Bryan Anderson
April 7th, 2007 by Matt
A few months back, I read an interview in Esquire of Bryan Anderson, a 25-year-old triple-amputee who served in the War in Iraq. He’s one of the 24,518 who’ve been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the quotations from the piece appears now and again on our sidebar “One Progressive Thought,” and it goes like this: “If you’re not falling, you’re not trying.” Bryan, of course, meant in terms of his physical therapy, but he also says that it’s become his motto.
The interview is extensive, funny, inspirational, smart, and dark, and it paints a picture of war that you can’t wipe clean from your mind, even if you wanted to.
Guys and gals like Bryan need our help, and we’ve set up a fund through Homes for Our Troops to do just that. Homes for Our Troops needs your help, and we’re hoping to raise $250, a modest sum, for this fine and unfortunately necessary organization. (Bryan has been helped by a similar organization called the Wounded Heroes Foundation. You can donate by clicking this sentence.)
We thought we’d share more of Bryan’s story in his own words, so here are some other quotations from the article (you can read the entire piece by clicking here):
Editor’s note: the following contains some graphic language and descriptions.
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“I think the only time I would agree with war is if there’s a childish country that wants to do something really, really stupid and won’t listen to anybody. Then it might be worth it.”
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“At any moment, anything could happen. We were lucky for ten months. We knew we would get hit. It was always a question of how bad it would be. I never thought it would be this bad.”
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“[After the explosion], I was lying there. Before I said anything, I wiped my face because I felt blood and the flies were all over, and the first thing I saw was my finger gone. Okay, not so bad. Then I turned my hand over, and the whole thing looked like ground beef. But it still looked all right, kind of. I could see bone. Anyway, while I’m looking at this, I went to wipe my face with my left hand and there was nothing there. Oh, fuck. After that I looked down at my legs, and right as I saw what had happened, my friend grabbed my forehead and pushed it down, hoping that I hadn’t seen. But I did. I knew they were gone.”
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“I want to be a stuntman. I’m an adrenaline junkie. I like going fast and all that stuff. And now that I’m like this, and I have an identical twin brother who’s just as crazy as I am. I’m hoping we can make something happen of it.”
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“For the most part, I dream that I’m full-bodied.”
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“I’ve been getting tats since I was eighteen. I had nine tattoos. After the explosion, I had six and a half. On my left inner forearm I have the Chinese symbol for life. Go figure.”
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“I don’t regret anything.”
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