Red Dirt and Resilience: A Soldier’s Fight Beyond the Battlefield

by Derick Bosley

On March 9th, 2024, at 0615, I lay flat on my back, staring up at the bluest sky I had ever seen. The world around me was dead quiet. The consequential African sunrise illuminated my surroundings in a serene calm that betrayed the situation I found myself in. I was lost in a moment of peace, lying in the bright red dirt, despite the cacophony of noise and utter chaos unfolding around me.

Dirt hitting my face from PKM bullets peppering the ground around my head, and the searing pain in my right leg snapped me back to reality. Just a moment earlier, I had been in a firefight, making my way back to my partner, when a 7.62 round tore through my body. In that instant, I lost approximately four inches of my tibia. My anterior tibialis was decimated, the peroneal nerve severely damaged, my arteries and veins severed, and the tissue that once covered my shin obliterated. It felt as if a 10-pound sledgehammer had made contact with my shin at full swing. They say the dirt in Africa is so red because of the blood spilled over that land; in a poetic way, I had just helped make it that much darker.

[Editor’s Note: PKM stands for Pulemyot Kalashnikova Modernizirovanniy, which translates to Kalashnikov Modernized Machine Gun. It is a Soviet-designed general-purpose machine gun chambered in 7.62×54mmR and has been widely used by military forces and insurgent groups around the world.]

In my mind, it seemed minutes had passed. But it had only been the time it takes a bullet to travel down the barrel of a gun. I said a quick prayer, “Lord, get me out of here so I can be a dad and husband again.” After a brief moment of reflection, my mind snapped back to my surroundings. Now it was time to fucking work. I looked at my leg for the first time. Blood was pouring from the gaping hole where my shin used to be. “No one is coming to save you. It’s up to you,” I told myself. Instinct and training took over. I ripped the tourniquet from the right side of my plate carrier and started passing the windlass under my upper right thigh. Just as I was finishing, my partner slid in to help me. He wouldn’t know until we returned to base, but he had just been shot as well. With my bleeding controlled, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

I tried to stand, but there was no bone in my lower leg for support. My partner got under my arm, and we made our way to the back of one of the trucks. Adrenaline coursed through my system. We flopped into the bed of the truck and started the hellacious drive through the bush to the HLZ [Helicopter Landing Zone]. As the only medic on our team, I knew I had to stay coherent enough to feed my partner the information he needed to get the helicopter in the air for medevac, assess myself and my injuries, and provide treatment. As much as I wanted to give myself pain meds and let future me deal with this, I knew I couldn’t leave my team in such a predicament. Bouncing around in the back of that truck was the first time I was actually able to think of anything other than survival. It was the first time I realized that the people who love me, through no fault of their own, had just had their lives changed.

When we finally arrived at the HLZ, I scanned my surroundings to make sure the bird could land there. Once I determined it was clear, I instructed my team to set up a litter next to the truck. With some help, I laid myself onto it. Then it was time to get to work. I directed my team to different items in my aid bag, talked them through starting an IV, assessed and treated a minor flesh wound on my left leg, and instructed them on how to begin a blood transfusion. Once we had done everything we could, the adrenaline wore off, and the pain in my leg became unbearable. The helicopter was about 10 minutes out, so I instructed my team on how to administer ketamine. They performed phenomenally. I coached them through injecting it into my IV, and I got some much-needed relief.

It has been almost a year since that day. Even now, when I lie back and look up at a blue sky, I am immediately taken back to that dark red dirt. I could be bitter and hate the people who sent me there, but what would that accomplish? I could let this injury define me and dictate what I do with the rest of my life—but I have a daughter who needs a dad to chase and play with her and a wife who deserves to be loved, not stuck with a man who is angry because he can’t do the things he once could.

I won’t say it’s easy to keep that mindset. I get frustrated at myself for not being able to do things that used to come so easily. For the longest time, I was the guy who could just get it done—no matter what. I could figure out how to accomplish the mission. It was hard to internally accept that I am no longer that guy.

For instance, we were fortunate enough to go to Vail through the Vail Veterans Program. It had been just over 10 months since my injury. Two months prior to the trip, I had my last major surgery. They removed my external fixator, inserted a titanium rod into my tibia, hammered that rod into place through my knee joint, took bone from my hip, and grafted it into the middle of my tibia.

I can’t say enough about the Vail Veterans Program and the experience they gave my family, allowing guys like me to feel something “normal” again, if only for a few days. The trip was full of highs and lows. I was able to get on a snowboard again for the first time since I joined the Army in 2012.

I spent that week with my snowboard instructor, hand in hand, trying to relearn something I had done since I was 13. On the last day, we went to the top of the mountain in the afternoon. That morning, I had done more than most do in an entire day. Unfortunately, after a week of pushing myself as hard as I could, my body broke down. My right knee had taken a beating from all the surgeries. The nerve damage left my right foot numb, swollen, stiff, and painful.

On top of that, I was just physically drained. Every uneven bump sent waves of agony through my shredded knee. With every toe-side turn, the pain in my arthritic toes grew worse. With a lot of help from my instructor, we made it about a third of the way down the mountain. But for one of the first times in my life, I had to quit. My body had let me down, and the mountain had won. I can’t describe the shame and depression I felt as I limped my way to the gondola to bail off the slope. Jenna tried to reassure me that I had done amazingly, but I couldn’t see it. All I saw was that I told my body to perform, and it said no—completely disregarding the fact that just two weeks before the trip, I never thought I’d be on a snowboard at all, let alone tackling one of the biggest mountains in the U.S.

I’m used to fighting measurable battles. Gunfights and trauma can be compartmentalized and managed. Long patrols can be endured with mental toughness—one foot in front of the other. But this fight, the fight against my newfound limitations, is one I never expected. I’m learning every day what this new fight looks like.

Take the wins when you can.

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
—Jack London

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Derick grew up in West Virginia. He was a member of 3rd Ranger Battalion as platoon medic. Now he spends his days being a husband, father, flight medic, hunter, leatherworker, and knife maker.

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As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.