Warriors in their Own Words
Remarkable stories of war told by the men who fought for a proud nation. Their words. Their voices. Our first episodes tell riveting stories from World War II, then we move on to the Vietnam War and other dramatic conflicts.
PREVIEW: “Not Ready to Quit”
| S:2In this preview, SSG King recounts the night that her Chinook helicopter was hit by an RPG. Make sure to catch out full interview with King when it releases tomorrow.
–
At 30 years old, Beth King was a single mother, and joined the Army as a way to provide for her five-year-old son. She deployed to Afghanistan and became a Chinook helicopter maintainer.
As one of the few women in her field, SSG King felt extra pressure to excel. She had to prove herself to her male colleagues, and if she failed, she was told they would take a “long break” before allowing another woman to join their company. She succeeded, and became the first female to fully progress to crew chief in her company.
One night, King’s Chinook was hit by an RPG, and she was four feet away from the blast. She fell out of the helicopter, but was caught by her harness. Although she and the rest of the crew made it back to their FOB, King knew something wasn’t right. She experienced severe pain, spells of vomiting, and had difficulties with her speech, but had no visible injuries. Unfortunately, King’s need to prove herself as a capable woman in her field persisted to the detriment of her health. She was asked multiple times to tough out her injuries and continue flying missions, and she complied, going 18 months without treatment.
King later discovered she had suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that was made worse by her continued action. She was medically discharged, and began physical therapy.
King also suffered from PTSD, anxiety, and depression. She found that cycling in a special wheelchair reignited her competitive spirit and greatly improved her mental health, so she trained for competition. Unbeknownst to her, the wheelchair cut off circulation to her feet, and her consistent and intense training in the chair caused significant, lasting pain.
Now, King is awaiting an amputation of one of her legs. If the amputation is a success, and the pain completely dissipates, she plans on amputating the second.
In the meantime, King has begun training in the javelin throw, and hopes to compete in the 2024 Paralympics. She says in tomorrow’s interview “I would love to go to the Paralympics, but the truth is I just like being better. I like improving. I like growth. It is like all this effort is not meaningless. All this pain and suffering has led to me improving, then it's worth it.”
To learn more about King, and how the Wounded Warrior Projected aided in her recovery, visit https://www.woundedwarriorproj....
Where to Listen
Find us in your favorite podcast app.
Ken Harbaugh:
I'm Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In this preview, we'll be sharing a clip from tomorrow's interview with SSG King. If you'd like to hear more previews like this, please let us know at [email protected]
SSG Beth King:
We were flying at a higher elevation. We're coming through, absolutely no gunfire that night. Everyone's like, "Wow, that's weird. That's actually nice." We come in, we get to right outside Honaker-Miracle, which was the FOB name. It was right there in the Pech River Valley. We start circling to lose altitude, and about 400 feet off the ground an RPG comes through the belly of the aircraft, at a forward angle, and went right into the gator. I was on the ramping about four feet or so from where the RPG came in. It went into the engine of the gator and exploded, which ignited the gas line and caught the aircraft on fire.
Now, because the gator was there, I think is the only reason they were able to land the aircraft. Because otherwise the trajectory, it would've severed our drive training. We would've lost all ability. Really the gator saved us.
So the fire starts going, and the aircraft starts shaking. The wiring harness underneath was all severed, so the pilots had absolutely no instruments. Everything was lighting up, warning, warning, warning. Everything was wrong. But they still had control. They were able to continue down, but as the air flows through, basically it was pushing all the fire back towards me on the ramp. The aircraft was all kinds of shaky, so I was getting jumbled around. In Chinook, we have what we call a monkey tail, which is basically a cargo strap that goes from between our shoulder blades to some point on the aircraft so that you can't get thrown too far basically. I was hooked in, so I wasn't too worried. As I'm inching backwards up the ramp trying to get out of the fire, my boots are starting to singe a little bit. I'm like, oh, this is not good. I hit my head off the F transmission pan, and somehow I get knocked out. I'm not sure whether I just shooked out or if I wasn't aware of how close I was. I stepped one step too far. I went over the edge and I just dangled by my monkey tail for the last 100 feet, 150 feet of descent. Just shaking like a little ragdoll.
When they landed, they were right side high. All the rotor blades all hit off the ground on the left. Rotor blades were going everywhere. We had ammunition inside the aircraft cooking off in the fire. It was a little fireworks show in there, which really ruined fireworks for me for the rest of my life, I think. I don't like the sight of them, I don't like the sound of them. But we got down and I realized in the shaking, my comms, my mic button was hung up. I could hear them in my ears. I lost consciousness there for a second. I come back to them trying to figure out if I'm still alive or where I'm at as they're trying to get everyone off the front of the aircraft.
I finally grabbed my mic cord and I'm like, "I'm here. I'm up. I just need to come in to unhook myself." I crawled back into the aircraft, unhooked my tail, went to jump off, but then my vest got caught in the hinge. I had to come back up again into it, work my vest off, and then I jumped to the ground. I don't know how far it was. I want to say it was probably just a quarter of a mile we were from the FOB we were trying to land in.
We all gathered up on the side of the aircraft and we said, "This is no good. We have to leave. Everything's cooking off inside." The pilot decided that we were just going to run to the wall and tried to get someone to talk to us through the window of the tower in the wall around the FOB. That's what we did. We all ran up to the wall. We got permission to enter. We all, one by one helped everyone climbed through the window. We got into the FOB, and then the Air Force PJs came to get us and bring us back to our FOB for the night.
Ken Harbaugh:
That was SSG Beth King. Make sure to catch our full interview with King when it releases tomorrow.