Heroic soldier says "It was only one day" in his career

A soldier's story: It was only one day in his military career
By TIM TRAINOR
The Montana Standard, Butte
Published: June 24, 2012

Fueled by anger, suffering from a serious back injury and with no feeling in his legs, Nick Keene fired 2,800 rounds into a group of Taliban fighters.

Then he picked up a machine gun and emptied that. He put seven or eight clips into his own personal weapon and did the same until the pain was too much and he lost consciousness.

He woke up in a hospital somewhere. Kandahar maybe, Germany. There were generals gathered around his bed. He wasn’t wearing a shirt so they pinned a Purple Heart to his blanket before he fell back into unconsciousness.

Keene, 24, a 2006 graduate of Butte High School, spent five dramatic and violent months in the Panjwayi District in Afghanistan, known as the “birthplace of the Taliban.” Located in the southeastern part of the country along the Pakistan border, it has been home to some of the most sustained fighting in the now decade-long war.

Yet, it is a place Keene was not looking to leave so soon.

“I wish I could have stayed longer,” he said. “It was hard to think that while my guys were sweating, bleeding in the mud, I’m sitting on a couch doing nothing.”

Commendations

It was only one day in his military career, but Keene’s actions resulted in a Purple Heart and an Army Commendation Medal with valor. He may have saved the lives of each of those soldiers lying prone on the roadside and his injured lieutenant, who was able to be transported from the fight with shrapnel wounds from which he recovered.

Nick will never be the same. Discs and vertebrae in his back were more than broken — they disintegrated and were ground into sand and chalk. It took months for doctors to confirm they did not need to amputate, but even then Keene thought he would be confined to a wheelchair. After months of painful physical therapy he learned to walk with the help of a cane that he will use for the rest of his life. He cannot climb steps and he has a lifetime of surgeries ahead of him, some of which carry the possibility of paralysis if one of the already-frayed nerves is severed.
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