Tales from the Blast Factory

A Brain Injured Special Forces Green Beret's Journey Back From the Brink

Adam Marr, Andrew Marr

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781683504948
• eBook ISBN: 9781683504955
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Military Biographies

A veteran tells his story of suffering from traumatic brain injury—and finally finding relief.
 
Former Green Beret Andrew Marr served multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan—incurring dozens of traumatic brain injuries. It just about destroyed him and his family, and almost cost him his life.
 
After the military medical establishment repeatedly failed him, Marr called upon the initiative and determination that had served him as a warrior—and eventually triumphed with the help of an innovative doctor. As thousands of veterans, athletes, accident victims, and other TBI sufferers wallow in the wake of inadequate treatment—and in many tragic cases, turn to suicide—this book offers new hope and explains the science behind this very specific kind of healing, and why conventional protocols fail.
 
"Takes us from the battlefields of Afghanistan to Andrew's unrelenting battle to be whole again . . . a raw reminder that even in a brain injured state, the mind can clearly triumph." —Joe Rogan

Chapter 1

The Grind of Combat

I joined the Army in a post-9/11 era with no preconceived notions about what I was signing up to do. Nobody can truly comprehend combat until they’ve been in it, but regardless of its risks, that’s where I wanted to be. Much to my parents’ chagrin, I decided to enlist in lieu of commissioning as an officer. My brother, Adam, who commissioned as an officer after college, tried to urge me to go to Officer Candidate School as well. I wanted to be an operator, and I knew my time on the teams would be short-lived had I gone the commissioned route. I considered the idea momentarily, but it was not for me. I was a leader regardless of the rank I wore on my chest.

When I enlisted, that’s all I saw myself doing: being in the trenches. And because I loved my job, I became exceptional at it. I was well respected; I loved the people I got to be around; I loved the common cause. I embraced the level of commitment it took to execute tasks at that level and I respected the courage it required from the men to my left and right. I was surrounded 24/7, 365 with men of the same mind-set who, in turn, made me raise my game to another level. Bringing anything less than my “A” game was unthinkable. The consequences could be fatal.

I’d found a home in combat. Leaving my team and that way of life—the way of the warrior—was as foreign a concept to me as breathing without oxygen. The brotherhood and the grind of combat became like air, food, and water. I couldn’t live without it. I was sure it was my purpose—that I was born to it. Lead men into battle; kill evil; free the oppressed. I thought I’d do it forever, or until someone told me I couldn’t anymore. I just didn’t realize it would happen so soon. No one ever does.

Combat withstanding, this was an era before the superabundance of information that has come out in very recent years about the inherent brain dangers from football on any level: Pop Warner, high school, college, or professional. A study from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute and Wake Forest University School of Medicine showed that “Repeated impacts to the heads of high school football players cause immeasurable changes in their brains, even when no concussion occurs . . .”² Between my football years and my military duties, the damage was mounting.

By definition, aftereffects of a head injury include being dazed or unaware of where you are—what we call “getting your bell rung.” Seeing stars and ringing in your ears are also symptoms many individuals who work in and around explosives experience. Among my roles on the team was that of master breacher, tasked with creating the explosive charges put on doors, windows, and other points of entry from which we’d have to get a “safe” distance away and then blow up the device and go back inside. It’s hard to quantify precisely, but the number of TBIs I’ve received in my life is in the double, if not triple, digits.

In retrospect, every time we executed one of those blasts, no matter how small, everyone was at risk of, and may have sustained, a TBI. The fact is, I’d done hundreds if not thousands of explosives charges over the course of my career, but that’s the life of an operator. The only time I was ever knocked unconscious was on a mission in 2013, and it was brief. That’s why for so many months after I’d completed what was to be my last deployment, there were no correlations made between repeated head traumas and the slow but sure cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical decline and nightmare for me that followed.

* * * *

Whiskey. Alpha. Romeo. Delta. Alpha. Kilo. The last place I deployed to in Afghanistan is called Wardak Province, located in the central east region. I had to spell it out because it’s not a place most people know. It is marked by the Kabul—Kandahar Highway, maybe a little better identified, though most of Wardak’s half a million residents live in remote villages. At that point, though, we were in the capital: Maidan Shahr. It was infested with free-roaming enemies terrorizing the local populace. The Taliban enjoyed total freedom of movement, walking openly in public while heavily armed. They were the law. We were tasked with clearing them out. The engagements that ensued resulted in the most violent combat of my SF career.

On June 3, 2013, we were going after a known facilitator of improvised explosive devices—commonly known as IEDs—in an attempt to capture or kill him. The following excerpt was taken from my Purple Heart denial appeal (addressed in Chapter 7), recounting the specifics of the engagement:

On June 8th 2013, ODA xxxx to include Sergeant First Class (SFC) Marr, was part of an operation in Mamikheyl Village, Wardak Province, Afghanistan, with their Afghan National Army Special Forces (ANASF) counterparts. Their Afghan-led mission was to investigate a suspected insurgent weapons cache. Once at the suspected cache, SFC Marr’s team strong pointed the compound while their ANASF counterparts entered the compound. SFC Marr’s team entered the compound after the ANASF asked for support. The compound was clear of insurgent and civilian personnel. During the sensitive site exploitation, a hole containing what was believed to be 107mm rockets was identified. During the investigation of the munitions, SFC Marr found anti-tampering devices attached to the rockets. Upon notification of the anti-tampering devices, the ODA’s team sergeant ordered all nonessential personnel to evacuate the compound. Once all nonessential personnel were clear of the site, SFC Marr and his 18C (Special Forces Engineer) counterpart began to prep charges to explosively reduce the cache site. The team received a heavy volume of effective PKM (Soviet-made machine gun), small arms (AK 47 automatic rifle), and RPG (rocket propelled grenade) fire as the ODA’s team sergeant was setting up an outside perimeter.

SFC Marr and team were pinned down by the effective enemy PKM, small arms, and RPG fire at a cover and concealed position that was within 50M of the cache site. SFC Marr and team would have to cross the cache site and an open danger area to link back up with their main element. The enemy continued to place accurate RPG fire directed at the cache site. One effective RPG round would have triggered the explosives to a sympathetic discharge (a blast wave from one munition can ignite other nearby munitions). SFC Marr and team’s current position made link up with the main element tactically unfeasible and would have resulted in multiple US casualties from the effective enemy RPG fire. SFC Marr detonated the explosives, resulting in a documented TBI. The exact contents of the cache were unknown; however, the battle space owner 3^rd Infantry Division Intelligence Section estimated the cache due to size of blast and human intelligence to have contained approximately 12 107mm rockets.

An attempt to move to a friendly position while the cache site was in danger of a sympathetic discharge while being pinned down by effective enemy fire made SFC Marr and team’s movement tactically unfeasible. Not detonating the explosives would’ve resulted in the team being vulnerable without a covered and concealed position ensuing in catastrophic US fatalities. The enemy situation dictated SFC Marr’s decision to detonate. SFC Marr’s actions under effective enemy fire allowed the team to effectively break contact, fight back to their main element, resulting in no US or ANASF casualties while reducing a known enemy cache site. SFC Marr received a medical retirement on 28 June 2015 from wounds received in combat.

The next things I remember after detonating the cache are the sound of glass breaking and my being completely engulfed in extreme blackness. I came to, prone, on my stomach, having no idea where I was because the sun had been swallowed up by the debris from the blast. I put my hands over my head because I somehow thought I was inside a building that was collapsing on me. I felt the area all around and realized I was not inside, but I was unsure of why the sun, which had just been shining, was now blotted out. We began taking more machine gun fire, which turned a switch back on inside of me as I realized we were definitely still fighting. My teammates and I were able to fight back, and much later, in making sense of what had happened with all of my symptoms, it was clear I’d suffered one of many TBIs. It would take many, many months before correlations were made between what happened that day and the cascade of physical, emotional, and behavioral issues that ensued for me. We laid low for a few days, and after that, it was back to the blast factory.

* * * *

On June 8, just five days later, we were back out on the hunt. My wife, Becky, who was about eight months pregnant with our first son, was home with our three daughters. It was understood that I’d go home for the birth and then attend Delta Force assessment and selection, keeping me stateside for the last half of that deployment. Within minutes of our arrival on the objective, we began taking enemy fire. Two team guys quickly came under accurate sniper fire and were pinned down at their location. They’d remain at their covered-and-concealed position in the kill zone until we could get them out.

The new mission was to neutralize the threat and get them out of the kill zone. The enemy sniper team was up on a mountain, with what we determined were several enemy combatants, so we could not effectively move to them. That left us with the option to engage with our organic weapon systems in the hope we could get the enemy to put their heads down long enough to get our guys out of there. We got some air on station, an Air Force A-10 Warthog Close-Support fixed-wing aircraft. The entire airframe is designed around its beautiful and destructive thirty-millimeter cannon: a cannon that saved our lives on more than one occasion. The A-10 effectively neutralized the enemy. Once we got our men back, we loaded up the vehicles to return to base—when further disaster struck.

I always traveled in the back of the lead vehicle. I did this because I needed to be the first one out to investigate and reduce any IEDs we came across. We were in a convoy of about a half-dozen RG vehicles (a mine-resistant light armored vehicle). I was in the lead vehicle in the back of the RG next to the bombproof exit door and window. We were riding with about one hundred meters between each vehicle when the one behind us hit an IED. I recall looking back and seeing the entire vehicle shoot up about twenty feet in the air. It seemed like slow motion, but then the forty-two-thousand-pound vehicle came crashing down on its side. From past occurrences, I knew the magnitude of what had happened to the occupants, though we could not simply dismount from the other RGs and rush to their aid. We had to be exceedingly cautious of our movements around other prospective IEDs and enemy fire. We also realized as soon as the explosion took place that the enemy was probably initiating an ambush. Very carefully, we closed the distance to the disabled RG, finding the blast had blown off the front passenger door. The teammate who’d been in the front seat was actually now trapped underneath the vehicle and unconscious. The vehicle’s gun, positioned at three o’clock had actually prevented him from being crushed by the fallen vehicle. Had it been at two o’clock or four o’clock, he would have died.

Four others in the RG were also severely injured, and as we started to work on trying to free our trapped teammate, the enemy began its ambush. AK, machine gun, and RPG fire began to rain down on us. I took some of our guys and some Afghan Special Forces guys to set up a security perimeter.

The landing zone was too hot at that time to land a medevac (a helicopter used to remove sick or injured people from an area). We orchestrated A-10 Close Air Support, or CAS, gun run after gun run on multiple enemy locations. Hours later, we finally got a medevac in to take the wounded out to higher echelons of care. The fight grew fiercer after the medevac departed, and we had to call for reinforcements. When all was said and done, thousands of pounds of bombs were accurately placed on multiple enemy locations.

We needed to investigate the blast site that had overturned the RG to figure out from what point the IED had been initiated. There was a lull in enemy fire after the gun runs, but no one would be dumb enough to stick around after all that carnage was unleashed from the sky, or so I thought. My teammate and I alerted the rest of the team that we were going to see if we could gather any intel from the suspected IED initiation site. We walked head-on into another near-ambush about one hundred meters away from the building that we thought had been where the blast initiated. Once again, the enemy opened up from a tree line about 150 meters away with RPG, AK, and PKM machine gun fire. Luckily for us, they were not too accurate with their fire this time. Without communicating, my teammate and I defaulted into a choreographed protocol of one man engaging and laying down covering fire while the other man would bound back several feet, get set, and then start laying down covering fire for the other man to bound back. This process is repeated until both are out of the kill zone. It is a thing of beauty that had become second nature to us by now. We got back and called for more CAS on that location. It wasn’t tactically feasible to do a proper battle damage assessment, but the number of enemy killed and wounded was significant.

With the injured gone, we now had three fewer men from my team in the fight. They would not operate for the rest of the deployment. After seeing my vehicle blown up and assessing the damage to my teammates at the blast site, I made a instant decision to forgo returning home for the birth of my son who was due in a few weeks. I had to stay with my team and finish the job. Becky and my children were safe. They were cared for and provided for. They had shelter. They had running water. Air-conditioning. Indoor plumbing. Refrigeration. Hospitals nearby. No threat of imminent danger. In our position, we had none of the above. I knew my soon-to-be-born son would appreciate that decision when he was old enough to comprehend it. Becky’s response was reassuring.

She said, “Baby, we all love you and are so proud of you. You do whatever you have to do to bring the rest of those boys back home alive and safe. We’ll all be here waiting for you when you get back.”

I was confident in my team and I was confident in my skill and experience level, but I also knew there was a high probability that I wouldn’t make it back alive. We were walking the razor’s edge and we all knew it.

Chapter 2

A Cry for Help

I returned home from Afghanistan in August 2013, a few weeks ahead of my team. I met my son, Jace, for the first time at the Sea-Tac Airport baggage claim. In the weeks and months that followed, things began to change for me. The only thing I was sure of was that I was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it; I was just off. The deployment had been emotionally and physically taxing on the whole team. I decided we’d been grinding for a while, and I thought my body needed a break and then I’d be back to normal.

Like a slow burn, because of the post-traumatic brain inflammation that had stemmed from my multiple TBIs (of which I was completely unaware at that time), my body started to rebel. Scientific research states the effects of a brain injury can surface on impact—or a long time afterward.³ It was about three months after my return to the States that I began to notice some changes. I was plagued by depression, angry outbursts, anxiety, mood swings, memory loss, an inability to concentrate, learning disabilities, sleep deprivation, loss of libido and lean body mass, muscular weakness, and more. When I finally reached the breaking point, I was drinking all day, consuming a 750-milliliter bottle of bourbon every night, was on more than a dozen medications including mind-altering narcotics, and had become completely detached and isolated from everyone I loved. The manifestations of dementia became familiar territory to me and those around me. I was sleeping with a handle of whiskey and a loaded shotgun by my bed.

The events that led up to it included severe panic attacks. One of the attacks came on at my unit gym when I became lightheaded and dizzy, with a pounding heart rate. I fought off an impending crying jag. I remember telling myself, You’re a Green Beret; do not lose it and start crying in here. This was foreign territory to me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• My Standard of Performance
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Grind of Combat
• Chapter 2 A Cry for Help
• Chapter 3 The War Within
• Chapter 4 The Power to Choose
• Chapter 5 Moving Outside of the Box
• Chapter 6 The Underlying Condition
• Chapter 7 Abundance
• Chapter 8 Creating the Warrior Angels Foundation
• Chapter 9 Biology Lessons Learned Relative to TBI
• Chapter 10 Life Lessons Learned
• Chapter 11 Final Thoughts
• About the Author