August 12, 2025 • 35 mins
On August 3rd, 2008, U.S. Air Force Staff Sergeant Nick Bradley’s life changed forever when a 20-pound IED detonated under his Land Cruiser during a mission in Afghanistan. Thrown from the vehicle and blinded by the blast, Nick awoke in a ditch, unable to move. “I was helpless,” he recalls. “I didn’t know what was going on—or if I was going to make it out of there.”
In this deeply human and unflinchingly honest episode of Alive Again, Nick walks us through the aftermath: a shattered body held together by 14 plates and 20 screws, the surreal detail of his nose being duct-taped back on in the field, and the long, painful road through coma, surgeries, and emotional reckoning.
But this is also a story of profound transformation.
Every year, Nick honors his fallen comrade on his "Alive Day", a testament to the transformative power of shared humanity and the enduring spirit of resilience in the face of the unthinkable.
This episode is a testament to the fragile threads that tether us to life, the brotherhood forged in battle, and the courage it takes to keep going.
His story reminds us that life is scary, and "that’s okay".
Story Producer: Dan Bush
* If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story. Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Staff Sergeantnick Bradley, United States Air Force.
On August third, two thousand and eight, my truck was
blown up by a twenty pound anti tak mine. You
can't go through the things I've been through in life
and not believe in something right. Because let's just say
I'm wrong. Then I wasted a lifetime being wrong. But
then let's say I'm right. Well, I'm right for a
(00:38):
lot longer.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:04):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener and discretion as advised.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
How I would describe myself as I'm a big kid. Honestly,
you know, I've just learned to appreciate life and a
different light, so to speak. I was born in Eldedo, Arkansas,
population like thirty thousand people something like that. And then
when I was twelve years old, we moved to an
(01:40):
even smaller town, population three hundred and thirty people. So
that was a bit of a culture shock for me.
But I mean I kind of loved it, the solitude
of it all. You know, it was quiet, you could
see all the stars in the sky every night. I
think it kind of shaped a lot of my perspective
online life, just the way I view things and how
(02:04):
I treat things and right, because it's real easy to
get trapped in negative things. And I think that's where
the foundation of that perspective I have on things it
kind of began. I just I just I've always just
like I love to laugh and I like when other
people laugh. You know, it just it just changes the mood.
It can dictate a lot of things. I mean, it's
(02:26):
cause it's real easy to get stuck in like the
bad are the negative of things, right, kind of like
my story. You know, I think had I not had
that outlook, it would have been real easy for me
to just stay negative. Honestly, I never just wanted to
(02:47):
serve to be honest with you when I graduated high school.
My dad, he simply just told me, He's like, Nick,
you got to go to college or something. You can't
do nothing, and you need to. You need to find
your own way. You need to Essentially, you got thirty
days to get out of my house make a path.
And at that point I had already been talking to
(03:08):
a recruiter and so, you know, it seemed like a
viable option. I was tired of going to school. I
was like, I can go in the military, and you know,
they'll pay for this and they'll pay for that. I
had a buddy that joined the Marines, and I remember
he said to me, He's like, Nick, I hear the
Air Force is way better. Join the Air Force. I
did way more deployments than him too, by the way,
but nonetheless I ended up joining the Air Force and
(03:32):
June of one, so right before September eleventh, I just
thought boot camp was pretty easy because my dad was
really tough on me growing up, you know, because I
deserved it. Probably started just time learning the ropes, you know,
(03:52):
real green about all of it. Kind of my mindset
mentally where I was at is I was pretty happy.
I liked how things were going, but I think boot
camp was easier for me just because I always again
the perspective thing, you know, it could always be worse.
(04:12):
The camaraderie piece, I think is one of the biggest
aspects of the military, right, the brotherhood that comes with it,
you know, and you know, because you build these really
really tight bonds based on the job that you're doing.
I felt like I was around some of the greatest
humans ever. During that time. You do become a family.
(04:35):
I mean, you spend you know, six months to a
year with these individuals day in and day out, with
no days off, no breaks, that you develop routines and
to have a bit of normalcy. You become a family.
So we had gotten to Afghanistan. It was the end
(04:59):
of March. I was actually a last minute add on
to this trip. So the team had already been prepping
for this deployment for a month or two. They'd already
done some other trainings and things of that nature. And
I wasn't slotted to leave until way later in the year.
And there was a guy that dropped out of the
team and they needed to feel one and I was
(05:20):
the next slotted to go. And you know, would this
being my third deployment, and I'd never had this feeling before.
I had this hunch, we're going over with thirteen, but
twelve are coming home, and you know, in hindsight's always
twenty twenty, right. But other members of the team, including
my mom and some other individuals that were closing it
(05:43):
in the group, they had that same kind of hunch,
that intuition, that gut feeling, whatever you want to call it,
that's something was going to happen on this trip. Third,
it started just like most other days. Actually, the missions
(06:05):
that I had slotted for that day were canceled because
the general officer that I was part of their security
detail that day, they had canceled all their moves. They
were just staying on the compound we were at. So
essentially I had a day off, and day off in
a deployed location is it's there's nothing to do, you
(06:28):
know except the mission, right, So play video games, watch
a movie, go to the gym, eat some food, watch
a movie, go to the gym, eat some food.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
You see what I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Like, that's it, it's it, that's all it is. And
so so it was just, yeah, it was just a
normal day. And the other general that we were guarding
the rest of the team had taken him to the airport,
which is about an hour convoy away, to drop him
off so he could fly out on R and R
for a couple of weeks. And then they got back
(06:59):
and to sided the general's exact, the colonel wanted to
go out to this firing range, so we were going
to take him out there. And that's when I got
a phone call like, hey, we got a mission for
you now since you're off, so go with us to
do this. I was actually I was thrilled with it. Well,
and plus, I mean, Garrett's the one that called me,
(07:21):
and I was like, sure, man, I'll go out there
with you. That's kosher. Just have a sweet little hang
day at the range, no big deal. And so I
loaded up in the truck and off we went. So
like I refer to him as Garrett now because we're
both out of the military. However, when we were in,
you know, he was Sergeant Night. He's Garrett now because
(07:41):
he's retired, and I always just called him Garrett. Me
and Garrett were roommates. We'd got to know each other
really well, developing a tight bond. Me and him had
done the majority of the missions together, so we knew
how each other operated. So it was it was kind
of like a safe space, right.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
It was.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
You know, it's like I got my wingman here, like
I know how he's going to operate. I know what
he's thinking when we do these missions. I know if
this happens, this is gonna be his move and this
will be my move. And it was a very yin
and yang kind of thing. So I loaded up and
jumped in the truck with my truck commander, Gonzo Haimi
Gonzalez is his name, and he jumps in the truck
(08:23):
with me. And now also when we did these missions,
Gonzo ninety percent of time was my TC for my drives,
so he was the truck commander or TC. So he
was the one that was in the passenger seat, the
front passenger seat, always my extra set of eyes, right,
So his head's on a swivel, just watching all the
action the other moving vehicles, the people walk in, just
(08:44):
to make sure nothing's out of the ordinary, because I'm
focusing on driving the cars around our vehicles because my
job in the convoy, I drove the last vehicle and
these convoys, right, they called it the chase truck and
my job was solely to create a bubble around the
convoy to make sure no cars passed us cut into
the convoy, you know, just to essentially protect the convoy itself.
(09:08):
Use my vehicle as kind of a weapon, if you will,
to create a barrier to keep it safe and keep
it moving.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And during that time in Afghanistan, it was probably one
of the i would say hottest times in Afghanistan. They
back then, they said from two thousand and eight to
twenty ten was some of the toughest years in Afghanistan,
where you were having frequent explosions or IDs or v
beds is what they call them. It's a vehicle born
(09:43):
improvised explosive device. It's just an ID, but they put
it in a vehicle and they crash the vehicle and
then blow up, suicide bombers, gunfights, it's you know, it
was it was kind of the wild West. We knew
the route, We knew where we were going. We didn't
need maps and we didn't need to brief on it
and do that. We just we knew which way we
(10:05):
were going. We know the route were taken there. We
know the different route we're taken back because you never
take the same route, you know. Because it was again
me and Garrett, it was very yin and yang. We
knew already, and so I fell in line with the
convoy and we took off. Now we turned off on
this dirt road leading into the gun Range. And I
(10:25):
remember when we turned off on this dirt road, my
truck commander, Gonzo, he calls out, hey, watch this white
pickup truck. It's coming in pretty fast from behind us.
And again, my job is to make sure vehicles aren't
passing the convoy, they're not breaking into our convoy. That
was that was my gig. And right in that moment,
(10:47):
the lead vehicle called out that we needed to pick
up our pace because there was this little colvert, little
bridge that said was a potential spot for an ied
so we needed to pick up the pace. Well, right
then that right in that moment, that little white pickup
truck pulled up next to me. It had gotten right
side by side with me, and I just gave them
(11:08):
a little nudge to remind them that they don't pass
the convoy. Well, when I nudged them, they drove off
the road and ran into this looked like a telephone pole,
and at that moment, I'd downshifted the truck to pick
up some speed to get the speed going back on
the road, and I was turning back on the dirt
road and it was in that moment when the twenty
(11:30):
pound anti tank mine detonated. And that was the last
thing I remember. It was just like someone turned a
light switch off. My lights just went out. There were
(11:53):
two Taliban members that remotely detonated the twenty pound anti
tank mine, but by the time the relay got from
the trigger to the actual ID, it was my truck
that was hit. It hit right underneath the gearshift of
the truck, which where my right arm was. I stayed
in the vehicle through the explosion. Once the vehicle came
(12:15):
to a rest, I was. I was knocked out for
one to two minutes, they said, and then I went
face first down into this colvert that was nine feet
I didn't hear anything. I didn't I didn't necessarily feel anything.
It was just just empty. Just everything just went dark.
(12:36):
So at this point when I regained consciousness, I might
have had my eyes open, I might not have, but
I couldn't see anything. I was completely blind. Everything was
pitch black, but I was, I was conscious. I knew
something had happened. I didn't know exactly what happened. I
knew I was in a lot of pain. So at
(12:57):
this point, I'm trying to assess, well, where I'm at,
what's going on, what happened At that time, I didn't
really hear much of anything, and I want to say
that was probably one of those more scary things. I
did have a radio, but apparently my radio was hitting
the explosion and it so my mic, they said, was keyed,
(13:19):
meaning that the button was clicked down, like they could
hear me, you know, breathing, but they couldn't. They didn't
know anything else. They didn't know how bad it was.
They didn't know. So at this point I tried to
just continue to assess the situation. Mean, meanwhile, I can't
see anything. I can't move my right arm there was
a lot of pain and my right elbow, but I
(13:42):
couldn't move anything on my right side. So I tried
to take my left hand and you know, get the radio.
I couldn't get it to work. I tried to get
my gun out of the whole ster, just in case
I needed to defend myself. I couldn't get the gun
out of the holester, you know, and it's and at
this time, you know, like, okay, what's really going on?
Like how bad is this? Am I going to be
(14:03):
able to get out of the situation? But I'm trying
to stay calm, right. You don't want to go into
shock because then you'll start bleeding faster. And I knew
I was bleeding. I could taste the blood in my mouth.
And I remembered, you know, before the day before I
left again, going back to that gut feeling, I had
(14:23):
just had this hunch. Well, I was hanging out with
my daughter, my oldest daughter. She was two and a
half years old at the time, and I just made
a promise to her that no matter what happens, Daddy
would come home. And in that moment, she handed me
this little flower. And I carried her pictures everywhere with me,
and I'd taken that flower and I put put it
behind her pictures and I had it in my pocket
(14:45):
and that was the only thing that I could grab
a hold of in that situation where I was laying
in that ditch, and I remember grabbing that and thinking
about a promise I made, and I just I would
not let myself give up. Had to figure out a
way to just remain calm until someone got back to me,
because clearly I wasn't gonna get out of there by myself.
(15:09):
And it was probably within a minute or two of
that of me just holding onto that flower and just relaxing,
that I heard Garrett's voice and he jumps down the ditch.
I asked him a very inappropriate question that I thought
was important. I asked him if my manhood was still
attached because I couldn't stand up, I couldn't do anything,
(15:31):
because I was like, if not do let me die.
He wrote, That's what I told you again, I find
I find the light. Like even in a situation like
that where I'm at, I had jokes, you know it
just I'd say, I say silly stuff, you know, I
thought it would lighten the tension. But I was also
(15:51):
half serious about it, you know. And I knew also
not just for me to stay calm. I knew if
he could sense that, okay, Nick still Nick in there
despite all this, it could calm him down a little
bit too. And he told me everything was fine and
he was going to get me bandaged up. And at
that time, you know, we didn't have the medical equipment
(16:15):
needed for this mission. You know, it was kind of
an unsanctioned mission, and you know, we didn't have a
ton of medical supplies. But Garrett duct taped my nose
back on my face. They put some bandages on because
my nose was blown off. They bandaged up my arm
and hands. Then there was a few other team members
that called in for air support for a metavac. They
(16:36):
had to pop the smoke so the choppers knew where
to land. They then they loaded me up on this stretcher,
got me out of the ditch, and I remember when
they loaded me on the black Hawk, I could hear
him talking to Garrett. I could hear Garrett talking to me.
I was talking to Garrett muttering stuff, which was crazy
because a lot of the bones in my face were
(16:58):
fractured at the time. For me to have those kind
of conversations was humorous to me. But as soon as
they got me loaded on the black Hawk, I remember
just the black Hawk taking off and my head was
kind of by the door that was open, and I
could feel the wind blowing in my hair, and it
was in that moment I just felt a sense of
calm and peace, like everything was going to be okay.
(17:21):
They kept me heavily sedated. They transported me to the
nearest major base, which was a bogger marefield in Afghanistan.
Garrett stayed on the chopper with us. He stayed with
me by the bedside. I underwent an extensive surgery, drama
surgery in order for them to transport me to Germany,
(17:45):
to launch till Germany, because typically when someone suffers those
types of injuries, that's where they send them to Germany.
They get to Germany, they'll spend a couple of weeks there,
and then they send them back home, either to Walter
Reed or Brooks Medical or you know somewhere. You know. Yeah,
(18:09):
while while I was in that ditch, during during that
time frame, that ten minutes of just dead silence, you know,
I was I was a little scared, you know, quite frankly,
I was worried because you know, one you're kind of alone,
and there, to me, I think there's no worse feeling
(18:31):
than feeling alone in any situation. And when when Garrett
made it back to me and I heard the sound
of his voice, I felt safe. I had I had
a sense of calming that ran over me because I
knew I had back up at that moment that I
wasn't alone anymore. But there were time, there were periods
(18:57):
during that ten minutes that I did I did think
that that's where staff starting Nick Bradley's story was going
to end. But but again going back and trying to
remember that promise and that little girl's face, you know,
my daughter's face had just I think it was just
it was enough to keep me focused on the task
(19:18):
at hand, to not just just let that beat me.
I didn't. I didn't know what had happened to Gonzo
until a couple weeks later, while I was in Walter
(19:38):
Reid because I had been in a medically induced coma,
they were able to inform me that he didn't make
it out of the explosion. He was he was killed
on impact as soon as the bomb went off. And yeah,
(19:59):
so that was pretty tough for them to tell me.
It's pretty tough to take, you know. Well, there's a
couple of things really, because after they told me all
this stuff, they told me that they were having trouble
getting the nerves of my legs to respond, that I
might not walk, that they anticipated eighteen months of recovery
(20:22):
is you know, this is they're waking me up, telling
me all this stuff that still had to go through
multiple more surgeries, like all these things, and it was
kind of crushing, you know. And you know in that moment,
it's you're still just trying to figure out how you
survived and you know what's really going on. And I did.
I spent probably a day in just a dark place.
(20:44):
I didn't want to talk to anybody, I didn't want
see anybody. I just I went kind of dark.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
It was a really heavy day. Like I just found
out what happened. I found out about Gonzo. Right, So
it's tough, right, it was tough to process all that stuff. Man.
Well that's what I did. I took a picture of
my daughter and I taped it next to my bed.
(21:12):
It's a beautiful thing, man, it really is. I don't
get talked about it much. I taped this picture of
my daughter next to the bed, right, and I just
I just told myself every day, I'm gonna do something
better today than I did yesterday. Because that day that
(21:33):
I was also kind of in the dumps.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I had.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I had physical therapy that day and I couldn't set
up in a bed by myself. Right, These two nurses
actually had to physically pick me up and set me
up on the bed, and they wanted me to scoot
to the edge of the bed, which I couldn't do.
They had to help me and all the things. And so,
you know, that was very defeating for me, because you know,
I went from being in really good shape to I
can't sit up in a bed by myself. So the
(21:57):
next morning I woke up and I set up in
the and I scooted it to the edge of the bed.
It took me a while, and it was a lot
of pain. It was really painful, but I did it.
And right about the time I got to the edge
of the bed, the therapist had come into the room
to do physical therapy that morning and they were floored
that I had made it up in the bed. And
(22:19):
so after that, I knew there wasn't going to be
a lot to stop me, and I just I kept
telling myself, no matter how bad I think this is,
it could be worse, you know, right, because I survived
and Gonzo didn't, Right, it could be worse, and you know,
and it I think that really started transforming my take
(22:43):
on it my mental state, right is kind of just
looking at things as a glass half full, right, to
just get better and just to push myself a little
bit more every day, no matter how painful it is.
Just find the bright side of it. And I'm going
to do better, and I'm gonna do better. And I'm
like plain about these things because I get the opportunity
to still do these things, you know, because it's all perspective.
(23:10):
I just think, you know, going through any kind of hardships,
if you're gonna mentally beat them, you have to learn
how to change your mindset to have that outlook, because
otherwise it's real easy just to get bogged down in
the part that sucks. Yeah, you know, rediscovering a sense
(23:32):
of purpose through all this is it's, you know, your
strongest when you're the most vulnerable, right, And I think
when a human loses a sense of purpose, they become
very vulnerable, right. And I was. I felt lost for
a little while just trying to figure out, you know,
a path because I found myself kind of kind of
(23:52):
alone and you know, just kind of walking through my
journey and figuring out, Okay, this is who I am, Now,
what do I want to do? You know, what kind
of relationships do I want to have. It's helped me grow,
It's helped me to be more confident in the person
that I am, you know, because I've learned things that, Okay,
I don't like that, but I really enjoyed that. I
(24:13):
didn't think I would like that. I still have the
ability to serve people, and I just I feel like
that's such a great mission for me. You know, looking
back on this, I wouldn't I wouldn't change a thing,
not a not a single thing, because I don't think
(24:33):
I'm the same person now that I would have been
had it not happened, right, I think it made me
better and stronger and a lot of different aspects. And
I'm grateful for the experiences I've had. I'm grateful for,
you know, getting to learn this much about myself, to
(24:55):
dig deep and really evaluate myself right, Because you can't
reach your full potential until you've been at the bottom, right,
and you can't climb to the heights that you're meant
to go until you start. You got to start somewhere,
you know, And I think this gave me the opportunity
to start from the bottom, right. And if you can
(25:17):
find the positive. In any situation you're in, you're gonna
have a positive attitude. You're gonna become a positive person.
And with that positive attitude, there's nothing you won't be
able to overcome. Nothing, I mean, any olts go in
front of you, You're gonna find a way over it.
And so I would just it gets better. You know,
it might get worse before it gets better, but it
gets better even in the bad. And it's if you
(25:40):
keep that mindset about it. You have to tell yourself
that it's it will get better because it could be worse.
It could always be worse.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Welcome back, This is a Live again joining me for
a conversation about today's story. Are my other Alive Against
story producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Dye, And
I'm your host, Dan Bush. All right, we have Lauren Vogelbaumb,
Nick Takoski, Brent Die and myself Dan Bush. And so
talking about Staff Sergeant Nicholas Bradley. So he became my
(26:28):
instant best friend and like he would crack jokes through
text that I hardly understood. But then I'll look at
him twice and start laughing. My ass off, because he's
actually a.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Really funny guy, and like he keeps saying throughout the show,
he's like, I'm just a big kid.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I'm just a big kid.
Speaker 5 (26:41):
And other than this being a story of survival and
endurance and obviously resilience, you know, getting blown up by
an ied in Afghanistan and then having the will to
survive and to go through everything he went through to
get back on his feet after that, and surviving the
loss of his friend Gonzo, who died in the truck,
and he made it up out and it wasn't this
(27:01):
sort of macho attitude that helped him to survive or
helped him make it through that. It was his vulnerability
rather that helped him make it through that. And we
got to a point in our conversation where he was saying,
we're the strongest one, We're most vulnerable. And what was
interesting about the interview was ironically that's when he really
when he was most vulnerable. During the interview, that's when
we got to know him and we got to hear
(27:22):
his feelings about his daughter and his feelings about Gonzo.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Well, I think what really struck me about Nick's story
is how similar it is to my story. I grew
up in a small town population twelve hundred people, and
even the way he described like seeing the stars at
night and the optimism that that gave him and kind
of the sense that things could always be worse. I'm
I mean, I kind of always had that same I
(27:47):
think it's just kind of a Midwestern sort of way
of thinking, well, you know, things could be worse, so
you know, let's just keep plugging along. And just like Nick,
my dad was like, you've got to do something to
want you to go to the military, you know, And
I think that a lot of guys who are in
the military are big kids who like to joke around,
and they get into the military to expand their horizon
(28:09):
and go somewhere else. You know, That's what I did.
And you know, just his sense of humor, like saying,
is my manhood still attached after being I mean, I
would hope that I have the presence of mind to
crack a joke like that in that moment, because I
think what he was trying to accomplish with that was
I think everything he described, like building that camaraderie, letting
(28:29):
everyone know that he's still here under this wound. I mean,
his freaking nose is blown off his face, you.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Know, he.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
And there's still a human being under here.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I'm not.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Yeah, But it wasn't like he didn't soldier up to
make it through this, to sit up on the bed.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Was it was this picture of his.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Daughter, but and the pressed flower that he kept in
his wallet.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
But I think most guys that I served with would
be motivated by the things he described. They'd be motivated
by their friendship and their desire to reconnect with their daughter.
And you know, I think we have this image of
from watching war movies that everybody's some jar head running
over the hill with a gun. Most of our guys
who are just trying to get out of their small town,
maybe get some money for college. And I was when
(29:16):
I joined the military. I was like, please, you know,
there's a lot of guys who are like, I hope
I see some action while I'm here, and I'm like, please, no,
I don't. I just want to get my gi bill
and go.
Speaker 8 (29:25):
You know.
Speaker 7 (29:26):
But the humor is also what really struck me. And
I think that that is such a human element and
such an important element to trying to cope with anything.
I know that that's a major coping mechanism for me,
sometimes to a negative level. But you know, like in
this world, when we're going through it and you're dealing
with such heavy stuff, I think we have to get weirder.
(29:47):
I think our humor like like like comic relief. Yeah,
like we need to be irrepressible.
Speaker 8 (29:51):
Yeah, I know when I'm in trouble because I can't
stop making jokes, I think you're on fire to I'm
like a single tear running down my shoes.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
But yeah, I mean, like the the you know, the
daughter thing really.
Speaker 9 (30:06):
Did that hit me right in the in the chest
of course. And I think, to kind of add on
to Brent's thing here, it's you know, uh, it's more
than just a common experience in the military. I think
it's a common experience across humankind to like to try
(30:26):
to rally and rally the people around you using whatever
forces you have, and sometimes humor is all you got
if you're lying there bleeding making a joke about.
Speaker 8 (30:37):
Like you know.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
And then he didn't say manhood either nearly No, well
either way, I walked away from next story. I don't know,
looking around, going okay, would I have that hood spot?
Speaker 3 (30:56):
What? You know?
Speaker 5 (30:57):
If I had, if I got blown up by an ID,
what things would I draw on for myself to get through?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Would I find humor? You know what? Where would any
resilience come from? It's it's a all of these stories
are that way.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
But it's just like kudict to you man, the part
where he talks about his daughter. I mean, I was
almost in tears. Like when I used to fly a
lot for work. You know, I'm a videographer, and I'd
take my camera gear and go different cities, and every
time I left my baby is like if my plane
crashes or something, you know, this might be the last
time I see my wife, the last time I see
my daughter. And then when my daughter was a little
bit older, she'd always make artwork that could hang in
(31:32):
my hotel room. And I'm just thinking, oh my god,
to just be lying there with your legs blown off
and your nose blown off and you have this little
flower that your daughter had given you. I mean that
had me right here, you know, and like, yeah, I
just think that that inciting moment that you know, yes,
there's a reason to pull through this. I've got to
(31:53):
get there for my daughter. But he describes that feeling
of being alone. Like, imagine that your truck just got
hit by a ie. You don't know if the rest
of your crew is even alive. You're susceptible to enemy fire.
You're lying there and you could get shot at it,
and you're blind and you're blind. You can't move and
you don't hear anything for ten minutes, and you're holding
(32:15):
this flower that your daughter gave you. Just like all
quite in the Western Front or something, and they had
these premonitions that somebody was gonna die on this mission.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah, that one person wouldn't return.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
And one person didn't his friend Gonzo. You know, like, wow,
that's crazy.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
The premonitions aspect of a lot of these stories is
it's recurring as well.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
I keep hearing that again and again in these stories. Is
the quality of.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
A premonition of like, you know, even if it's just
had a bad feeling, you know, in retrospect, you know, it's.
Speaker 7 (32:49):
The human mind is really willing to try to make
sense of things. And whether or not that's real, Like
whether or not you could like scientifically pin that down,
it doesn't matter because at the end of the day,
it's what that is, the experience that you had and
so even if it's just your weird meat machinery doing something.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Up there, it's it's not part of your narrative.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
It's still real.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
Well, another thing in his story, which kind of plays
out in a lot of ours, is just the need
to take it your recovery day by day. Take that,
you know, like how you have to set these goals
and just graduate rather than the enormity of your situation.
It's just like, I've got to recover slowly.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
That's that's a good takeaway. The only way to get
through this stuff is to take it one step at
a time. It's the only to break these huge problems
into smaller pieces is the only.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Way to get through it.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Well, thanks guys, I really appreciate you all being here.
And Reema, thank you for recording with us today. And
but now thank you everybody. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Thank you for wrangling figure.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Next time on a Live Again, we have a special
conversation with doctor Sarah Kerr, a death and ritual healing
practitioner who helps individuals and families navigate the journey of
dying with grace and meaning, honor and.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Validate your own experiences. The nudges and the intuitions and
the quiet impulses, that capacity to open our consciousness to
something more than just what's in that western box.
Speaker 6 (34:21):
So often we're told that those.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Aren't real, they don't matter, they should be ignored.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
You just making it up, your imagining things.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
You're not.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Doctor Kerr shares how ritual and sacred death care can
transform our relationship with loss, grief, and mysteries.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Of what comes next. Don't miss this.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Profound discussion on embracing death as a natural and sacred
part of life. Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney,
Brent die, Nicholas Dukowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett,
additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew
Frederick and Trevor Young. Special things to Alexander Williams for
(35:01):
additional production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K
Ali and Nomes Griffin. Today's episode was edited by Mike
w Anderson, mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
I'm your host Dan Bush.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Special thanks to Nick Bradley for sharing his incredible story.
Alive Again is a production of iHeartRadio and Psychopia pictures.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
If you have a.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Transformative near death experience to share, we'd love to hear
your story.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Please email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
That's a l i v e A g A I
N P R O j e c T at gmail
dot com.
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
My name is Staff Sergeantnick Bradley, United States Air Force.
On August third, two thousand and eight, my truck was
blown up by a twenty pound anti tak mine. You
can't go through the things I've been through in life
and not believe in something right. Because let's just say
I'm wrong. Then I wasted a lifetime being wrong. But
then let's say I'm right. Well, I'm right for a
(00:38):
lot longer.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous accounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:04):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener and discretion as advised.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
How I would describe myself as I'm a big kid. Honestly,
you know, I've just learned to appreciate life and a
different light, so to speak. I was born in Eldedo, Arkansas,
population like thirty thousand people something like that. And then
when I was twelve years old, we moved to an
(01:40):
even smaller town, population three hundred and thirty people. So
that was a bit of a culture shock for me.
But I mean I kind of loved it, the solitude
of it all. You know, it was quiet, you could
see all the stars in the sky every night. I
think it kind of shaped a lot of my perspective
online life, just the way I view things and how
(02:04):
I treat things and right, because it's real easy to
get trapped in negative things. And I think that's where
the foundation of that perspective I have on things it
kind of began. I just I just I've always just
like I love to laugh and I like when other
people laugh. You know, it just it just changes the mood.
It can dictate a lot of things. I mean, it's
(02:26):
cause it's real easy to get stuck in like the
bad are the negative of things, right, kind of like
my story. You know, I think had I not had
that outlook, it would have been real easy for me
to just stay negative. Honestly, I never just wanted to
(02:47):
serve to be honest with you when I graduated high school.
My dad, he simply just told me, He's like, Nick,
you got to go to college or something. You can't
do nothing, and you need to. You need to find
your own way. You need to Essentially, you got thirty
days to get out of my house make a path.
And at that point I had already been talking to
(03:08):
a recruiter and so, you know, it seemed like a
viable option. I was tired of going to school. I
was like, I can go in the military, and you know,
they'll pay for this and they'll pay for that. I
had a buddy that joined the Marines, and I remember
he said to me, He's like, Nick, I hear the
Air Force is way better. Join the Air Force. I
did way more deployments than him too, by the way,
but nonetheless I ended up joining the Air Force and
(03:32):
June of one, so right before September eleventh, I just
thought boot camp was pretty easy because my dad was
really tough on me growing up, you know, because I
deserved it. Probably started just time learning the ropes, you know,
(03:52):
real green about all of it. Kind of my mindset
mentally where I was at is I was pretty happy.
I liked how things were going, but I think boot
camp was easier for me just because I always again
the perspective thing, you know, it could always be worse.
(04:12):
The camaraderie piece, I think is one of the biggest
aspects of the military, right, the brotherhood that comes with it,
you know, and you know, because you build these really
really tight bonds based on the job that you're doing.
I felt like I was around some of the greatest
humans ever. During that time. You do become a family.
(04:35):
I mean, you spend you know, six months to a
year with these individuals day in and day out, with
no days off, no breaks, that you develop routines and
to have a bit of normalcy. You become a family.
So we had gotten to Afghanistan. It was the end
(04:59):
of March. I was actually a last minute add on
to this trip. So the team had already been prepping
for this deployment for a month or two. They'd already
done some other trainings and things of that nature. And
I wasn't slotted to leave until way later in the year.
And there was a guy that dropped out of the
team and they needed to feel one and I was
(05:20):
the next slotted to go. And you know, would this
being my third deployment, and I'd never had this feeling before.
I had this hunch, we're going over with thirteen, but
twelve are coming home, and you know, in hindsight's always
twenty twenty, right. But other members of the team, including
my mom and some other individuals that were closing it
(05:43):
in the group, they had that same kind of hunch,
that intuition, that gut feeling, whatever you want to call it,
that's something was going to happen on this trip. Third,
it started just like most other days. Actually, the missions
(06:05):
that I had slotted for that day were canceled because
the general officer that I was part of their security
detail that day, they had canceled all their moves. They
were just staying on the compound we were at. So
essentially I had a day off, and day off in
a deployed location is it's there's nothing to do, you
(06:28):
know except the mission, right, So play video games, watch
a movie, go to the gym, eat some food, watch
a movie, go to the gym, eat some food.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
You see what I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Like, that's it, it's it, that's all it is. And
so so it was just, yeah, it was just a
normal day. And the other general that we were guarding
the rest of the team had taken him to the airport,
which is about an hour convoy away, to drop him
off so he could fly out on R and R
for a couple of weeks. And then they got back
(06:59):
and to sided the general's exact, the colonel wanted to
go out to this firing range, so we were going
to take him out there. And that's when I got
a phone call like, hey, we got a mission for
you now since you're off, so go with us to
do this. I was actually I was thrilled with it. Well,
and plus, I mean, Garrett's the one that called me,
(07:21):
and I was like, sure, man, I'll go out there
with you. That's kosher. Just have a sweet little hang
day at the range, no big deal. And so I
loaded up in the truck and off we went. So
like I refer to him as Garrett now because we're
both out of the military. However, when we were in,
you know, he was Sergeant Night. He's Garrett now because
(07:41):
he's retired, and I always just called him Garrett. Me
and Garrett were roommates. We'd got to know each other
really well, developing a tight bond. Me and him had
done the majority of the missions together, so we knew
how each other operated. So it was it was kind
of like a safe space, right.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
It was.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
You know, it's like I got my wingman here, like
I know how he's going to operate. I know what
he's thinking when we do these missions. I know if
this happens, this is gonna be his move and this
will be my move. And it was a very yin
and yang kind of thing. So I loaded up and
jumped in the truck with my truck commander, Gonzo Haimi
Gonzalez is his name, and he jumps in the truck
(08:23):
with me. And now also when we did these missions,
Gonzo ninety percent of time was my TC for my drives,
so he was the truck commander or TC. So he
was the one that was in the passenger seat, the
front passenger seat, always my extra set of eyes, right,
So his head's on a swivel, just watching all the
action the other moving vehicles, the people walk in, just
(08:44):
to make sure nothing's out of the ordinary, because I'm
focusing on driving the cars around our vehicles because my
job in the convoy, I drove the last vehicle and
these convoys, right, they called it the chase truck and
my job was solely to create a bubble around the
convoy to make sure no cars passed us cut into
the convoy, you know, just to essentially protect the convoy itself.
(09:08):
Use my vehicle as kind of a weapon, if you will,
to create a barrier to keep it safe and keep
it moving.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And during that time in Afghanistan, it was probably one
of the i would say hottest times in Afghanistan. They
back then, they said from two thousand and eight to
twenty ten was some of the toughest years in Afghanistan,
where you were having frequent explosions or IDs or v
beds is what they call them. It's a vehicle born
(09:43):
improvised explosive device. It's just an ID, but they put
it in a vehicle and they crash the vehicle and
then blow up, suicide bombers, gunfights, it's you know, it
was it was kind of the wild West. We knew
the route, We knew where we were going. We didn't
need maps and we didn't need to brief on it
and do that. We just we knew which way we
(10:05):
were going. We know the route were taken there. We
know the different route we're taken back because you never
take the same route, you know. Because it was again
me and Garrett, it was very yin and yang. We
knew already, and so I fell in line with the
convoy and we took off. Now we turned off on
this dirt road leading into the gun Range. And I
(10:25):
remember when we turned off on this dirt road, my
truck commander, Gonzo, he calls out, hey, watch this white
pickup truck. It's coming in pretty fast from behind us.
And again, my job is to make sure vehicles aren't
passing the convoy, they're not breaking into our convoy. That
was that was my gig. And right in that moment,
(10:47):
the lead vehicle called out that we needed to pick
up our pace because there was this little colvert, little
bridge that said was a potential spot for an ied
so we needed to pick up the pace. Well, right
then that right in that moment, that little white pickup
truck pulled up next to me. It had gotten right
side by side with me, and I just gave them
(11:08):
a little nudge to remind them that they don't pass
the convoy. Well, when I nudged them, they drove off
the road and ran into this looked like a telephone pole,
and at that moment, I'd downshifted the truck to pick
up some speed to get the speed going back on
the road, and I was turning back on the dirt
road and it was in that moment when the twenty
(11:30):
pound anti tank mine detonated. And that was the last
thing I remember. It was just like someone turned a
light switch off. My lights just went out. There were
(11:53):
two Taliban members that remotely detonated the twenty pound anti
tank mine, but by the time the relay got from
the trigger to the actual ID, it was my truck
that was hit. It hit right underneath the gearshift of
the truck, which where my right arm was. I stayed
in the vehicle through the explosion. Once the vehicle came
(12:15):
to a rest, I was. I was knocked out for
one to two minutes, they said, and then I went
face first down into this colvert that was nine feet
I didn't hear anything. I didn't I didn't necessarily feel anything.
It was just just empty. Just everything just went dark.
(12:36):
So at this point when I regained consciousness, I might
have had my eyes open, I might not have, but
I couldn't see anything. I was completely blind. Everything was
pitch black, but I was, I was conscious. I knew
something had happened. I didn't know exactly what happened. I
knew I was in a lot of pain. So at
(12:57):
this point, I'm trying to assess, well, where I'm at,
what's going on, what happened At that time, I didn't
really hear much of anything, and I want to say
that was probably one of those more scary things. I
did have a radio, but apparently my radio was hitting
the explosion and it so my mic, they said, was keyed,
(13:19):
meaning that the button was clicked down, like they could
hear me, you know, breathing, but they couldn't. They didn't
know anything else. They didn't know how bad it was.
They didn't know. So at this point I tried to
just continue to assess the situation. Mean, meanwhile, I can't
see anything. I can't move my right arm there was
a lot of pain and my right elbow, but I
(13:42):
couldn't move anything on my right side. So I tried
to take my left hand and you know, get the radio.
I couldn't get it to work. I tried to get
my gun out of the whole ster, just in case
I needed to defend myself. I couldn't get the gun
out of the holester, you know, and it's and at
this time, you know, like, okay, what's really going on?
Like how bad is this? Am I going to be
(14:03):
able to get out of the situation? But I'm trying
to stay calm, right. You don't want to go into
shock because then you'll start bleeding faster. And I knew
I was bleeding. I could taste the blood in my mouth.
And I remembered, you know, before the day before I
left again, going back to that gut feeling, I had
(14:23):
just had this hunch. Well, I was hanging out with
my daughter, my oldest daughter. She was two and a
half years old at the time, and I just made
a promise to her that no matter what happens, Daddy
would come home. And in that moment, she handed me
this little flower. And I carried her pictures everywhere with me,
and I'd taken that flower and I put put it
behind her pictures and I had it in my pocket
(14:45):
and that was the only thing that I could grab
a hold of in that situation where I was laying
in that ditch, and I remember grabbing that and thinking
about a promise I made, and I just I would
not let myself give up. Had to figure out a
way to just remain calm until someone got back to me,
because clearly I wasn't gonna get out of there by myself.
(15:09):
And it was probably within a minute or two of
that of me just holding onto that flower and just relaxing,
that I heard Garrett's voice and he jumps down the ditch.
I asked him a very inappropriate question that I thought
was important. I asked him if my manhood was still
attached because I couldn't stand up, I couldn't do anything,
(15:31):
because I was like, if not do let me die.
He wrote, That's what I told you again, I find
I find the light. Like even in a situation like
that where I'm at, I had jokes, you know it
just I'd say, I say silly stuff, you know, I
thought it would lighten the tension. But I was also
(15:51):
half serious about it, you know. And I knew also
not just for me to stay calm. I knew if
he could sense that, okay, Nick still Nick in there
despite all this, it could calm him down a little
bit too. And he told me everything was fine and
he was going to get me bandaged up. And at
that time, you know, we didn't have the medical equipment
(16:15):
needed for this mission. You know, it was kind of
an unsanctioned mission, and you know, we didn't have a
ton of medical supplies. But Garrett duct taped my nose
back on my face. They put some bandages on because
my nose was blown off. They bandaged up my arm
and hands. Then there was a few other team members
that called in for air support for a metavac. They
(16:36):
had to pop the smoke so the choppers knew where
to land. They then they loaded me up on this stretcher,
got me out of the ditch, and I remember when
they loaded me on the black Hawk, I could hear
him talking to Garrett. I could hear Garrett talking to me.
I was talking to Garrett muttering stuff, which was crazy
because a lot of the bones in my face were
(16:58):
fractured at the time. For me to have those kind
of conversations was humorous to me. But as soon as
they got me loaded on the black Hawk, I remember
just the black Hawk taking off and my head was
kind of by the door that was open, and I
could feel the wind blowing in my hair, and it
was in that moment I just felt a sense of
calm and peace, like everything was going to be okay.
(17:21):
They kept me heavily sedated. They transported me to the
nearest major base, which was a bogger marefield in Afghanistan.
Garrett stayed on the chopper with us. He stayed with
me by the bedside. I underwent an extensive surgery, drama
surgery in order for them to transport me to Germany,
(17:45):
to launch till Germany, because typically when someone suffers those
types of injuries, that's where they send them to Germany.
They get to Germany, they'll spend a couple of weeks there,
and then they send them back home, either to Walter
Reed or Brooks Medical or you know somewhere. You know. Yeah,
(18:09):
while while I was in that ditch, during during that
time frame, that ten minutes of just dead silence, you know,
I was I was a little scared, you know, quite frankly,
I was worried because you know, one you're kind of alone,
and there, to me, I think there's no worse feeling
(18:31):
than feeling alone in any situation. And when when Garrett
made it back to me and I heard the sound
of his voice, I felt safe. I had I had
a sense of calming that ran over me because I
knew I had back up at that moment that I
wasn't alone anymore. But there were time, there were periods
(18:57):
during that ten minutes that I did I did think
that that's where staff starting Nick Bradley's story was going
to end. But but again going back and trying to
remember that promise and that little girl's face, you know,
my daughter's face had just I think it was just
it was enough to keep me focused on the task
(19:18):
at hand, to not just just let that beat me.
I didn't. I didn't know what had happened to Gonzo
until a couple weeks later, while I was in Walter
(19:38):
Reid because I had been in a medically induced coma,
they were able to inform me that he didn't make
it out of the explosion. He was he was killed
on impact as soon as the bomb went off. And yeah,
(19:59):
so that was pretty tough for them to tell me.
It's pretty tough to take, you know. Well, there's a
couple of things really, because after they told me all
this stuff, they told me that they were having trouble
getting the nerves of my legs to respond, that I
might not walk, that they anticipated eighteen months of recovery
(20:22):
is you know, this is they're waking me up, telling
me all this stuff that still had to go through
multiple more surgeries, like all these things, and it was
kind of crushing, you know. And you know in that moment,
it's you're still just trying to figure out how you
survived and you know what's really going on. And I did.
I spent probably a day in just a dark place.
(20:44):
I didn't want to talk to anybody, I didn't want
see anybody. I just I went kind of dark.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
It was a really heavy day. Like I just found
out what happened. I found out about Gonzo. Right, So
it's tough, right, it was tough to process all that stuff. Man.
Well that's what I did. I took a picture of
my daughter and I taped it next to my bed.
(21:12):
It's a beautiful thing, man, it really is. I don't
get talked about it much. I taped this picture of
my daughter next to the bed, right, and I just
I just told myself every day, I'm gonna do something
better today than I did yesterday. Because that day that
(21:33):
I was also kind of in the dumps.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I had.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I had physical therapy that day and I couldn't set
up in a bed by myself. Right, These two nurses
actually had to physically pick me up and set me
up on the bed, and they wanted me to scoot
to the edge of the bed, which I couldn't do.
They had to help me and all the things. And so,
you know, that was very defeating for me, because you know,
I went from being in really good shape to I
can't sit up in a bed by myself. So the
(21:57):
next morning I woke up and I set up in
the and I scooted it to the edge of the bed.
It took me a while, and it was a lot
of pain. It was really painful, but I did it.
And right about the time I got to the edge
of the bed, the therapist had come into the room
to do physical therapy that morning and they were floored
that I had made it up in the bed. And
(22:19):
so after that, I knew there wasn't going to be
a lot to stop me, and I just I kept
telling myself, no matter how bad I think this is,
it could be worse, you know, right, because I survived
and Gonzo didn't, Right, it could be worse, and you know,
and it I think that really started transforming my take
(22:43):
on it my mental state, right is kind of just
looking at things as a glass half full, right, to
just get better and just to push myself a little
bit more every day, no matter how painful it is.
Just find the bright side of it. And I'm going
to do better, and I'm gonna do better. And I'm
like plain about these things because I get the opportunity
to still do these things, you know, because it's all perspective.
(23:10):
I just think, you know, going through any kind of hardships,
if you're gonna mentally beat them, you have to learn
how to change your mindset to have that outlook, because
otherwise it's real easy just to get bogged down in
the part that sucks. Yeah, you know, rediscovering a sense
(23:32):
of purpose through all this is it's, you know, your
strongest when you're the most vulnerable, right, And I think
when a human loses a sense of purpose, they become
very vulnerable, right. And I was. I felt lost for
a little while just trying to figure out, you know,
a path because I found myself kind of kind of
(23:52):
alone and you know, just kind of walking through my
journey and figuring out, Okay, this is who I am, Now,
what do I want to do? You know, what kind
of relationships do I want to have. It's helped me grow,
It's helped me to be more confident in the person
that I am, you know, because I've learned things that, Okay,
I don't like that, but I really enjoyed that. I
(24:13):
didn't think I would like that. I still have the
ability to serve people, and I just I feel like
that's such a great mission for me. You know, looking
back on this, I wouldn't I wouldn't change a thing,
not a not a single thing, because I don't think
(24:33):
I'm the same person now that I would have been
had it not happened, right, I think it made me
better and stronger and a lot of different aspects. And
I'm grateful for the experiences I've had. I'm grateful for,
you know, getting to learn this much about myself, to
(24:55):
dig deep and really evaluate myself right, Because you can't
reach your full potential until you've been at the bottom, right,
and you can't climb to the heights that you're meant
to go until you start. You got to start somewhere,
you know, And I think this gave me the opportunity
to start from the bottom, right. And if you can
(25:17):
find the positive. In any situation you're in, you're gonna
have a positive attitude. You're gonna become a positive person.
And with that positive attitude, there's nothing you won't be
able to overcome. Nothing, I mean, any olts go in
front of you, You're gonna find a way over it.
And so I would just it gets better. You know,
it might get worse before it gets better, but it
gets better even in the bad. And it's if you
(25:40):
keep that mindset about it. You have to tell yourself
that it's it will get better because it could be worse.
It could always be worse.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Welcome back, This is a Live again joining me for
a conversation about today's story. Are my other Alive Against
story producers Lauren Vogelbaum, Nicholas Dakowski, and Brent Dye, And
I'm your host, Dan Bush. All right, we have Lauren Vogelbaumb,
Nick Takoski, Brent Die and myself Dan Bush. And so
talking about Staff Sergeant Nicholas Bradley. So he became my
(26:28):
instant best friend and like he would crack jokes through
text that I hardly understood. But then I'll look at
him twice and start laughing. My ass off, because he's
actually a.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Really funny guy, and like he keeps saying throughout the show,
he's like, I'm just a big kid.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
I'm just a big kid.
Speaker 5 (26:41):
And other than this being a story of survival and
endurance and obviously resilience, you know, getting blown up by
an ied in Afghanistan and then having the will to
survive and to go through everything he went through to
get back on his feet after that, and surviving the
loss of his friend Gonzo, who died in the truck,
and he made it up out and it wasn't this
(27:01):
sort of macho attitude that helped him to survive or
helped him make it through that. It was his vulnerability
rather that helped him make it through that. And we
got to a point in our conversation where he was saying,
we're the strongest one, We're most vulnerable. And what was
interesting about the interview was ironically that's when he really
when he was most vulnerable. During the interview, that's when
we got to know him and we got to hear
(27:22):
his feelings about his daughter and his feelings about Gonzo.
Speaker 6 (27:26):
Well, I think what really struck me about Nick's story
is how similar it is to my story. I grew
up in a small town population twelve hundred people, and
even the way he described like seeing the stars at
night and the optimism that that gave him and kind
of the sense that things could always be worse. I'm
I mean, I kind of always had that same I
(27:47):
think it's just kind of a Midwestern sort of way
of thinking, well, you know, things could be worse, so
you know, let's just keep plugging along. And just like Nick,
my dad was like, you've got to do something to
want you to go to the military, you know, And
I think that a lot of guys who are in
the military are big kids who like to joke around,
and they get into the military to expand their horizon
(28:09):
and go somewhere else. You know, That's what I did.
And you know, just his sense of humor, like saying,
is my manhood still attached after being I mean, I
would hope that I have the presence of mind to
crack a joke like that in that moment, because I
think what he was trying to accomplish with that was
I think everything he described, like building that camaraderie, letting
(28:29):
everyone know that he's still here under this wound. I mean,
his freaking nose is blown off his face, you.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Know, he.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
And there's still a human being under here.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I'm not.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Yeah, But it wasn't like he didn't soldier up to
make it through this, to sit up on the bed.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Was it was this picture of his.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Daughter, but and the pressed flower that he kept in
his wallet.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
But I think most guys that I served with would
be motivated by the things he described. They'd be motivated
by their friendship and their desire to reconnect with their daughter.
And you know, I think we have this image of
from watching war movies that everybody's some jar head running
over the hill with a gun. Most of our guys
who are just trying to get out of their small town,
maybe get some money for college. And I was when
(29:16):
I joined the military. I was like, please, you know,
there's a lot of guys who are like, I hope
I see some action while I'm here, and I'm like, please, no,
I don't. I just want to get my gi bill
and go.
Speaker 8 (29:25):
You know.
Speaker 7 (29:26):
But the humor is also what really struck me. And
I think that that is such a human element and
such an important element to trying to cope with anything.
I know that that's a major coping mechanism for me,
sometimes to a negative level. But you know, like in
this world, when we're going through it and you're dealing
with such heavy stuff, I think we have to get weirder.
(29:47):
I think our humor like like like comic relief. Yeah,
like we need to be irrepressible.
Speaker 8 (29:51):
Yeah, I know when I'm in trouble because I can't
stop making jokes, I think you're on fire to I'm
like a single tear running down my shoes.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
But yeah, I mean, like the the you know, the
daughter thing really.
Speaker 9 (30:06):
Did that hit me right in the in the chest
of course. And I think, to kind of add on
to Brent's thing here, it's you know, uh, it's more
than just a common experience in the military. I think
it's a common experience across humankind to like to try
(30:26):
to rally and rally the people around you using whatever
forces you have, and sometimes humor is all you got
if you're lying there bleeding making a joke about.
Speaker 8 (30:37):
Like you know.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
And then he didn't say manhood either nearly No, well
either way, I walked away from next story. I don't know,
looking around, going okay, would I have that hood spot?
Speaker 3 (30:56):
What? You know?
Speaker 5 (30:57):
If I had, if I got blown up by an ID,
what things would I draw on for myself to get through?
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Would I find humor? You know what? Where would any
resilience come from? It's it's a all of these stories
are that way.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
But it's just like kudict to you man, the part
where he talks about his daughter. I mean, I was
almost in tears. Like when I used to fly a
lot for work. You know, I'm a videographer, and I'd
take my camera gear and go different cities, and every
time I left my baby is like if my plane
crashes or something, you know, this might be the last
time I see my wife, the last time I see
my daughter. And then when my daughter was a little
bit older, she'd always make artwork that could hang in
(31:32):
my hotel room. And I'm just thinking, oh my god,
to just be lying there with your legs blown off
and your nose blown off and you have this little
flower that your daughter had given you. I mean that
had me right here, you know, and like, yeah, I
just think that that inciting moment that you know, yes,
there's a reason to pull through this. I've got to
(31:53):
get there for my daughter. But he describes that feeling
of being alone. Like, imagine that your truck just got
hit by a ie. You don't know if the rest
of your crew is even alive. You're susceptible to enemy fire.
You're lying there and you could get shot at it,
and you're blind and you're blind. You can't move and
you don't hear anything for ten minutes, and you're holding
(32:15):
this flower that your daughter gave you. Just like all
quite in the Western Front or something, and they had
these premonitions that somebody was gonna die on this mission.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah, that one person wouldn't return.
Speaker 6 (32:28):
And one person didn't his friend Gonzo. You know, like, wow,
that's crazy.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
The premonitions aspect of a lot of these stories is
it's recurring as well.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
I keep hearing that again and again in these stories. Is
the quality of.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
A premonition of like, you know, even if it's just
had a bad feeling, you know, in retrospect, you know, it's.
Speaker 7 (32:49):
The human mind is really willing to try to make
sense of things. And whether or not that's real, Like
whether or not you could like scientifically pin that down,
it doesn't matter because at the end of the day,
it's what that is, the experience that you had and
so even if it's just your weird meat machinery doing something.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Up there, it's it's not part of your narrative.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
It's still real.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (33:12):
Well, another thing in his story, which kind of plays
out in a lot of ours, is just the need
to take it your recovery day by day. Take that,
you know, like how you have to set these goals
and just graduate rather than the enormity of your situation.
It's just like, I've got to recover slowly.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
That's that's a good takeaway. The only way to get
through this stuff is to take it one step at
a time. It's the only to break these huge problems
into smaller pieces is the only.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Way to get through it.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Well, thanks guys, I really appreciate you all being here.
And Reema, thank you for recording with us today. And
but now thank you everybody. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Thank you for wrangling figure.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Next time on a Live Again, we have a special
conversation with doctor Sarah Kerr, a death and ritual healing
practitioner who helps individuals and families navigate the journey of
dying with grace and meaning, honor and.
Speaker 4 (34:08):
Validate your own experiences. The nudges and the intuitions and
the quiet impulses, that capacity to open our consciousness to
something more than just what's in that western box.
Speaker 6 (34:21):
So often we're told that those.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
Aren't real, they don't matter, they should be ignored.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
You just making it up, your imagining things.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
You're not.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Doctor Kerr shares how ritual and sacred death care can
transform our relationship with loss, grief, and mysteries.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
Of what comes next. Don't miss this.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Profound discussion on embracing death as a natural and sacred
part of life. Our story producers are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney,
Brent die, Nicholas Dukowski, and Lauren Vogelbaum. Music by Ben Lovett,
additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Our executive producers are Matthew
Frederick and Trevor Young. Special things to Alexander Williams for
(35:01):
additional production support. Our studio engineers are Rima L. K
Ali and Nomes Griffin. Today's episode was edited by Mike
w Anderson, mixing by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
I'm your host Dan Bush.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Special thanks to Nick Bradley for sharing his incredible story.
Alive Again is a production of iHeartRadio and Psychopia pictures.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
If you have a.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Transformative near death experience to share, we'd love to hear
your story.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Please email us at Alive Again Project at gmail dot com.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
That's a l i v e A g A I
N P R O j e c T at gmail
dot com.
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