Good Charlotte

Now I have to tell you even though I was hurt and hurt bad I still had my awesome sense of humor. My team Sgt. who I called “Big Guns” was there with me from the moment I got hit to the aid station before they sent me south to the combat hospital. He was trying to keep me from going into shock by telling me jokes and keeping me laughing. After he bandaged me up he said “Pete” (that is what my team called me) “guess what… now you get a Purple Heart!” By the way that was the only medal I didn’t want because it requires something like this to happen.
All this time he had to keep pressure on my foot to slow the bleeding down which is very painful. I kept telling him “Stop pushin’ on it that really isn’t helping the pain” he would just grin and say “it’s to stop the bleeding Pete I can’t” I said “fine let me bleed then it hurts.” By the time we got to the aid station the bed of the Hummer was filled with blood. When they pulled me out they had to open the tailgate and when they did it just poured out. I thought for sure I was done for I had never seen so much blood in my life.
This is the part that I don’t understand the nurses cut all of my clothes off and put a blanket over me. They said it was to make sure that I wasn’t hurt anywhere else and so they could easily get to the wounds. Yeah right I thought as I lay there in front everybody butt naked with a scratchy wool military blanket over me. Anyway after they stopped the bleeding they sent a Chaplin in to see me. He said “is there anything you would like?” after a second I said “yeah. Where is my CD player?” he looked at me kind of weird and I’m sure he thought I was nuts! But I was concerned because I had my Captain’s brand new Good Charlotte CD in it that I was listening to and it was in my cargo pocket of my uniform. Now you are probably wandering what that has to do with anything. My leg was hit right above the cargo pocket and I thought that it went through the CD player. I wasn’t really worried about the massive holes in me at this time because I was at the aid station but if that CD was broken I was toast. Everything was ok with it and with me for the time being.
Now they had to send me to the field hospital so they could get the shrapnel out of me. They couldn’t wait that long because their biggest concern was that Depleted Uranium was used in almost every bomb over there and if that was in me I had a bigger problem than bleeding to death. The hospital was about 35km away and it took about 45-50 minutes to drive there. So I got to fly in a Black Hawk! The coolest part about this was my whole 6 5 man team got to load me into the helicopter. It may sound dumb but this was a very sad time for me because this was like I was being forced away from my family. This was the first time we were separated in six months. It was already tough for me leaving home to go to basic training, AIT, and then war. Now I was doing that all over again. None of this hit me at the time…