken out of them, and their meaning... Money is the universal equivalant; the meaning of meanings, and yet, it is not...
Life is the meaning of meanings, and none of these things we find meaning in from nobility to nation have the slightest of meaning to the dead... Their dead are no different in the end from our dead, and all the dead of all of history have not the slightest meaning...
There is a story from history about a triumph Caesar held in his honor in which one of his soldiers gave up his own life for his glory... This was described as dispicable... Perhaps the man was devoted in the classical sense of the term... What was his meaning??? Who cares... Losing life one loses all, and all the more in a society robbed of meaning where all things meaningful find their price and value in the market place of commerce...
What is your virtue worth??? What is a few moments of intimacy worth... What are the hours of your life worth... What is your estate worth, what is your country worth, what is your religion worth... Money means everything, except for the fact that no matter how much of death a person can buy with a very small fortune as an investment toward a larger one yet, in the end to have a few more moments of life such people will spend all they have, and more they do not have...
Honestly; you should try to dispense with the cant... I am brave, and brave to a fault; but usally some one paid me for my work, and for that, they got my courage for free... But once; I tried to do what I did- ironwork, for free, for charity... It scared the hell out of me... I could trade my life for money, I could risk my life for something, anything on the plus side... To risk it for an empty idea like altruism that I could handle without risk was nuts on nutty... I could get killed... I would be like that man Caligula had killed in the belief that he had a large fortune that he as emperor would then inherit... When he found the man as poor as a sparrow he said: "He died for nothing"... That is what our soldiers are dying for now...
If we are unwilling to transform this society, and shock it into life with lighting bolts and thunder, then every death, including our own will be for a lost cause, and for nothing...Every word of meaning, and our own time and lives that have had the meaning and value cashed out of them -need their meaning back... And we have got to stop our young from dying for nothing because nothing is what they have, and all they will ever have, dead or alive...We have to give our lives value and meaning that the rich never will...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Fri Apr 19, 2013 6:24 AM
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