Cpl. Kyle Carpenter speaks to Gamecock men's soccer

but Kyle carpenter is currently a freshman at the University of South Carolina before attending school Kyle served over four years the United States Marine Corps during his second appointment with the 2nd battalion 9th Marines in Afghanistan was it correct Marja Marja yep down south um Kyle sustained critical injuries after being hit by Hand Grenade for the last two and a half years of his time in the Marine Corps Kyle's Bennett at Walter Reed in Bethesda Maryland which is widely known for specializing the care treatment and rehabilitation of our nation's wounded warriors while recovering Kyle never stopped taking advantage of furthering his education Kyle took classes between surgeries and during the end of his stay completed two internships one with the CIA or is it different yeah so Farrow same thing did the Intelligence Agency National Counterterrorism Center and the other on Capitol Hill with the House of Veterans affair committee under Florida congressman Jeff Miller after nearly 40 surgeries years of physical therapy and rehabilitation costate steadfast in his goal to attend to school for a degree of physical education we wanted to give you this stuff thank you very much the Hat and there's also underneath here captain's been we'd like for you to serve as honorary captain in our next game against New Mexico thanks man I appreciate that thank you very much hey that means a lot I really appreciate it thanks for having me today as I was in a daze my name is Kyle carpenter I joined the Marine Corps in 2009 I graduated high school for in 2008 I went to Parris Island went to boot camp I got done with boot camp summer of 2009 did a short three month deployment down through the Caribbean to Dominican Republic Cuba to do some training and we worked a little bit with the Coast Guard and DEA trying to track down some drug lords after that while we were on that float with the Navy the president decided to send a surge of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan and we knew that during that speech listening to it on the on the ship we knew that if he gave the thumbs up that we were going to be one of the first units in line into a region Afghanistan that nobody had been in a long time so he gave the thumbs up and we need that was it and time to train the next seven months after we got off the ship we trained non-stop day in and day out to get ready for this deployment we didn't know how bad it was going to be we knew is going to be rough but when we started seeing the unit that we were going to go over there and relieve coming back in wheelchairs with crutches neck braces we knew that we knew that I guess we had our work cut out for us so July of 2010 myself and my buddies my Marines we got on a bus at a military base in North Carolina and when we stepped on that bus you could not help but think you know a pretty good chance that this is the last time I'm going to be on American soil it's gonna be the last time they'd ever see my family alive so we went over there it's about a ten day trip I give or take a couple days to get to where you're going now you go through multiple countries multiple bases multiple types of aircrafts and just little steps all along the way and on the tenth day that morning we were supposed to fly out at midnight over there it's preferable to fly at night to work at night because the chances of the enemy attack you are much lower so we didn't get that flight at midnight we went later that morning we got on a helo all the lights were off it was around 5:30 a.m. yeah we flew low and fast and that lowers your chances of getting shot down so with all the lights off the Sun was starting to come up and I got my first glimpse of Afghanistan looking out the back of that helicopter past our door gunner all you see is patches of green farmland rivers canals people walking around with donkeys farm animals it's a totally different world they're uh they're stuck way way way way way back in time so looking out the back of that helicopter again the thought that thought comes across you know am I gonna lose my life in that field am I gonna lose a buddy down there so we landed and boots on the ground the fighting started and it didn't stop the entire four months I was there every morning our alarm clock was our base getting attacked Marines that were outside the wire which is kind of our term for our safety walls our base whether it was our Patrol getting attacked our base getting attacked no matter what it was every day was a was a hard fight fast forward four months it's November 20th we have in the Marines we like I was introduced we deploy with battalions which is a lot of Marines but once you get over into a combat zone you break into depending on how bad the region is or how spread out you want to be creating that Marine American military presence depending on that just depends on I guess how many Marines are gonna be with I was only with forty to forty five Marines when we finally got to where we were going we lived out of a I guess you could envision a mud hut with no roof just four high mud walls and a big square and usually 5 to 15 family members would live in one not many had shoes sleep on the ground live on the ground and that's their life I mean from the second you can walk you're working in the fields and those shoes on and you do that until until you're old and you pass that's just the lifestyle over there so November 20th my squad which was only roughly nine to 12 Marines that's who I did with my squad the entire time I was over there the platoon I was with we were broken down into four squads so we got tasked with the mission on November 20th to punch down about a clique which is a kilometer not too far but with the terrain over there as bad as it was we didn't have vehicles we did everything on foot we carried all our weapons RM of food water whatever we needed we towed it with us we got tasked with a mission to punch south and into a very bad region and any time we had gone anywhere near this region or we had gone south at all it was hours upon hours of fighting just to get out of their life so we knew is gonna be rough didn't know how rough it was going to be so you know we prepared we packed bags we shoved as much food water ammo and empty sandbags as we could in our packs Sam we stepped out of our base early late late morning early afternoon and we started our journey down there about halfway down we started getting shot at no surprise there but our packs are so heavy it was kind of like we just flopped over in the field and hope we didn't get shot they flood the fields over there during the day so they know that we're on foot and if you can imagine having 100 pounds maybe excess 100 pounds on your back and trying to walk through but where you sink ankle-deep it was it was a task to get down there luckily we made it down with no casualties we kicked the family out because of the location of this compound we needed that one we compensated the family they moved out and because of combat and the war going on over there a lot of compounds are abandoned so they were able to move in one very close to the one that they were living in now we took that over and we immediately started filling sandbags that's what you want to do when you take over especially a really small base where it's not many guys in there and you're kind of fighting it out until help and supplies arrive and that was pretty much our mission I mean for the four months we were there because we haven't been in the read no troops really have been in the region for over 30 years our job really was to go over there for seven months and pick as many fights as we could get rid of as many enemy as we could and try to give the people over there a better life than the living under the the law of the Taliban I guess you could say so we take over this compound I would say 20 minutes after taking it over myself and my buddy we were filling sandbags in the corner and what sandbags do is you fill them up with dirt from the compound that you're in you dig them and fill them up and you stack them and what that does is that creates a barrier and sandbags are great for stopping bullets taking a little bit of blasts away if unfortunately you're exposed to that so sandbags really protect you so that's kind of like our our first line of defense over there so my buddy and me just two of us we were in the corner of the compound and we had started digging that hole to fill sandbags and the first attack came and I remember my back was to the center of the compound where all my buddies were and I heard this grenades are extremely extremely loud and they're about the size of a baseball maybe a little bit smaller you would never think so but they are extremely loud so when one went off what the Taliban like to do is their main choice of weapon is improvised explosive device and really they improvised with whatever they have I mean anything you can think of they they make bombs out of obviously to injure us and they'll dig out holes in the walls for when we walk by they'll detonate them the main I guess trigger that they use over there is pressure plate so that's why most of the guys injuries coming back are mostly double triple amputees because unfortunately we're just walking and it looks like a dirt road but you step on it and they have dug a bomb and put it in the ground and you trigger that and that's that's their main choice of weapon so my first thought was that they had ID'd the compound that we had moved into and we use metal detectors and we sweep over there but a lot of times they use styrofoam wood things that we can't pick up on so when I heard it go off my immediate thought was that they had booby-trapped our compound we had missed it and one of my buddies was gonna need some serious help I turned around and another one goes off in the exact same place that the first one did so then my thought was maybe we're getting mortared and mortars is you drop of a charge down in the tube and I mean I'm sure unless you play call of duty you drop a charge down in the tube it goes off it flies wherever you want it to and it lands and it obviously comes from the air so whatever was blown up our compound was coming from the air we had not been exposed to grenades the entire four four months I was there we had not heard of them being used that was just kind of unheard of because the terrain over there so open and it really is just farmland and rivers it's more of fighting our enemy across fields and longer distances instead of maybe like Iraq when it's cities and very urban and you can get up close and personal like that so we'd never been exposed to grenades but my buddy he yelled grenades when the third one went off and he it was hard to comprehend but it kind of clicked and we all started to react my my buddy who was kind of floating out in no-man's land in the middle of the compound obviously he wanted cover and to get cover he was running towards a part of the compound where over there they will have a giant square mud hut but in that within that hut though build a roof and usually one of the corners of the compound and that's where they sleep and they pack in there at night and that's kind of how they keep warm so my buddy was running to this walled covered room and unfortunately he ran as he was running another grenade came over the wall landed it blew into his side he kind of started stumbling I saw him he made it to the door and collapsed inside and uh you know it clicks over there you see one of your buddies get hit and I took off after him and probably the fastest I've ever ran I made it to that room and I went in there and I held his head up and he was obviously in a lot of pain and bleeding but his lung had been punctured and we had a corpsman there with us he's kind of like a medic and I we got him stable while we were working on him I noticed another one of my buddies have been injured in the same attack so we got them bandaged up stable put them on a medevac helicopter and they went off to the hospital but them are fine now and I doing great so later that afternoon we suddenly got attacked throughout the day sporadically and I later that afternoon I was on post and post as a I guess you would refer to it as kind of like a lookout whenever you take somewhere over or whenever you're occupying somewhere Marines we 100 percent of the time every second of the day every day of the year we have somebody on a high position that can look out for the guys on the inside make sure nobody gets too close to attack throw grenades and it was my turn for post so I climbed up on the roof and I've been at home post for a couple hours and I started getting shot at with a sniper rifle and usually they're not too accurate so I wasn't extremely worried but what they'll do over there is they will recruit fighters from other countries that aren't that don't favor the US and they'll come actually and they'll flood into Afghanistan and they'll help them fight and a big group that they bring in is a Chechnya who can really really knows how to use sniper sniper rifles so I was on top of the roof and I started getting shot at after about 15 minutes a very accurate fire I was fortunately I had built enough sandbags up on the roof that I had enough room to lay behind the rounds are so close that I could fill them impacting the sandbags that I was laying behind so after about 15-20 minutes of getting shot out like that the Marine that was in charge of me came and told me to get off the roof and I jumped down he said wolf it was a few hours until the Sun was supposed to set and like I said they don't really mess with you too much at night so we were going to finish it when the Sun went down and it got dark we were gonna finish building that post of sandbags for us to get behind I jumped off the roof and 40 seconds to a minute later rocket came in and totally vaporized that whole roof so that was day 1 the next day is November 21st and alarm clock we were getting attacked and we went throughout the day filling sandbags you know really on high alert obviously from everything that had happened the past 24 hours mid-afternoon it was myself and my best friend it was our turn to take post so we climbed up on the roof and I don't really remember too much I guess of the before events before I was injured mainly I just remember how I felt after I had been blown up really I just remember myself my buddy kind of joking around laughing laying on top of the roof and next thing I know it felt like I got smacked in the face of the 2x4 my vision totally went white kind of looked like if your TV's on a station that that really have cable it's just kind of white static it looked like that my ears were ringing very very loud and I was very confused because the last thing I remembered I was on top of a roof I went walking around I wasn't doing anything so it's hard for me to comprehend and try to connect the pieces in my head what really had happened I knew I got blown up and been injured in Afghanistan but I just couldn't think of wine I was fading very fast one of the last thing I remember is feeling like warm water was being poured all over me from the blood that was coming out I was very tired just felt like I wanted to take a nap and uh my buddy kept telling me then you're not gonna die you're not gonna die and I kept arguing with him and said hey man wasn't this is it I'm gonna die and I had I briefly thought about at my head and I knew and it had accepted that once I went unconscious that was it so uh you know I thought of a few things you know my family obviously I tried very briefly to get right with the man upstairs and I went unconscious and I thought that was it and uh a month to a month and a half later it's all very blurred together but a minimum of a month later I started to come out of my coma and I see you at a Walter Reed National Military Medical Center which is a big military hospital in Washington DC I spent a little over two and a half years there recovering I went through a little over 40 surgeries um therapy you name it medically and I probably went through it but uh I mean that's that's my story and I really I mean whenever the chance comes for me to speak to people I usually like to end with really appreciate things um I was really thinking like how I could tailor my story to uh you know you're also soccer team and you're at your I guess your guys that you have here in this room and the coach I was really thinking about it and I want to stick with really appreciate things because I really think that that really affects your life in all aspects and it not only helps you as a person I believe but as a player and I just really appreciate that you know you have a nice cleats and nice nice shoes on your feet and and you can go to school and get an education and you can you're afforded the opportunity to play soccer and that you can come to practice and get better every day and play under the lights and you know go into the bathroom and turn the faucet and get fresh clean running water I mean we're extremely fortunate here and you know it's coaches out to tell you that you can push harder than you ever thought and you can you know achieve things physically that you never thought were possible so I'll stay away from that but really just just enjoy your time here and just be glad for what you have that's Australia and I mean y'all can ask me any questions if you like nothing's out of bounds and about a year after I got out of hospital I met up with one of my buddies and he said he had a present to give me and I was not expecting this but after I was hit my buddies actually went out and found the ring from the grenade that was pulled and I thrown at me so this is a whole reason oh well hi all it's happened but uh yeah so more questions yeah what was the I like how long did take you to be old like till you're like fully like functioning and walking like that um well I'm still learning and still adapting is still working it a lot of things in life I mean I got learned how to cuz both Mars are severely damaged and this arm was a limb Salvage and I only have really one nerve in it and I'm not many tendons and it doesn't do much so I really learned how to do a lot of stuff with my left hand because it was the better of my two arms so I learned how to write with my left hand and then when this one got better I learned how to write with this one so now write with this one eat with this one mainly tie my shoes with my left one it's just like however however you make it work it works and as far as walking that was a very slow and a nauseating process because after being one totally still and for a month and I see you and your body doesn't move and your brain says scrambled and trying to get a grasp on what's really going on you're going through hallucinations and all the medication they're pumping into you your body really has a rough time at least for me anyway kind of getting that going and I mean for the first three weeks that I tried to do anything it was like really bad like nausea like throwing up it was just really terrible to even do anything so it - for months it at Walter Reed and then I went to Richmond Virginia to a hospital there and I spent two months there just doing the same thing trying to get moving and get going and all that small goals now you said that you had the internships for the different companies uh also physical education major ah what's your plan for the future um well probably the biggest part I mean besides my family and people that supported me one of the biggest factors in my recovery was when I got well enough I was in the gym every day for hours on end I would just go to the gym every single day cuz really once you get severely injured and I you know when you're in the military your job goes from being total machine gun to just you're a patient and your job is to recover and get as well as you possibly can back to your new 100% so being in the gym helped me tremendously physically emotionally mentally and uh you know I I want a degree that is an absolute goal in mind which I want to achieve and will achieve but I do want that degree to back it up but really I just want to be a personal trainer and I kind of want to pass that along to uh to other people how much the gym helped me thanks for letting me come today guys are just Marseille cuz I know how these guys would feel about getting up in front of a group and talking and how they would feel getting up in front of a group of strangers and talking and for you to have gone through all the development that you have and to have the poise and to be able to speak as perfectly as you did in front of all these guys that you don't even know is absolutely astounding and thank you I really salute you you've done a great job thank you how can you say that thanks guys look forward

Channel: South Carolina Gamecocks

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Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 19 2014