@mrballen: The Grenade That Got Me The Purple Heart I've told the grenade story a hundred times, but the part that still messes with me isn't the explosion. It's what came after. I'm sitting in this alleyway in Afghanistan, can't hear anything, can't see anything, bleeding out, and I couldn't even stand up. My medic, Kyle, got to me and put on the tourniquets. I remember thinking very clearly, very calmly, that I was probably going to die there. It wasn't scary. It was just a fact. Seven days later I'm walking through Home Depot with twenty-six pieces of shrapnel still in my hip and ankle, barely able to push a cart, trying to act like everything was normal. Today I'm thinking about every vet who knows that gap between what happened over there and what coming home actually looks like. And to all those that never got to make it home.