Brandon Bailey found himself face down on the ground in Afghanistan, his toes pointing to the sky after the Humvee he was riding in hit an improvised explosive device and blew up.
“I went end over end with the truck,” Bailey said.
He and the Humvee flew some 138 feet away from the spot of the blast. His fellow Marines feared the worst as they approached the mangled truck, now resting upside down on the turret.
“I had been crushed underneath the truck and rotated 180 degrees at the waist,” Bailey said. “I had shattered my pelvis, that came out of the inside of my right thigh. I crushed my right hip, had done damage to my left hip as well. I had broke my back in five places. I had a ruptured bladder, a perforated bowel, broken ribs. I was opened up from the inside of my thigh into my groin, all the way to my sternum.”
It was January 24, 2009. He and his team were coming back from a counterintelligence mission and were working in the dark. The lights on the trucks were off and they were operating solely with night vision goggles. The road they took back to base, he said, was one of the only stretches of asphalt in the Bala Buluk district in Farah Province, Afghanistan.
In the middle of the road was a pothole.
“They had dug down in the gravel in the pothole and then dug under the asphalt,” Bailey said. “It was a pressure plate IED. It was an Italian anti-tank mine with 355-millimeter mortars on top of it. And that's what we hit.”
During his 14 years with the Marine Corps he had seen other deployments with the Marine Expeditionary Unit. His first was to Iraq, others spanned across the Mediterranean and Europe.
Having been to Iraq before orders to Afghanistan didn’t seem to be any different on paper. However, he said he quickly discovered the difference.
“It was a completely different world. They were fighters. They were fighters,” he said.
Fighters or not the War on Terror kept him busy and Brandon Bailey loved what he was doing in Afghanistan.
“I didn't have the greatest job in the Marine Corps, I had the greatest job in the world. I got to find the targets. I got to track the targets in there when their number got called, I got to go knock on their door with about two pounds of C4 and 17 of my best friends,” Bailey said.
That January night the mission was like so many before. He said as his four-Humvee convoy made their way back to the base, they took a different route back since it was shorter. One of his team members told him what they yelled across their communications headset after the blast of the IED.
“He said the next thing he said to our team leader was 'truck four is gone,'” Bailey said. "It wasn't if it was going to happen, it was when it was going to happen, and it just so happened to be my number got pulled that night.”
His team members were able to work together to lift the Humvee off of him and he was soon on his way via medical helicopter to the base and field hospital.
Patched together well enough to continue transport, he would be flown to Landstuhl, Germany.
“I remember being at Landstuhl. I had a priest come in and read me my last rites. The only thing I could think was, 'that's great, but I'm not Catholic.' So, I don't know if the Protestant chaplain was at lunch or where he was at, but at that time, you'll take whatever you can get from anyone,” Bailey explained.
A little more patch work and Brandon Bailey would make his way to Walter Reed Medical Center in the U.S. His family was given little to no hope that he'd survive his injuries much longer.
“They told my family right out of the gate, 'go get family and close friends here because he's going to die within 30 days from infection,'” he said.
Despite the unimaginable signs of defeat Bailey said as time went by he fed off the doctors telling him that he wouldn’t walk again. He was determined to come back and be as normal as he could be despite the nearly life-ending injuries.
While he was in a coma at Walter Reed he didn’t realize an organization had stepped in to help he and his family through the darkest of times.
“The Semper Fi & Americas Fund or The Fund, they had contact with my parents before I ever knew anything about them.” Bailey said. “They were there to render that assistance, 'hey, what can we do for you? What do you need? You know, are you missing work? What were your travel costs,' things like that. So they were there to take care of the family.”
Janine Canty is the senior director at theSemper Fi & America’s Fund, a nonprofit that helps support loves ones financially while their service member recovers.
“To be able to help ease some of the financial worries for them is, I don't know, it fills my heart,” Canty said.
She was Brandon Bailey’s case manager and has been with him and his family throughout his recovery journey, which has seen thousands of miles of travel as he endured 28 surgeries — with two more coming in 2023.
“We work as hard as we can to make sure that they don't feel the that crunch. And we can help with airfare. We can help with, we can pay mortgages,” Canty said.
Their mission was started in 2003, according to their website. Founded by military spouses who volunteered to provide bedside support to wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s now a nationwide operation and receives support from the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation and PXG. For the past 11 years the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation has made a matching donation of $10 million. Those who donate through December 31st will have their donation doubled as a result of the matching funds.
Brandon Bailey said he feels better today than he did before the IED blast nearly took his life. He salutes the surgeons who pieced him back together and rebuilt his body. He also said he wouldn’t change a thing about his life’s journey.
When he thinks back about that January night there’s one thing that comes to mind:
“They tried to kill me, they just couldn’t.”
If you have a veteran story to tell in your community, email homefront@wcpo.com. You also can join the Homefront Facebook group, follow Craig McKee on Facebook and find more Homefront stories here.
