Shrapnel - The Scars I Took To War: Memoir of a Green Beret - Don R. Kabrich

Shrapnel - The Scars I Took To War: Memoir of a Green Beret - Don R. Kabrich

A decade already a Green Beret, with a coveted slot on a Scuba ODA, it seemed pure bad luck when Kabrich was severely wounded by a roadside bomb just a week into his first deployment to Iraq in May 2004. He declined the offered medical retirement then disguised his persisting limb paralysis to make it through another back-to-back combat deployment. The Special Forces Warrant Course was next, allowing him to remain on the Operational Detachment and return to the Iraq War for three more deployments. Achievements to be proud of, to be sure. All the more, when one learns of the wounds and their scars that Kabrich carried from long before joining the Army as a thin 135-lb six-foot seventeen-year-old with nothing but a GED and laughable test scores. Wounds and their scars from a childhood frighteningly purposed by a jeopardy-smart, short-guy-syndromed, hard-drinking, violent, berating, abusive father who seemed intent upon making the least of his son . . . to which Kabrich credits the toughening-up and gritty perseverance he learned to embody to defy and overcome the worthlessness his father had determined to force upon him. Fortified by those scars, Kabrich went from a truck driver private to a Green Beret Engineer Demo Sergeant, and he lays out in graphic detail the physical and mental rigors of Special Forces training--from SFAS ( Special Forces Assessment and Selection ) through the Q-Course ( Qualification Course )--which all who have earned the Green Beret will attest, and those who wish to earn the beret would do well to read about and heed. Kabrich admits that some of the childhood wounds were self-inflicted, and he believes that all the scars are today their own kind of badges that demonstrate how far beyond those potential defeats he has come--to a Doctorate in Divinity / Theology, to the summit of Mt. Everest . . . to enjoying a loving stable family of his own. With a military career behind him and an ongoing ministry in front of him, Kabrich accepts his scars to be an essential part of his journey and success. The scars and wounds he carries, Kabrich did one thing--he made them count.