"Keep breathing"

Sgt. Oliver Campbell has deployed to Afghanistan several times since he joined Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Army Ranger battalion in 2013. He was wounded on a mission there earlier this month. His mother, Carol, visited him at an Army hospital in Germany for his initial medical treatment. Photo courtesy of Carol Campbell via The News Tribune.

Army Ranger Sgt. Oliver Campbell and a teammate from Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment are now recovering at Walter Reed Military Medical Center after a Jan. 16 attack in eastern Afghanistan’s Paktika province.

Campbell, 22, was the more seriously wounded of the two, with a bullet lodged close to his heart. Three other bullets passed through his body.
Now, “he’s doing very well,” said his mother, Carol Campbell of Kansas City.

In his letter to friends and family, Campbell thanked his teammates for keeping him alive after the attack. He praised the flight surgeons who revived him when his heart stops and the nurses who’ve tended to him.

“I owe a lot of people thank-yous for everything that has happened in the past week,” he wrote.
He also gave thanks to actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

“Believe it or not, when I was laying there all jacked up, the movie ‘The Revenant’ came to mind,” he wrote. “All I could think of was that line, ‘Keep breathing.’ ”

Read the entire story here.

Sunnrise at Arlington

Sunrise at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, Va after a record breaking snowfall blanketed the Washington DC area with 18 inches of snow. (Photo by SPC Nathan Johnston)

Service & Sacrifice: Surgery count high, spirits higher

Veteran Michael Trost guesses he's had 28 surgeries since being wounded in Afghanistan. He now faces another major operation. Photo: WBIR.com.
Four years and dozens of surgeries later, MSgt Michael Trost speaks frankly about his next major surgery: He is choosing to have his badly damaged lower right leg amputated just below his knee so part of his toe can be used as a new thumb.

“I’m not losing a leg, I’m gaining a thumb,” he said with a chuckle, sitting in the kitchen of his family hobby farm in Blount County, TN.

Story and video here.