By Col. Robert Hale’s count, Todd Nelson had already cheated death twice when he arrived at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. A 34-year-old senior logistics supervisor based in Kabul in Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Nelson had escaped injury on hundreds of convoys by relying on speed, agility and a little luck. On a hot August day in 2007, a month before he was due to go home, his luck ran out.
Nelson and his partner, Chris Sanders, were headed back to camp when a Toyota Corolla pulled in front of their truck. Sanders hit the brakes and swerved to the left, then locked eyes with the car’s driver, who flipped a switch, blowing his car, and himself, to bits.
Sanders, shielded by Nelson, escaped with minor burns. Nelson took most of the blast in the face. The explosive force crushed his facial skeleton and fractured his right leg. Shrapnel and glass tore through his legs, sinus cavity and right eye, and twisted like a corkscrew through his right cheek. A fireball hotter than molten rock seared his right side from the bottom of his foot to the top of his crown, burning his face nearly through to the bone.
Field medics doubted Nelson could survive evacuation to the U.S. military hospital in Germany, much less to Brooke’s burn facility in Texas. When he arrived at Brooke two days later, hospital staff made plans to donate his organs.
