Rehab, Special Forces Style

Richard · 03-20-2010, 10:41

I debated placing this one under the SF mindset thread.

And so it goes...

Richard

Quote:

Rehab, Special Forces Style: Scuba-combat Instructor Has Eyes On Afghanistan
Adam Linhardt, Key West Citizen, 20 Mar 2010

Army Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Talmadge lives by the Green Beret ethos -- crawl, walk, run.

"Baby steps," he said with a wry smile.

His wife, children and fellow Green Berets are simply glad the 31-year-old is alive and can take those steps, though he can still run and with a hundred pounds of gear on his back.

It's been little more than two years since Talmadge nearly lost his life, and later his leg, during a fierce firefight in northern Afghanistan. A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fired into his Humvee impaled his left thigh. Talmadge continued returning fire as a medic yanked the explosive device from his leg.

Working rehab

The Portsmouth, Va., native has been recuperating in Key West while working as a dive instructor at the Army Special Forces Underwater Operations School on Fleming Key, where Green Berets go to learn stealthy underwater-infiltration techniques and advanced scuba systems.

"I'm still working to rejoin the team and get deployed again," Talmadge said. "It's all about striving to maintain that standard, and we have high standards in [Special Forces]. I want to exceed that standard. I think I'm a better soldier after all this, and I want to take that knowledge back. And I will."

Ambushed

It had been a dark, chilly morning south of Kandahar in September 2007 when Talmadge and his fellow heavily armed Green Berets left a secluded base in Humvees. The commandos refer to the Humvees as "gun trucks," because they can pack so much firepower into them, he said.

"It was cold, getting colder and dark," Talmadge said. "The moon was not out that night, so it was pitch-black. We like it that way. Those are good operating conditions."

The 11 Green Berets had no idea that about 60 enemy fighters knew they were coming.

"It was around 2 in the morning and we were just outside a small village when they hit us," he said. "It was well-calculated. It seemed like they had four or five RPGs for each truck -- Taliban probably, but I don't really know. A few rockets skipped off the ground and missed the first truck. That's when we all started firing."

The Green Berets shouted for the status of each man as the gunbattle ensued.

Talmadge was in a gun turret on one of the trucks, manning a grenade launcher when he saw two red flares out of the corner of his eye.

"We had two heaters (rockets) coming right at us -- fast," he said.

"One blew out the back of the truck and the other hit the side of the truck and me."

The RPG struck Talmadge in his leg and lodged there, hanging from his thigh amid the chaos as he and the other commandos fought to move the convoy out of the "kill zone."

"Somebody said the truck was on fire, but actually it was the booster of the rocket hanging out of my leg," Talmadge said.

A medic, who happened to be driving, reached up and pulled the rocket from his leg as Talmadge dumped a clotting agent on the wound and applied a tourniquet. Concerning the bleeding, Talmadge said, "There was quite a bit."

Rushed to surgery

None of the Green Berets were killed -- though three, including Talmadge -- were seriously wounded.

Talmadge doesn't know how many enemy fighters were killed.

The team called in fighter jets for "fire support." The planes strafed enemy locations and dropped bombs, he said.

When the team returned to the site to gather intelligence, Talmadge already was in surgery at a military hospital in Kandahar.

He was flown to Germany and was back at Fort Bragg, N.C., within 10 days.

"I called my wife on a satellite phone at Kandahar and told her I was going into surgery," he said.

"I was on meds at the time. I just told her the doc would fill her in. I was pretty groggy at that point."

Since returning to the United States, the husband and father has undergone 45 reconstructive surgeries to his leg requiring skin graphs and extensive muscle repair.

"It's amazing not a single bone was broken," Talmadge said. "But the doctors told me to not even think about walking for a year, or running for at least two years. That was all the incentive I needed."

Emboldened by the doctors' apparent lack of faith, Talmadge forced himself out of the hospital bed every day and made laps around the nurses station with the help of a walker.

"I'd do 50 laps, then go back to my room and crash for, like, 12 hours," he said.

Key West assignment

Since Talmadge was a military dive school graduate, military officials decided the Key West Army scuba-warfare school would be a great place for him to recuperate. He arrived on June 10, 2008.

"Being in the water helps a lot with recovery," he said. "People have said that being a diver and in such good shape really helped out a lot, but I can't say for sure."

Maj. David Butler, a spokesman for the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, was in Key West recently as the Discovery Channel filmed a program on the Green Berets.

Butler called Talmadge an inspiration to other soldiers.

"He's the real deal," Butler said. "There's nothing more I can say. An amazing story."

Despite being a rough-and-tough Special Forces commando, Talmadge said he had to prepare himself mentally during his recovery.

Daddy shoots bad guys

"It was hard being this 29-year-old guy walking around with a walker and then a cane," he said. "My moods varied, but my wife and kids really helped with that. They helped me stay positive."

Talmadge has three children, two boys ages 7 and 6 and a 3-year-old daughter.

"I just tell my kids that 'Daddy is going to work,' that's all," he said.

"My boys are old enough to understand what I do now and they'll say, 'My dad is out shooting bad guys.' I have to remind them that we're not always doing that."

To a layperson, Talmadge not only appears fully recovered, but in far better shape than most.

A large scar will forever cover his left thigh, a constant reminder of the firefight that led to his Purple Heart.

"People are always asking me here, 'Man, what is that? Did a shark bite you or something?'

I just shrug and say, 'Yeah, something like that.'"

http://keysnews.com/node/21763