Former Army Captain Florent Groberg poses for a portrait at the Pentagon. President Obama will present him with the Medal of Honor, which will make Groberg the 10th living recipient. Photo / AP
US Army Captain Florent Groberg had a weird feeling about the mission as soon as his team arrived by helicopter that morning in Afghanistan's Kunar province. Something seemed out of place. Someone, he surmised, was out to get them.
Minutes later, Groberg made a split-second decision and rushed at a man who was strangely backpedaling towards the Army patrol. Groberg didn't know for sure there was a suicide vest underneath the man's dark clothing until he grabbed him by the chest - and by then, his only choice was to bring him to the ground right before the man detonated.
"I hit him, grabbed him, tried to push him as far away and throw him to the ground," said Groberg, 32.
"It happened so fast. That's the thing. People are asking me, 'What were you thinking? What were you guys thinking?' You don't have time to think. You react. Thirty seconds, the entire scene. Eight seconds from the time I see him and he's detonating. That's how fast."
Groberg's quick reaction on August 8, 2012, will result in him receiving the Medal of Honour, America's top award for valour in combat. President Barack Obama is expected to drape the award around the soldier's neck on Friday at the White House, just a few kilometres from where he ran track athletics at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and at the University of Maryland-College Park.
The attack was a life-changing moment for many people. Four men - Army Command Sergeant Major Kevin Griffin, 46; Army Major Thomas Kennedy, 35; Air Force Major Walter Gray, 38; and foreign service officer Ragaei Abdelfattah, 43 - were killed, and several others were severely wounded.
Groberg suffered life-threatening injuries to his left leg that led to 33 surgeries. Half of his calf muscle was blown off, leaving a man who once dreamed of competing in the Olympics with chronic nerve pain, a limp and wonders about whether an amputation makes sense someday.
"I'm waiting for the iRobot type of legs, you know, that goes into your nerves and it just plugs it in and you can take it off and it's three times stronger than my right leg," Groberg said.
"Once that comes around, I'll probably go in there and be like, 'Look, I'm done with the pain and I would like to go running again.' But until then, I'll suck it up."
Groberg will become the 10th living American to earn the Medal of Honour for actions since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Twelve service members have received for actions in Afghanistan, including three posthumously. Of those, 10 came from actions within a few dozen kilometres of each other in bordering Kunar and Nuristan provinces.
Four more service members earned the Medal of Honour in Iraq, all of whom received it posthumously.
Groberg, who often goes by "Flo," was on his second deployment to Afghanistan when the attack occurred. He was serving as the personal security detachment commander for their brigade commander, then-Colonel James Mingus and Griffin, the senior enlisted soldier in the unit. Groberg's team travelled across eastern Afghanistan from Jalalabad Airfield nearly daily with the leaders as they met Afghan officials and other coalition units.
The soldiers, primarily of Fort Carson, Colorado, flew into a small base known as Fiaz in the morning with plans to move on foot to the nearby compound of the provincial governor in Asadabad district. The security detachment typically patrolled in a diamond formation with the brigade's leaders in the centre and Groberg in the back, but a premonition made him move near the front of the patrol that day.
The patrol reached a small bridge over a canal, and were approached by motorcycles coming from the opposite direction. They began crossing the bridge, but stopped partway over and retreated back in the opposite direction. Groberg ran at the suicide bomber, and threw him to the ground with the help of another soldier, Sergeant Andrew Mahoney, who would go on to receive the Silver Star for his valour.
The explosion ripped into the patrol, but short of the centre of the diamond where it would have inflicted the most carnage. As Groberg was flung into the air, a second suicide bomber nearby detonated his vest prematurely, damaging a building.
"I don't even know how to describe it," Groberg said.
"Everything was just going so slow. And then like - Zoom! So fast, and you're back in it and it's 'What happened to me?' And I'm laying on the ground with my assault pack propping me up."
Groberg had a ruptured ear drum and a traumatic brain injury in addition to his leg wound, and was in shock. He initially thought he had stepped on an improvised explosive device buried in the ground, but started to figure out what happened when he realized he was covered in blood and bone fragments that weren't his own.
Sergeant 1st Class Brian Brink scrambled to pull Groberg to safety, and the team medic, Specialist Daniel Balderrama, treated Groberg's leg despite dealing with torn knee ligaments of his own because of the blast.
"Balderrama saved my life, in my opinion," Groberg said.
"Brink did, too, for dragging me. But Balderrama is the one who put a tourniquet on me and kept me awake. I could have gone into a coma, from my understanding, because I had lost so much blood. But he was there for me. It's just one of those things where you're so impressed by him, and you're so grateful."
A younger soldier in the unit, Private Eric Ochart, also kept the wounded Groberg from doing anything rash after the explosion when an Afghan man grinning at the remains of the four men who died, Groberg said.
"I was angry and not thinking, obviously. I'm not sure what would have happened, but here's the thing: To not have to worry about it because I have professionals who were around me," Groberg said of Ochart.
"He grabbed my arm and I guess he read my mind, because he was like, 'It's not worth it, sir." The men hit by the blast scattered in different directions afterward. Groberg spent nearly three years at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Bethesda. The surgeries were painful, but there also was the matter of making peace with what happened.
"It's not a day that you go out and have beers, throw back beers, and talk about it with your boys," Groberg said. "My guys, everybody struggled with it for a while."
In some ways, the injuries have brought the captain full circle, and back to Washington for a third time. Groberg is the son of a former Motorola Iridium executive, Larry, and a French-Algerian mother, Klara, and spent most of his early childhood living in France and speaking French. The family moved to the United States when Groberg was about 11, first to the Chicago suburbs and then to Potomac, Maryland.
Groberg initially was enrolled at the Lycee Rochambeau French International School in nearby Chevy Chase, but transitioned to public school in eighth grade as his English improved. High school, he said, was relatively easy, and he earned a track scholarship to the University of North Carolina-Wilmington afterward in 2001.
His experience in North Carolina was mixed, however. Within a semester, he decided that the beach town school had too many distractions for him, and he looked north to attend the University of Maryland-College Park. There was no scholarship for him there, though - in fact, he had to wait for a spot to open before he could even join the track team, he said.
"I did so many jobs," Groberg said of how he paid for school.
"But actually, the main job was police auxiliary for three years, three and a half years up there. I was that guy that would go around in that vehicle that did not give parking tickets, but everyone thought I gave parking tickets and kept yelling at me about this. Like, 'Why did you give me a parking ticket?' Like, if I could really give parking tickets, I'd give you TWO parking tickets right now."
Groberg graduated in 2006 with a degree in criminology and criminal justice and his name in several distance running record books. It took two years for him to join the Army in part because he needed to decide whether he would renounce his French citizenship, a requirement to have the security clearance of an Army officer, he said. He became a naturalised US citizen in 2001, a few months before graduating from high school.
The captain was a patient at Walter Reed for nearly three years until this May, and retired medically in July after entertaining ways that he might continue to serve in the Army. He plans to settle in Washington and work at the Pentagon in defence policy, but aspects of that were put on hold when it was decided he would receive the Medal of Honour, he said.
Obama called Groberg a few weeks ago to let him know he would receive one of the country's highest distinctions. The soldier would have preferred receiving the Army's second-highest award for combat valour, the Distinguished Service Cross, because of its lower profile.
"No doubt I will always be the same person, but it's a challenge, you know, and I have great people around me who will smack me upside the head if I start saying some crazy stuff," he said.
He chuckled, and then added: "It's a weird feeling."
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