Bruce McQuain from Blackfive joined us once again for Someone You Should Know, our weekly tribute to the troops. Bruce spent 28 years in the U.S. Army and he is a veteran of the Vietnam war. He brings a perspective and understanding to these stories that we could never match.
This week Bruce told us about Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Amilcar Rodriguez who earned a Silver Star for his heroics in Afghanistan,
Rodriguez, equipped with his SAW, located the sniper position in a building and pulled the trigger, emptying the 200-round magazine and killing the two-man enemy team. While fighting ensued all around, Rodriguez dashed over to a wounded staff sergeant and quickly began to treat his leg wound and drag him to cover.
But suddenly the corpsman felt shocks of pain.
Three successive rounds, likely from a machine gun, struck Rodriguez. One round punctured his chest, cutting into one lung, and another sliced into his right arm. Rodriguez, in an interview with Marine Corps Times, recalled the staff sergeant “saw my neck explode†from one of the rounds. Although wounded himself, the Marine grabbed bandages to stem Rodriguez’s bleeding as the corpsman tried to get both of them to safety.
At the time, Rodriguez couldn’t see his right arm, and he couldn’t feel it. He quickly assumed it had been blown off in the fighting.
Rodriguez was undeterred. “I was prepared for life without my arm,†he said.
Just then, another Marine ran onto the rooftop and pulled Rodriguez toward a stairway. That’s when he realized that his arm was still intact, although it wasn’t functioning and he couldn’t feel anything. Another sergeant trailed them and brought the wounded staff sergeant off the rooftop to safety, and a spec ops medic team worked on their wounds. The young soldiers were flustered, Rodriguez said, so he talked them through the steps and helped calm them down. “It was their first combat experience,†he said.
Rodriguez and several wounded men eventually were evacuated.
The Someone You Should Know radio collaboration began as an extension of Matt Burden’s series at Blackfive. Bruce does an incredible job with the series every week. The SYSK archive can be found here and The Pundit Review Radio Podcast RSS feed can be found here and you can find us on iTunes at Pundit Review Radio.
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On Boston’s Talk Station WRKO since 2005, Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week we give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to the radio every Sunday evening from 6-9pm on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.