An American Hero

At 4:30 p.m. on Novem­ber 12, 2004, a rock­et pro­pelled grenade (RPG) blew through a Black Hawk helicopter’s plex­i­glass chin bub­ble at the feet of its pilot, Cap­tain Tam­my Duck­worth, and det­o­nat­ed in her lap, vapor­iz­ing her right leg, blow­ing her left leg up into the instru­ment pan­el, and shred­ding her right arm. The chop­per went into a steep descent. Going in and out of con­scious­ness, Duck­worth grabbed the stick with her left hand and tried to guide the craft to a safe land­ing, but with­out legs she couldn’t press the floor-ped­al controls.

Co-pilot, Dan Mil­berg, unin­jured in the blast, brought the chop­per down safe­ly in a small clear­ing about five min­utes flight time from the Taji, Iraq, air­field. It hit the ground hard in an upright posi­tion, its rotor blades jolt­ing to a stop. When Duck­worth reached for the lever to shut off the engine, she passed out.

Behind Duck­worth and Mil­berg in the cab­in, the copter’s oth­er two crew mem­bers were seri­ous­ly injured. The RPG tore apart Sergeant Chris Fierce’s leg, and an AK-47 round hit door gun­ner Kurt Han­ne­mann in the low­er back.

Mil­berg knew they had to get out of there because the Iraqi insur­gents, who shot them down from a grove of palms about 500 yards away, would be run­ning as fast as they could to the clear­ing to fin­ish them off.

In Iraq, Black Hawks flew mis­sions in pairs. Mil­berg jumped out of the cock­pit and fran­ti­cal­ly waved down the com­pan­ion Black Hawk hov­er­ing over­head. It imme­di­ate­ly land­ed in the clearing.

Han­ne­mann stum­bled out of the downed chop­per. As the door gun­ner, his job was to “defend the perime­ter” while the oth­ers made a run to safe­ty. With the entire back of his uni­form soaked in his own blood, light­head­ed, and going into shock, the 23-year-old sol­dier stag­gered across the clear­ing and placed him­self and his M4 between the chop­pers and the expect­ed arrival point of the bad guys.

Mil­berg helped Fierce out of the Black Hawk and turned to Duck­worth. Her list­less body slumped for­ward into her shoul­der har­ness, her right leg gone, her left leg sheared at the shin but hang­ing on by a thread of flesh, the skin and mus­cle of her right arm pul­ver­ized, its bones shat­tered, her tor­so and face rid­dled with hot shrap­nel, blood drench­ing her uni­form. Tammy’s dead, Mil­berg thought.

The Amer­i­can Soldier’s creed is unequiv­o­cal: “I will nev­er leave a fall­en com­pan­ion.” Even a dead one.

Mil­berg pulled Duckworth’s life­less body out of the cock­pit. He and Matt Back­ues, of the res­cue copter’s crew, draped her arms over their shoul­ders and ran for the wait­ing Black Hawk. She was so slick with blood they dropped her, picked her up, and dropped her again. Mil­berg then saw that Fierce couldn’t walk on his crushed leg and peeled off to help him while Back­ues grabbed the shoul­der strap of Duckworth’s flight vest and dragged her across the clearing.

Han­ne­mann retreat­ed from the perime­ter and climbed on board the res­cue copter. Back­ues hand­ed Duckworth’s tor­so up to him, and he lift­ed her into the cab­in, her left leg flop­ping along behind, that thread of flesh still hold­ing it on. The oth­ers scram­bled in, and the Black Hawk took off.

As it sped toward Taji, Fierce stared at buck­ets of blood slosh­ing around on the floor. Where did all that blood come from? He’d applied a tourni­quet to his man­gled leg, and it had stopped bleed­ing. Hannemann’s wound had stopped bleed­ing, too. Sud­den­ly, it dawned on him. Duckworth’s heart was still pump­ing. He shout­ed to the oth­ers that she was alive! The pilot radioed Taji to have a Medi­vac copter ready to speed her to the sur­gi­cal hos­pi­tal in Baghdad.

The Medi­vac touched down in Bagh­dad at 5:24 p.m., less than an hour after the RPG explo­sion. As the nurs­es trans­ferred her to a mobile gur­ney, she regained con­scious­ness. She remem­bered the shoot­down, but noth­ing after that.

“Where are my guys?” she shouted.

“Just relax,” they told her. “We’ve got peo­ple tak­ing care of them.”

But she wouldn’t relent, demand­ing infor­ma­tion about the wel­fare of her crew all the way into the oper­at­ing room. When a nurse began to give her anes­the­sia, she grabbed him by the scrub, pulled him to her, and looked him dead in the eyes. “You bet­ter take care of my guys!” she said. Then she fell back, and every­thing went black.

In 2010, I’d con­tributed time and mon­ey for a decade to Los Ange­les Pub­lic Coun­sel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm, rep­re­sent­ing more than 25,000 low-income chil­dren, adults, and fam­i­lies. In 2009, I helped Pub­lic Coun­sel launch a Cen­ter for Vet­er­ans’ Advance­ment to aid vet­er­ans over­come pover­ty, employ­ment bar­ri­ers, home­less­ness, and phys­i­cal and men­tal health issues.

Each year Pub­lic Coun­sel throws a big fundrais­ing ban­quet and gives an award to an indi­vid­ual who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to its caus­es. In 2010, Pub­lic Coun­sel gave its annu­al award to the Unit­ed States Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Vet­er­ans Affairs.

Because of my involve­ment with the Cen­ter, Pub­lic Coun­sel gave Cindy and me seats beside the hon­oree. When we arrived at the Bev­er­ly Hilton Hotel’s ban­quet room for the awards cer­e­mo­ny, the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary was already there, her wheel­chair pushed up close to the head table. We sat down next to her and intro­duced ourselves.

“Tam­my Duck­worth,” she said, shak­ing our hands. “It’s an hon­or to meet you.”

She hadn’t received much press back then. I only knew bare-bones facts about her. Born in 1968 in Bangkok, Thai­land, to a Thai-Chi­nese mom and a U.S. Army dad, and raised in Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii, she joined the Army in 1992 and became a heli­copter pilot. After the RPG attack, she spent a year reha­bil­i­tat­ing from her injuries in Wal­ter Reed Hos­pi­tal in Bethes­da, Mary­land. While there, she helped oth­er patients secure ben­e­fits. That sparked an inter­est in gov­ern­ment ser­vice on behalf of vet­er­ans, which even­tu­al­ly led to her appoint­ment to the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs.

Flash­ing a pix­ie grin, upbeat, and fun to talk to, she gave me sug­ges­tions about the Cen­ter and some con­tacts who could help us, but she wasn’t all busi­ness. She asked about our chil­dren and beamed as we bragged on them. It was obvi­ous she loved kids, but at 42, she was child­less. I won­dered if her injuries were the reason.

When they pulled her chair away from the table to wheel her back­stage for the award pre­sen­ta­tion, I saw the extent of those injuries for the first time. Her right leg was ampu­tat­ed up high near the hip; her left leg was gone just below the knee; and her right arm was laced with fleshy skin grafts.

Mike Far­rell, a U.S. Marine Corps vet­er­an and the actor who played Hawkeye’s side­kick on M*A*S*H, intro­duced her. She emerged from behind the cur­tains, walked across the stage on pros­thet­ic legs, and took her place behind the lectern, main­tain­ing that pix­ie grin all the way.

Speak­ing with­out notes in a con­ver­sa­tion­al tone, she talked about the shoot­down, focus­ing on the hero­ics of the 23-year-old door gun­ner, Kurt Han­ne­mann. Scared out of his mind, in great pain, and bleed­ing pro­fuse­ly, he put his life at risk, she said, to defend the perime­ter and pro­tect the crew. Pub­lic Coun­sel makes that same stand, she told us. “You rep­re­sent the voice­less, the pow­er­less, the poor, and the dis­abled. You’ve been run­ning to the fight for years, mak­ing a stand, say­ing ‘You’re not get­ting through me. I’m here to defend these peo­ple and the val­ues I believe in.’” She empha­sized the impor­tance of our work for vet­er­ans. “Tonight, there are young brave Amer­i­can men and women strap­ping on body armor right now. They need to know you’re on that perime­ter. They need to know you’ll be here to help them when they return.”

She almost died defend­ing her coun­try. For most of us in the audi­ence, our only sac­ri­fice was writ­ing checks and vol­un­teer­ing in our spare time, and yet she closed her remarks by thank­ing us for our ser­vice to the nation.

I’ll nev­er for­get that speech. This coura­geous sol­dier, who lost both legs, a big chunk of her right arm, and half the blood in her body, stood before a crowd of rich lawyers dressed in thou­sand-dol­lar suits and silk ties, sit­ting in the lap of lux­u­ry in Bev­er­ly Hills, our bel­lies full from a ban­quet fare of filet mignon and choco­late souf­fle, and made us feel like we were the real heroes. Her grace, brav­ery, and good humor made me want to give back so much more.

As Mike Far­rell said at the end of the cer­e­mo­ny, “By God, she’s inspiring!”

Tam­my Duck­worth is now the junior Sen­a­tor from Illinois.

I’m glad I was wrong about her injuries. In 2014 at age 46, she had a baby girl, and in 2018 at age 50, she became the first Sen­a­tor to give birth while in office, anoth­er baby girl.

In 2020, she made the short list of poten­tial run­ning mates for Joe Biden, but he wor­ried that Repub­li­cans would attack her eli­gi­bil­i­ty because she was born in Thai­land. “I’ve beat­en every ass­hole who’s come after me with that,” she told Biden. He chose Kamala Har­ris instead. I can’t help won­der­ing what course his­to­ry would have tak­en if he’d cho­sen Sen­a­tor Duckworth.

Polit­i­cal pun­dits say that Democ­rats are search­ing des­per­ate­ly for a leader and that those who have stepped for­ward so far haven’t gen­er­at­ed much enthu­si­asm. Sen­a­tor Duckworth’s name nev­er comes up.

I don’t write polit­i­cal posts, main­ly because pol­i­tics makes me sick (see Polit­i­cal Angst for more on that), but I’ll break my rule here to say this.

The epi­graph to Sen­a­tor Duckworth’s 2021 mem­oir, Every Day is a Gift, is the U.S. Army War­rior Ethos: “I will always place the mis­sion first. I will nev­er accept defeat. I will nev­er quit. I will nev­er leave a fall­en comrade.”

If you’re look­ing for a leader, you might want to con­sid­er an Amer­i­can hero, who has lived her whole life by that creed.