Sgt. Martin Thompson at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan shortly after his accident in July 2003. (Photo by Capt. Charles Benner of the 220th Special Forces Group)

By Mike Santa Rita
Maryland Newsline
Tuesday, May 10, 2005

EDGEWOOD, Md.- Sgt. Martin Thompson, 52, is a career soldier. “I basically grew up in the Army,” he said during a recent interview.

He joined the Army at 17 and at 19 was sent to Vietnam as a paratrooper, where he was deployed in the Tet Offensive of 1968, he said. Soldiers he knew were killed regularly, including his squad leader, who was killed in action in 1969, leaving Thompson to lead the six-man team.

“I almost got it a couple of times myself,” he said.

He escaped injury in Vietnam. But more than 35 years later, an Army pickup truck in a mountainous region of Southeastern Afghanistan nearly killed him.

The truck rolled down the side of a mountain with him inside, causing serious injury, said he and Maj. Charles Kohler, a spokesman with the Maryland National Guard.

Today, after six months in the hospital, seven surgeries and a year of intensive physical therapy, Thompson said he is almost his old self, except for a numbness in his fingertips that feels like frostbite.

But it was a close call. Deployed with the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Green Beret, Thompson was sent to a region near the Pakistani border in February 2003. He said he was part of an operation targeting the Taliban and its sympathizers.

In July 2003 a Taliban leader was discovered hiding out in a nearby compound. A night assault was planned.

Close to midnight on July 21, 2003, on a mountain road, a Toyota pickup truck that Thompson was driving got stuck. Several members of Thompson’s team attempted to push the vehicle out of a rut while he sat inside. His crew accidentally sent the truck careening down the embankment with Thompson inside.

The truck turned over at least 10 times on its way to the bottom, Thompson said. The roof caved in on him, and the vehicle was demolished, he said.

Because of the altitude - they were more than 10,000 feet up - a helicopter couldn’t get in to pull him out, he said. Additionally, the crew he was with thought they were in a “hot area” controlled by the Taliban. So for 12 hours Thompson stayed on the mountain without morphine until it was decided safe to take him out. The medic on Thompson’s team gave him a pain killer, but it did nothing for him, Thompson said.

Sgt. Martin Thompson, left, with Gen Phillip R. Kensinger Jr. in December 2003. (Photo by Sgt. Larry D. Lewis)

Thompson was eventually driven out to Bagram Air Force Base in Southeastern Afghanistan.

His head had a crack in the upper skull and a cheek bone was crushed. His left hand was broken in seven pieces. “You could see the bone and the nerves,” he said.

The news at Bagram Airbase was grim. “They weren’t sure with the bone and the nerve damage if [I] could keep the hand,” he said. Luckily, a surgeon grafted bone from a dead Afghani and inserted it into his hand, saving it, he said.

Audio: Sgt. Martin Thompson talks about the initial surgery that saved his hand, (1minute and 12 seconds, RealPlayer needed)

Surgery was also performed on his arm, his head and his face, reconstructing the cheek bone, which was crushed. He was taken to Germany, to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where his wounds were cleaned again.

Thompson reached the United States on July 23, 2003. He was taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where during additional surgeries most of the metal “hardware” was placed in his hand to reconstruct it, he said.

During months of physical therapy, silly putty became one of his friends.

A machine he nicknamed the “torture rack” was used to increase wrist and arm mobility, he said. “It’s one of those ‘no pain, no gain’ type things,” he said.

In July 2004 his physical therapy ended. That same month he started his job at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a full-time casualty assistance liaison.

He said he sees wounded soldiers on a daily basis at Walter Reed, helping patients find transportation and housing and performing other administrative tasks.

Today, apart from the numbness and occasional muscle spasm in his fingertips, Thompson said he is completely functional. He plans to retire from the Army in two years.

He now lives in Baltimore with his wife of 12 years, Marsha. Together they have 10 grandchildren from his son, Sean, from a previous relationship, and from his three stepchildren.

Once Thompson has retired from the military he plans to go into private security work in Iraq on a year-long contract. He said he hopes to make enough from that contract to come back to the United States and open a car wash in East Baltimore.

He has keen memories of the crash that almost killed him, but they do not haunt him, he said. If he sees a movie set in Afghanistan or a Toyota pickup truck, he said he thinks about the accident he was in, “but only for a split second.”

He wants to focus on the positive, he said.

“I think about how close I came to buying the farm …and it makes me enjoy every  minute of life,” he said.

Copyright © 2005 University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism