Honoring Heroes

Washington, D.C. – Freedom Alliance is an educational-charitable foundation that, among other things, provides college scholarships to the offspring of U.S. military personnel killed in action. Every year, coincident with the Army-Navy Game, the organization presents its "Defender of Freedom Award" to an individual whose character, courage and selfless deeds inspire virtuous service from the rest of us. This year's recipient, U.S. Marine Lieutenant Andrew Kinard unequivocally meets these criteria.

On October 29, 2006, Lieutenant Kinard was leading his Marines on a foot patrol in Rawah, Iraq — searching for a terrorist bomb factory — when a command-detonated IED exploded directly next to his left leg. The blast blew him into the air and he landed almost 20 feet from the crater. Three other Marines were wounded.

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According to those who were there, before the grievously injured officer passed out from loss of blood, he ordered them to set up security, get a head count and start treating the other injured Marines. The platoon Corpsman tried to staunch the flow of blood, but couldn't find enough undamaged tissue to apply tourniquets and the lieutenant was losing blood — from almost everywhere.

A Cas-Evac helicopter airlifted him to the Marine Air Base at Al Asad, then to the Army trauma hospital at Balad, north of Baghdad. Sixty-seven pints of whole blood — more than five times the amount in a healthy adult — were pumped into the failing officer's veins in a 24-hour period.

By the time he was flown to Landstuhl, Germany in a C-17 Nightingale, he had gone into cardiac arrest — and been resuscitated — twice. Emergency surgeries went on nearly non-stop to plug the seemingly innumerable holes punched in his body. The family was alerted and a prayer vigil held. Hundreds of people half a world away went to their knees and begged God for a miracle.

Some miracles happen immediately. This one took awhile.

Four days after being blasted to pieces, Andrew Kinard was in the intensive care unit at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, with his family around his bedside — and still praying. By the time I got back from Iraq, just before Christmas 2006, "Drew" as his Marine and Naval Academy friends call him, had already endured more than two dozen surgeries.

His doctor told me that the 24-year old lieutenant was "getting better" even though he had pneumonia, a blood infection and multiple perforations of his intestines from shrapnel. They had just done one of the many skin grafts necessary to prepare his stumps for prosthetic limbs.

When I walked into his room, his mother and his sister Katherine were with him. His dad, a doctor in Spartanburg, SC, and two younger siblings, Courtney and Will, were all enroute to spend Christmas with their badly battered Marine.

But for all the cards, poster, banners, Christmas stockings, lights, photos and flags, the room would have looked like a scene from a science fiction movie. Monitors, electronic devices, compressors, pumps and assorted tubes, wires and bags of colored fluids surrounded the bed — all the connected to Andrew Kinard. Tiny flecks of shrapnel were still visible on the side of his face. He had no legs. His abdomen was an open hole. And he was smiling. "God is good," he said in greeting.

Over the next 11 months of hospitalization, Andrew Kinard was living proof of that statement. When I would ask him or his family, "How can I help you?" The inevitable response would be: "Just pray for recovery." And so, he also became evidence of the power of prayer.

In April 2007, he flew to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina to meet his Marines when they returned from Iraq. Wearing his Marine utility uniform for the first time since being wounded, he greeted his comrades in a special "all-terrain" wheelchair.

Asked by a reporter to recollect the day he was wounded, he acknowledged that his memory of the attack had been dulled by shock and pain. Then he said, "A man asks himself, if something happens to me, when I go into battle, how will I react? Will I be brave?"

As they arrived home, the members of "Alpha" Company made it clear: Lieutenant Andrew Kinard was, without a doubt, their hero.

On October 29, 2007, exactly a year after he was wounded, the indomitable young officer came home. Dignitaries and thousands of well wishers were on hand to welcome Andrew at First Baptist Church, Spartanburg. The following Sunday he spoke at all three services, thanking all for their unfailing prayers.

His recovery will continue for years to come. But on one of my visits to him in the hospital the man who had once played rugby at the Naval Academy said, "I don't need legs. I have my arms. I learned discipline at the Naval Academy. I have my faith and a desire to serve. Maybe I'll go to law school."

Andrew has all of that — and more. He also has a great sense of humor. He has a T-shirt with the words "Marine for Sale" printed on the front. On the back it reads: "40% Off — Some Assembly Required."

— Oliver North hosts War Stories on FOX News Channel and is the author of the new best-seller, "American Heroes: In The War Against Radical Islam." He has just returned from assignment in Afghanistan.