“I’ve taken a few selfies since it happened,” admits Medal of Honor recipient and USC student Kyle Carpenter with a grin. “But I’m really no different, just honored and appreciative of the people that want to come up and say hey or take a picture with me.” That seems to be Carpenter’s main message when he’s talking about what happened to him— the fact that despite his heroic act, he isn’t that different from everyone else after all.
In November 2010, Carpenter dove on a hand grenade to save his fellow platoon members while in combat with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. “It was an instinctive reaction,” Carpenter says. The explosion left the Marine in critical condition, and he was labeled P.E.A.—Patient Expired upon Arrival—when he landed in the Medevac helicopter. Carpenter didn’t wake up for five weeks.
“There was that moment when I woke up and grasped what happened,” Carpenter says matter-of-factly. “When I comprehended reality. That’s when I knew my job had changed. Now, I was a patient and I had more surgeries and recoveries to do.” As his left eye opened (his right was destroyed in the blast), Christmas stockings that his mom had hung on the hospital wall came into view, giving him an overwhelming feeling of normalcy despite his abnormal predicament. It’s what the family would have done in the living room at home.
Carpenter spent two years and eight months recovering at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. That’s more than 970 days of his life that he was confined almost exclusively to a hospital bed, enduring constant life-saving and reconstructive surgeries and physical therapy. He underwent more than 40 surgeries in that span, rebuilding all the way from his ankles up to his jaw and eye.
“Time in the hospital put things in perspective,” Carpenter says. “Your times can always be harder and worse. It taught me to appreciate the small and simple things in life, and Afghanistan taught me to be thankful for the luxuries we have here.”
The hospital stay was rough for Carpenter, not only because of the immense physical toll the back-to-back surgeries took on his body, but because of how it affected his spirit and the life he wanted to get back to. While his friends and peers were free to continue on with their lives, go to football games, attend classes, drive to their jobs and live the typical college life, Carpenter was trapped in a hospital fighting for his existence every single day.
“You always have to keep that angle in mind of, ‘I have to do this. I have to go through the pain to get to that point where I can make the next step in life,’” he says.
Carpenter also felt guilty for putting his family through the emotional strain of watching him die multiple times during surgeries and be resuscitated. It became a draining routine. The medical staff members at Walter Reed became some of Carpenter’s closest friends in those months, and when he was medically retired in July 2013, it was hard saying goodbye.
However, he had a whole support system back home that was waiting for him to return. “I had such love and support from this community and the state that helped me transition and heal mentally and emotionally,” Carpenter says. He also had another supporter who had visited him in the hospital and was about to bestow upon Carpenter the highest military award in the United States.
President Barack Obama met Carpenter in the Oval Office before presenting him the Medal of Honor at an official ceremony. “It was surreal getting to the White House and being taken back to meet him and his wife,” Carpenter says. He and the president of the United States chatted about typical things: major, studies, everyday life and, of course, Gamecock football. “Then, he told me he was proud of me and that his family, himself and the nation thanks me,” Carpenter—the eighth living recipient of the esteemed medal for the war in Afghanistan—says.
After returning to school in the fall, Carpenter was determined to get back to his life as usual, but there was an undeniable escalated hype around the hero. “I had a lot of close friends before, and I’ve always had great friends growing up. Family and friends didn’t change at all, but the attention did, the social media aspect especially,” he says. “I was getting friend requests from people I didn’t even know and recognized by people while walking to class or going downtown.” However, the fame didn’t seem to faze the humble Carpenter, who is one of the nicest people you could meet on campus.
He did come to realize the balance that his new position required. “There’s a professional side of my life and a student side,” Carpenter says. “I’d say the student side hasn’t really been affected all that much. But when I travel, go speak at places, go to receptions and events, then I can really tell that my life’s been affected.” So far, Carpenter has traveled across the country delivering speeches about his experience while reiterating the fact that he isn’t that different from everyone else. He’s spoken in San Diego, Las Vegas, New York City, D.C. and more. He has also delivered his story at the East and West Coast battalions of Wounded Warriors.
Carpenter’s experience has also inspired his major in international studies. “How the world behaves politically and socially interests me,” he says. “I got to work a little bit with the National Counterterrorism Center, where I learned the very beginning steps of how information is obtained and end result of how it’s given out on the battlefield. It was cool to see the other side of things.”
In regards to his social life at USC, Carpenter is a sophomore Kappa Sigma member who chills out on the Horseshoe, goes to pool parties at Olympia Mills and hangs out in Five Points on the weekends. He tailgates and goes to football games, he spends lazy afternoons playing Xbox in his apartment and he jams out to Avicii on the way to class. He also enjoys flirting with the ladies, though his love life can still be categorized as “single and ready to mingle.” Better get on that, girls. All this is to say Carpenter is a regular USC student: not all that different from every one of us.
“Anyone can be a hero,” Carpenter says. “You should just start out by helping people and trying to be a good person every day. People here read my story or meet me and they think I’m on a higher platform, but I’m not. I was just put in a unique circumstance and stepped up to the plate. Everyone’s going to have their own struggles and opportunities, so take advantage of those. My situation isn’t any more special than anyone else’s; mine is just much more rare.”
