The Sand Was Tan
Quick answer: How did the U.S. military's understanding of blast brain injuries change?
Early in Iraq and Afghanistan, troops knocked flat by blasts were told to shake it off. As damage surfaced, the military began counting blast exposures in service records. But Ron Clark, a retired Marine officer, explained that counting missed something: a single massive blast can be enough to cause lasting injury.
Years ago a North Carolina trooper pulled over a sober, polite Iraq veteran driving straight down the center line at 2 a.m., because that's how you survive a road seeded with bombs. “Son,” the trooper said, “you do realize you're in North Carolina.” John's friend Ron Clark, a retired Marine infantry and reconnaissance officer with a PhD and White House service, told that story in Washington to Ukrainian soldiers on leave, American Vietnam veterans, and researchers. His talk was a confession of how long it took the Corps to understand blast. At first, if nobody was putting a tourniquet on you, you were fine. Then came men like the gunnery sergeant who took seven blasts in twenty-one days and began walking into door frames. The military started counting, but one blast can be enough. Ron credited Ukraine for bringing wounded veterans back as trainers, and described a Kyiv clerk welcoming an amputee. Multiply that ten thousand times and you have a homecoming. Fail, and you have Vietnam.
Why it matters for leaders: The wounds you can't see still need a country that does the work of bringing its people all the way home.
Q: What has Ukraine done well for wounded veterans, according to Ron Clark?
A: It welcomes catastrophically wounded veterans back into the ranks as trainers and instructors, so no one is expelled from the brotherhood.
Q: What does “the sand was tan” mean?
A: At the 80th D-Day anniversary, a veteran held Omaha Beach sand and wept: it was the first time he'd seen it without his brothers' blood.
Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-sand-was-tan
By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation