bobdina
07-08-2010, 12:11 PM
'Am I going to die?'
Sgt. 1st Class Mark Wanner and Sgt. 1st Class Sean Clifton | Eastern Afghanistan | May 2009
By Sandra Jontz
When Sgt. 1st Class Sean Clifton kicked in the front door of a mud hut that Sunday morning last year in Afghanistan, more than 20 AK-47s greeted him.
“Oh, crap,” he thought.
Within seconds, Clifton was hit at least four times, one bullet searing through his pelvis just below his body armor, another shattering his left forearm, causing him to drop his weapon.
And again he thought: “Oh, crap.”
He managed to stumble away from the door and toward his team’s medics. He saw his friend a few feet away.
“His eyes were big, like saucers, and he said, ‘Save me,’ ” Sgt. 1st Class Mark Wanner recalled. “I thought of his boys at that moment, and that I wasn’t going to tell them their father had been killed.”
Wanner and fellow medic Sgt. 1st Class Matt Scheaffer worked to save their teammate, but it wouldn’t be easy.
“There was a volley of gunfire splashing around everybody,” Wanner said.
He and Scheaffer dragged Clifton toward the side of the building, thinking it would provide protection.
It didn’t.
“We were exposed the whole time,” Wanner said.
The Green Berets were caught in the crossfire between suspected Taliban fighters and the 30 Afghan security forces embedded with the 12-member Special Forces team.
While Scheaffer bound a tourniquet to Clifton’s arm, Wanner tended to Clifton’s abdominal wound. Clifton, meanwhile, wondered if he would die there in Afghanistan on Memorial Day weekend.
“Your mind processes a thousand things within those few seconds,” Clifton said. “I was thinking everything from ‘Oh my god, I’m hit,’ to ‘Am I going to bleed out? Am I going to die?’
“The shot to my arm was the most shocking. I could see my arm, my bone. … There was so much blood, and I remember thinking, ‘How many seconds of life do I have left before I bleed out?’ And then I had visions of my boys running through my head. My wife. My family. I was thinking, ‘Who is going to contact them?’ ‘How are they going to take the news?’ ”
While Clifton thought about his wife of seven years, about his sons who are ages 1 and 3, Wanner struggled to ensure that Clifton would see them again.
“I am here today, alive, because of the heroic and competent actions that Mark performed,” said Clifton, who turns 37 on June 19.
For his efforts, Wanner, 37, received the Silver Star. It is the first such award for an Ohio National Guard member since the Korean War.
“Oftentimes, it’s easy to lose sight of what we have as a people,” Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said during a recent interview. “Then we become aware of someone like this, this sergeant first class — a real person with a charming personality, a beautiful wife, two children, in so many ways a regular guy. And we’re appreciative that he chose to serve our country and chose to be a Green Beret and all that that involves.”
The 20-year military veteran is a construction man who leaves his home in North Dakota at 6:30 a.m. for a job building custom homes and often puts in 12-hour-plus days. He graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in microbiology and minors in chemistry and biotechnology and used to be a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine studying the impact of allergens on asthma patients.
Though he and his wife liked Ohio, they longed for the quieter hamlets of North Dakota — and going from researcher to builder suited him fine, he said. The simpler and quieter lifestyle offered by North Dakota provided the change of pace the family sought. Despite his schooling grounded in science, he opted for a career in construction, working for a childhood friend, and one that lets him work with his hands, get dirty, and relish the finished product.
Even if it means fewer evenings out with the boys of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group, he said. Fewer Blue Moon beers with his friend Clifton.
The round that penetrated Clifton’s pelvis ripped through his abdominal cavity, hitting his small intestine, large intestine, bladder, urethra, the sciatic nerve, and causing extensive vascular damage. He has been awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star for service and Bronze Star with “V” device.
He’s still not fully recovered. But he’s alive.
Sgt. 1st Class Mark Wanner and Sgt. 1st Class Sean Clifton | Eastern Afghanistan | May 2009
By Sandra Jontz
When Sgt. 1st Class Sean Clifton kicked in the front door of a mud hut that Sunday morning last year in Afghanistan, more than 20 AK-47s greeted him.
“Oh, crap,” he thought.
Within seconds, Clifton was hit at least four times, one bullet searing through his pelvis just below his body armor, another shattering his left forearm, causing him to drop his weapon.
And again he thought: “Oh, crap.”
He managed to stumble away from the door and toward his team’s medics. He saw his friend a few feet away.
“His eyes were big, like saucers, and he said, ‘Save me,’ ” Sgt. 1st Class Mark Wanner recalled. “I thought of his boys at that moment, and that I wasn’t going to tell them their father had been killed.”
Wanner and fellow medic Sgt. 1st Class Matt Scheaffer worked to save their teammate, but it wouldn’t be easy.
“There was a volley of gunfire splashing around everybody,” Wanner said.
He and Scheaffer dragged Clifton toward the side of the building, thinking it would provide protection.
It didn’t.
“We were exposed the whole time,” Wanner said.
The Green Berets were caught in the crossfire between suspected Taliban fighters and the 30 Afghan security forces embedded with the 12-member Special Forces team.
While Scheaffer bound a tourniquet to Clifton’s arm, Wanner tended to Clifton’s abdominal wound. Clifton, meanwhile, wondered if he would die there in Afghanistan on Memorial Day weekend.
“Your mind processes a thousand things within those few seconds,” Clifton said. “I was thinking everything from ‘Oh my god, I’m hit,’ to ‘Am I going to bleed out? Am I going to die?’
“The shot to my arm was the most shocking. I could see my arm, my bone. … There was so much blood, and I remember thinking, ‘How many seconds of life do I have left before I bleed out?’ And then I had visions of my boys running through my head. My wife. My family. I was thinking, ‘Who is going to contact them?’ ‘How are they going to take the news?’ ”
While Clifton thought about his wife of seven years, about his sons who are ages 1 and 3, Wanner struggled to ensure that Clifton would see them again.
“I am here today, alive, because of the heroic and competent actions that Mark performed,” said Clifton, who turns 37 on June 19.
For his efforts, Wanner, 37, received the Silver Star. It is the first such award for an Ohio National Guard member since the Korean War.
“Oftentimes, it’s easy to lose sight of what we have as a people,” Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said during a recent interview. “Then we become aware of someone like this, this sergeant first class — a real person with a charming personality, a beautiful wife, two children, in so many ways a regular guy. And we’re appreciative that he chose to serve our country and chose to be a Green Beret and all that that involves.”
The 20-year military veteran is a construction man who leaves his home in North Dakota at 6:30 a.m. for a job building custom homes and often puts in 12-hour-plus days. He graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in microbiology and minors in chemistry and biotechnology and used to be a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine studying the impact of allergens on asthma patients.
Though he and his wife liked Ohio, they longed for the quieter hamlets of North Dakota — and going from researcher to builder suited him fine, he said. The simpler and quieter lifestyle offered by North Dakota provided the change of pace the family sought. Despite his schooling grounded in science, he opted for a career in construction, working for a childhood friend, and one that lets him work with his hands, get dirty, and relish the finished product.
Even if it means fewer evenings out with the boys of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group, he said. Fewer Blue Moon beers with his friend Clifton.
The round that penetrated Clifton’s pelvis ripped through his abdominal cavity, hitting his small intestine, large intestine, bladder, urethra, the sciatic nerve, and causing extensive vascular damage. He has been awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star for service and Bronze Star with “V” device.
He’s still not fully recovered. But he’s alive.