Corporal (Ret.) Paul Gardner, USMC was left paralyzed from the waist down after a bullet severed his spinal cord during a firefight in Iraq. Gardner was wounded during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq when his platoon was engaged in a firefight with more than 100 Fedayeen Fighters in the Baghdad suburb of Al Tarymiah. While reloading his rifle, an enemy fighter took advantage of the situation and fired off a burst with his AK47 assault rifle, with one of the bullets entering just under Gardner’s left armpit. The bullet destroyed his spleen, collapsed his left lung and completely severed his spinal cord, instantly and permanently leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, yet Gardner’s re-telling of the story leaves the entire group laughing and crying.
--
Reach out and text someone you served with, social connection saves lives.
VET Tv gear
https://shop.veterantv.com/
Up Next in Season 1
-
Joseph James, Army | EP02
Sergeant First Class Joseph James, Army, endured four combat pumps, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom once and Operation Iraqi Freedom three times. On April 8, 2008, SFC James was the gunner on a Humvee that was hit simultaneously by two IEDs: the first explosion hit the engine block and d...
-
Nathan Smith, Army | EP03
W-2 Army Special Forces Operator Nathan Smith joined after 9/11 to kill some bad guys like the amazing patriot he is. In July 2018, during a mission to take the capital of ISIS in Afghanistan, Smith got into a grenade fight with the enemy trying to overrun his unit, and suffered a traumatic brain...
-
Shane Edmaiston, Navy | EP04
Navy HN Shane Edmaiston became a corpsman to avoid combat, but still got the best of it when he was blown up by an old Russian grenade thrown at his patrol by an Iraqi teenager. While on a foot patrol with 2nd Battalion 7th Marines to move vehicles away from voting sites for an election taking pl...
214 Comments