Wade Christiansen

Afghanistan 2009-2010

I remember I was falling down backwards. I’m looking at the sky and it felt like a daydream. I was thinking this is what it would feel like if you got blown up. I looked over at the wall that was just next to me, and that thing was blown out. I was on the ground and we started taking small arms fire from the triggermen. I couldn’t see anything out my left eye and I could barely see out my right one, but I returned fire as best as I could. After I was done shooting, I was looking down at my rifle and remember blood pouring out all over it. The leader of the patrol got both his legs blown off and was blown into a ditch. The medic pulls him out and starts working on him, but he was really, really, bad. He looked at the medic and said, “Tell my wife I love her,” and just faded off. I didn’t have a lot of thoughts really. So I just lay back down. All I remember is the blue sky and just saying “To hell with it.”

The team I was with was making our way to the front because we were gonna take point going through these alleyways. We were by the Mosque and then forty meters away there was a huge explosion. We all get down but we think it just another random Afghanistan explosion. We didn’t really think anything of it. I go rushing down around the corner and then I see…it was…I don’t know, just a pile of bodies. Later I found two legs blown off at the knees and a piece of someone’s scalp with long black hair. That’s when we realized it was a suicide bombing.