- 5 months ago
Captain Benjamin "Ben" Harrow is a decorated US Army Green Beret. A former collegiate lacrosse player, he trained at West Point and served as an infantry officer and special forces detachment commander during deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2012, while serving in Afghanistan, Ben was severely injured by an IED, losing both legs and two fingers. His recovery included a groundbreaking tendon-regrowth procedure using limb-lengthening surgery. He received the Purple Heart for his injury and earned three Bronze Stars during his career.
Harrow speaks to Business Insider about what separates the Green Berets apart from other special forces and the battle he faced after losing both his legs.
Today, Ben is president of an aviation management company in Florida. He hosts the Team Harrow Podcast, interviewing former servicemen and women.
For more about Ben, check out his podcast here: http://www.youtube.com/@TeamHarrow
@kreilly @jshardlow @rleslie
Harrow speaks to Business Insider about what separates the Green Berets apart from other special forces and the battle he faced after losing both his legs.
Today, Ben is president of an aviation management company in Florida. He hosts the Team Harrow Podcast, interviewing former servicemen and women.
For more about Ben, check out his podcast here: http://www.youtube.com/@TeamHarrow
@kreilly @jshardlow @rleslie
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FunTranscript
00:00My name is Ben Harrow.
00:01I was a captain in the Green Berets for six years.
00:03In 2012, I lost both my legs above the knees
00:07when an IED exploded.
00:08And this is everything I'm authorized to tell you.
00:13There is no other unit in the world
00:16that does what the Green Berets do
00:18because Green Berets look at problem sets
00:21a little bit differently.
00:22And we're always thinking, all right,
00:25I can kill person X,
00:27but what sort of second and third order effects
00:30does that cause?
00:31Maybe we should approach them and bring them in
00:33and have them work for us.
00:34Maybe they can bring us somebody bigger.
00:41Nation building is going in and supporting country X.
00:47The Green Berets are sent to that country
00:50to help become a force multiplier and train up an army,
00:54train up a police force and ensure security in that country
00:57because from security,
00:58there's a lot of trickle down effects from that.
01:00I'd say one of my biggest personal professional successes,
01:05and I'd say my team as well,
01:07was our deployment in 2010 to Aruzgan to the Chutu Valley.
01:13If you look on the map,
01:14it's right in between the Helmand and Kandahar province.
01:17Up in the Chutu Valley area,
01:19it was kind of the heartbed of the Taliban.
01:21The third group team was in the middle of a big clearing operation,
01:26and they kind of hit a point of like no man's land,
01:28and they couldn't break up into that valley any further.
01:32We picked up from that third group team,
01:34and at first we tried to push into the valley.
01:37We as a team did some thinking,
01:39and we realized that to be truly successful in Afghanistan at this juncture,
01:46we needed to do something different,
01:48and we knew that for us to do that properly,
01:51we had to be living and engaged with the villagers every day.
01:54So the next go around,
01:55instead of us trying to do this big clearing operation
01:59over a course of three days and just clearing compounds
02:02and trying to kill or capture whoever was there and then leaving,
02:06what we did was we actually skipped a whole area
02:09that we deemed as dangerous,
02:10air inserted into one area of a very northern portion of that village,
02:14did a river crossing,
02:16and then worked with the villagers beforehand that wanted us there.
02:20So we actually picked a compound that was like a goat pen
02:23and nobody wanted and said,
02:25hey, we're here and we're not going anywhere.
02:28We actually picked the compound
02:31because we didn't want to look as like
02:32we were just taking the nicest compound.
02:34And so more locals were willing to work with us.
02:37We were able to start to slowly build up
02:39a true local security force.
02:42The Taliban didn't know what to do
02:44because we just totally planted our flag
02:46in the middle of a major logistical chain of theirs
02:50and our villagers that were happy to have us there supporting them
02:54and literally fighting shoulder to shoulder with them
02:56right next to them doing long range foot patrols
03:00up into the mountains to go conduct ambushes on the Taliban,
03:03setting up checkpoints and sitting up on the checkpoints with them
03:06for days at a time,
03:07which they hadn't experienced before of,
03:09hey, these Americans are actually here living with us
03:11and eating our food and part of the tribe.
03:15It gained their support and that huge rapport,
03:19the rapport building, which is so critical for us as SF guys.
03:23You're living off the economy.
03:25Every night you're eating Afghan chicken or Afghan goat
03:29or Afghan sheep and rice.
03:31And if you're lucky, maybe there was okra or some like stewed tomatoes
03:35and a giant piece of flatbread.
03:37We were able to start to slowly recruit Afghans that were like,
03:41holy the Americans with beards, they're here.
03:45They're not going back to their fire base.
03:47We went in there with maybe the promise of five Afghans.
03:51By the end of that trip, we had a 90 plus man fighting force.
03:56The Taliban had destroyed the roads.
03:58Well, we hired about 300 villagers to build up their road,
04:03leveraging different government agencies, USAID and state and whoever else,
04:07and repave this road.
04:08And once we had security and we repaved the road,
04:12well, now comes in commerce.
04:13And all of a sudden we see the bazaar open up again in this village
04:16where there was nothing.
04:18So it was just interesting to see all the trickle down effects
04:22of once you're able to do the kinetic piece of the operation
04:27and, you know, kill, capture and remove whoever off the battlefield
04:30that's a bad actor, that's only a small piece of it.
04:34And the bigger piece is that nation building piece or for us at the time,
04:37you know, is that kind of the village building piece
04:39or the province building piece, but it's the same thing.
04:41It's just at a smaller scale.
04:46Usually when I'm explaining to people what the Green Berets do and who we are,
04:53they have no idea of what we really do, right?
04:56And to be honest, that's kind of the allure of it.
05:00We are a special operations unit.
05:02You don't necessarily want your adversaries knowing who you are and what you do.
05:07The motto of the Green Berets is,
05:08De Oppressible Liber, and it's Latin for to free the oppressed.
05:12It's we're there to help people and you're there to do good for others
05:16and the selfless service piece, which I love that aspect of it.
05:20The Green Berets are known as one of the most elite units in the U.S. military.
05:24Originally, it was called the OSS, Office of Strategic Services,
05:28which was formed during World War II.
05:30I believe in 1952, the OSS split, and it was the CIA and Special Forces.
05:37General Donovan, the original commander for the OSS,
05:41when people were asking what type of candidate that he was looking for
05:44to fill the role that the OSS was set up to conduct during World War II,
05:50he said, I'm looking for Princeton graduates that can win bar fights.
05:54They just don't fly around in helicopters at night doing cool guy stuff.
05:58I see him in the next morning in meetings,
06:00meeting with the mayor and meeting with the police chief.
06:02At the same time, half the team's out back training up,
06:05you know, the national SWAT team that they work with to go do missions.
06:08Their intelligence sergeant is constantly walking around
06:11and doing meetings with Iraqis and sync meetings
06:14with the rest of the conventional forces.
06:16So just seeing that they were kind of their own standalone group
06:19and they were very effective what they did,
06:23I saw that and I was like, I want to go do that.
06:25We're sent into regions and parts of the world
06:29to either help bring up a country or take down a country.
06:33And whenever I'm asked about, you know, what is it that Green Berets do?
06:37I always use the comparison that Army Rangers and Navy SEALs,
06:40they're kind of like checkers masters because they're the best at what they do.
06:44Green Berets are, I think, more of chess masters,
06:47and that's not to put one down and say one game is better than the other.
06:51There's similarities between the two games.
06:53It's just that for us, there's a lot more moves on the board that we're able to do
06:58because we work a lot more with government agencies, other nations' governments,
07:03other nations' military more closely and combined with them than the other units do.
07:08As an officer, there's a lot of gates that you have to pass even before attending selection
07:19that enlisted guys don't, one of those being just an on paper selection process.
07:24And I know some of my West Point classmates that applied on paper
07:28and then didn't even get invited to attend SFAS, Special Forces Assessment and Selection.
07:33I attended SFAS in July of 2008.
07:38SFAS had always been anywhere from like 24 to 29 days,
07:42and I think they did that just to kind of keep people guessing.
07:45So that way you couldn't like game selection.
07:47If you went to selection and I went the next month,
07:50you couldn't be able to tell me, hey, the first day you're going to do this,
07:54the second day you're going to do this to like prep for it.
07:56It's not the same course every time,
07:58but you're going to do the same stuff every time.
08:01When I went, because the global war on terror was hopping at the time, right,
08:05in 2008, Afghanistan was heavy.
08:08They condensed everything to 14 days to try and produce more Green Berets.
08:14When I was starting to train up for SFAS, I did a lot of ruck marching.
08:19We'd spend like an hour walking with your rucksack on of like 70 pounds,
08:24but you'd also have maybe a telephone pole on top of that.
08:28And you're lined up with somebody else that has that same telephone pole.
08:31And you just you walk miles and miles and miles
08:34with a telephone pole on your back, or you guys would take turns
08:37carrying a telephone pole and with your rucksack on the back on your back.
08:41Or maybe you show up one day and it would be like a 10 mile run.
08:45Selection is just a mental and physical like kick in the nuts.
08:51I was probably the most in shape I was ready to go to selection.
08:56And by the time I finished selection, I was I was pretty broken.
09:01I remember after finishing the last the very last portion of selection,
09:05which is called the Trek, which after everything that you do,
09:09you do this anywhere from like 25 to 30 mile road march.
09:14You really don't know the exact distance.
09:16You're not allowed to wear a watch.
09:17You can't have any way to keep track of it with like pace counting.
09:23And they just tell you, you know,
09:24line up on the cones with the prescribed
09:27packing list, which is always around like 80 pounds dry.
09:30So then you put on you put the water in there, too.
09:32So you're probably like 90 pounds.
09:34And then they tell you launch and they just tell you
09:38keep following the chem lights.
09:40And so you're just walking and walking and walking and walking.
09:43You're so broken mentally.
09:44You're so broken physically.
09:46So you get like a glimpse that like a person's like true soul and personality.
09:50But I ended up walking eight hours and 20 minutes nonstop.
09:55Basically, I think my friend and I said that we stopped for like five minutes to grab some food.
09:59But we knew that you couldn't stop too long because you get too comfortable.
10:02You cross the finish line and you're on this gravel
10:06and you drop your rucksack and you're in formation.
10:08It was so pain.
10:09It felt like the bottom of my feet were hit with a baseball bat just over and over and over again
10:15because you can't you can't just stand there.
10:17You have to like kind of shift and change feet because your feet are so bruised and they're so blistered up.
10:22I remember walking to the showers afterwards
10:25and it was just so painful trying to walk around on your feet after walking for almost nine hours.
10:31It's still, you know, even after losing my legs, it's still one of those like fond memories I have of my feet
10:38and just how painful it was on my feet.
10:41Selection is a huge mind and I went through reverse cycle.
10:44So we're doing everything at night.
10:46Sometimes they just keep you up because they don't want you to allow to get so much sleep for whatever reason.
10:50You know, that's part of selection.
10:52So they would do stuff where, you know, it's like three o'clock in the morning
10:56and you're sitting in this little auditorium and they hand out pieces of paper.
11:00You don't know what it is. And they say, all right, flip it over, read the instructions and complete the task.
11:05And you flip it over and the instructions are it's a it's a blank map of the United States.
11:10And they say, hey, this is a timed event.
11:13Fill in as many states in the United States as you can by memory.
11:16One of the things that they did one night they're keeping us up is
11:20they give us the piece of paper, they flip it over, you read it and it's a scenario.
11:25And the scenario is, is that you're in charge of a special forces patrol in Iraq.
11:31Your mission is to go and meet this key leader that no one's been able to meet.
11:35But it's very important that you meet him for like mission success.
11:38And while you're convoying to the meeting, you see, you know, a woman and child injured on the side of the road.
11:45And, you know, the question is, what do you do?
11:48My reasoning for not stopping is my mission today is to go and meet this guy.
11:53I don't know when I'm going to be able to meet him again as much as I care for the woman and child.
11:57And I understand how important that is.
11:59I also don't know if it's a setup.
12:01I don't know if it's some sort of trap.
12:03So I will radio to hire to let them know the grid coordinate.
12:07They can bring an air asset on.
12:09They can check out what's going on with maybe a drone, a predator feed.
12:12They can send another unit out there to go take care of that.
12:15But I know my mission is to go take care of what I was given.
12:18So we go outside.
12:20You know, we're all kind of waiting for people to finish up.
12:22And we're like, hey, how'd you do?
12:24What'd you do?
12:25What'd you say?
12:26And we go around and everyone's like, I stopped.
12:28No, of course I stopped.
12:29Yeah, of course I stopped.
12:30I wanted to show them that I care.
12:31Yeah, of course I stopped.
12:32They all looked at me and kind of laughed and were like, well, at least you had some reasoning behind it.
12:38And I think at the end of the day, that's really what the cadre want to see, especially from the officers,
12:44is that whatever course of action you do, you make your decision, you stick with your decision,
12:52you have reasoning for your decision.
12:54They want somebody that's analytical and always thinking through the problem set.
12:57After selection, I went back to my unit, finished up there, and then started the Q course,
13:09which was a long pipeline to become a Green Beret.
13:14And the Q course stands for the Special Forces Qualification Course.
13:18And depending on what your MOS is, or basically what your skill set is on the team, for me,
13:24because I was an officer, so I was known as an 18 Alpha.
13:27An 18 Bravo is your weapons sergeant.
13:29An 18 Charlie is the Special Forces engineer.
13:31The 18 Delta is the Special Forces medic.
13:34The 18 Echo is the Special Forces communications sergeant.
13:37And then you have an 18 Fox, which is the intel sergeant,
13:40as well as some other specialties on the team, a team sergeant and a warrant,
13:44who's basically the second in command on a Special Forces team.
13:47A big portion of what we do that makes us so elite is the cultural and the language training
13:53that we do that other units don't receive in practice, where we deploy to another region.
13:58A lot of the times we deploy, we don't take a translator because everyone on the team
14:02can speak that language.
14:03There's 1st Special Forces group, 3rd group, 5th group, 7th group, 10th group,
14:08and then 19th and 20th group.
14:10And each active duty group, which is 1st through 10th that I just named,
14:15each group has a specific AOR or area of responsibility on the globe
14:19that they're primarily responsible for.
14:22So for example, I was in 7th Special Forces group,
14:24so we were primarily responsible for Central and South America.
14:27So what that means that your language during the Q course is either Spanish,
14:31some people take Portuguese, but mostly Spanish.
14:34You know you're going to be going down south to Honduras, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile,
14:40wherever the mission takes you.
14:41I chose 7th group as my first choice and Spanish,
14:45hoping that that way I definitely get 7th group and go down to Central and South America
14:50or Afghanistan and do that mission because I just did 15 months in Iraq.
14:55And I was like, all right, I already got Iraq under my belt.
14:58I don't really want to go back to Iraq.
14:59I don't want to learn Arabic.
15:00When I was going through the Q course, it was just very language intensive,
15:04you know, eight hours a day, nothing but Spanish, working with the teacher,
15:08flashcards, the chalkboard, computer programs, watching TV as the captain.
15:15You know, you're expected to speak Spanish.
15:17You're expected to be able to stand up in front of a room of commandos in Colombia
15:22and be able to talk about what you do or talk about training in Spanish fluently.
15:28And I've always been a high performer.
15:30So I was listening to a lot of Spanish music.
15:33I got big into reggaeton.
15:35I got big into bachata.
15:36I was watching Mujeres Assassinas, Sanda, Telemundo.
15:39It became my favorite telenovela.
15:41It was really whatever I could do to try and absorb the language.
15:44The Q course can be anywhere from, you know, a little over a year like it was for me because
15:50I was a shorter language and my specialty course was a little bit shorter as an officer.
15:55But there's guys that go to first group where they're also in 18 Delta.
16:00So not only do they have to learn how to speak Chinese, which is like six to seven months,
16:04but you're also going through the special forces medical course, which is about a year
16:08in itself.
16:08So guys will spend like almost two years going through the Q course before they get to the
16:13team.
16:13There's an 83, 85% attrition rate.
16:16So 15 to 20% actually make it from entering selection, getting selected, going through the
16:22Q course, and then being able to walk across the stage and receive your Green Beret upon
16:28graduation.
16:29I had a report to 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group about a week after I graduated,
16:35which my wife wasn't too happy about, but such is life as a Green Beret and took a team
16:41right away.
16:42Little did I know that I made a very good impression on the 7th Group commander at graduation.
16:47They needed team leaders.
16:49So it was exciting for me.
16:50You know, it's like showing up day one and the New York Yankees and they said, hey, we
16:55heard you can play ball.
16:56Go take shortstop.
16:57You know, and so I was, it was exciting for me.
17:00During my time during the Global War on Terror or the GWAT, 7th Group and all the other Special
17:05Forces groups, besides focusing on their primary AOR, was also given the additional task of
17:12the GWAT.
17:14So for 7th Group and 3rd Group, primarily, we were headed to Afghanistan.
17:19I never had the opportunity to deploy to South America as a team leader in 7th Group.
17:25I just kept going back to Afghanistan.
17:33All U.S. Special Operations are elite, right?
17:36And they do a very good job in their selection process of how they find guys that want to
17:42be SEALs and Rangers and Green Berets.
17:45And they're willing to endure that physical hardship.
17:49You know, obviously, the SEALs have the water and the cold.
17:53And, you know, we have the cold in the woods and the starvation and the sleep deprivation.
17:58You know, there were times during Ranger School, you're cold and wet and starving, just like
18:02how I'm sure during BUDS, you're cold and wet and starving.
18:05And, you know, people are like, oh, what's tougher?
18:08I think it all sucks, right?
18:10Like, I'm sure, you know, starving in the cold sucks regardless, you know, if you're in
18:14the woods or on a beach.
18:15I don't, it all sucks.
18:18You obviously have that kind of like rivalry.
18:20Each Special Operations unit kind of has like, it's like stereotypes, right?
18:26Where the SEALs are, they look like they all do CrossFit and, you know, they're writing
18:33book deals and doing movies.
18:35Green Berets, we all look like we're junior varsity football coaches or we could be some
18:39vocational school teacher, like we teach shop.
18:42Rangers are so like gung-ho and like tight haircuts and just ready to run through a brick wall
18:50and just, you know, murder, death, kill and crush, you know, destroy.
18:53I'm a Ranger.
18:54And so everyone has kind of their stereotypes and jokes.
18:57But, you know, at the end of the day, like we love working with one another, at least
19:01from my perspective.
19:03How do you talk to your friends and family or actually your kids about how to watch media
19:08coverage?
19:10I just tell everybody to be very careful on what they see what's going on in the media.
19:15My in-laws love watching Fox News and I'm like, guys, that's not what, you know, they're
19:20like, is this true?
19:21How could they be doing this to the troops?
19:23And I'm like, that's not necessarily true, right?
19:26And then I have other family members that will tell me stuff that they see on CNN.
19:30And I'm like, that's not true either.
19:32Like, we don't really do that.
19:34During the global war on terror and obviously after the raid in Abadabad and when they killed
19:39bin Laden, more people wanted to know about him.
19:41More SEAL members, I think, came out and started to talk more openly about what they do in their
19:47community.
19:48But I think it is important for people to be able to talk about what they did, right?
19:52Up to a point.
19:54I had the opportunity to work with a SEAL team.
19:58I think it was Team 10 that came out to our Village Stability site that I talked about
20:04where we built the road in 2010.
20:07So seven Green Berets with maybe we had 25 Afghans working as our partner force, like
20:13living with us in the compound.
20:15We're living in this middle of Afghanistan, right?
20:17So they came out to our site.
20:20I think it was like two Blackhawks full of Navy SEALs.
20:23There was like me and one of my teammates.
20:25We're standing outside the door to our compound, like all dirty and bearded up and not really
20:31in a complete uniform.
20:32And we're like, hey, we're over here.
20:35Guys, just come walk over here.
20:36Everything's fine.
20:37Like, everything's cool.
20:38Just come walk, right?
20:39I remember doing the briefing and giving them the kind of like the history of how we got
20:45to this point, what the Valley used to look like.
20:47How, you know, what we were successful with.
20:50We finish it and, you know, it's all, we're all like shoulder to shoulder in there because
20:55there's so many SEALs.
20:56And I'm like, hey, so like, like, what's, what's your questions?
20:59And it's like quiet for a second.
21:01And one of the SEALs is like, where is everybody?
21:05And we were like, this is it, man.
21:08Like this, this is it.
21:14The SAS has always had a tan beret.
21:16I believe the British Navy commandos have a green beret.
21:19Also, the paras in the UK wear a maroon beret.
21:23So General Yoroborough adopted and just had everybody wear a green beret.
21:29President Kennedy at the time in 61 or 62 was down at Fort Bragg visiting.
21:35They were doing a demonstration of our capabilities to the president.
21:39And the president said, you know, how do you guys like those green berets?
21:43And General Yoroborough said, you know, we love them.
21:45And since then it's been authorized by the president.
21:48We're the only unit that has been authorized by the president of the United States for our
21:53traditional headwear, the green beret.
21:55As part of the dress uniform, it's not very comfortable wearing a wool beret in Afghanistan.
21:59So it doesn't, it doesn't keep the sun out of your eyes and it doesn't make much sense.
22:04So I remember we wore it a couple of times in Afghanistan, more for photos.
22:08And I just remember thinking to myself, you know, how did guys in Southeast Asia and Vietnam
22:13in the jungles wear these things?
22:14Because this is so uncomfortable.
22:16Once you become a green beret and you earn your green beret, you know, it's something
22:21never given or is earned.
22:22You're always part of the regiment.
22:24So even now I've been medically retired since 2016, I still consider myself a part of the
22:30special forces regiment.
22:32And even now, you know, you, you can still get your tab and your, your beret taken away
22:37if you do something to dishonor the regiment, whether you're the captain or this, the comms
22:42guy, or, you know, the senior engineer, you're an extra hand and you're going to help put together
22:47the satellite or you're an extra hand and you're going to go down there and help rig the demo
22:51to blow some of the rock away in the road that we're constructing, or you're there to help
22:56inoculate like 90 goats because we're trying to build rapport with the locals.
23:01So you're going to stick a syringe up the nose of all these goats and you're just the guy,
23:06you know, you're there to help do the mission.
23:07My last deployment to Afghanistan, I was in Kandahar province in Panjui district, and
23:19I got injured in May of 2012.
23:22I lost both my legs above the knee when an IED exploded.
23:25I remember walking into, through a doorway and immediately I felt myself getting thrown
23:32through the air and trying to figure out like what, what had happened.
23:38So what had happened was I stepped on this IED, it was only me that got injured.
23:43It immediately kicked off this ambush that the Taliban had set up.
23:48So I, I step on the IED, the machine guns open up, my team fires and maneuvers to get to me.
23:55When they get to me, they say, I'm, I'm rolling around screaming.
23:58And, and my right leg is gone.
24:01They said it looks like almost like a exploding cigar you see in a cartoon, but it's just like
24:06meat and bone.
24:07My left leg was so badly like shattered.
24:10They were like, that's, that's up.
24:12Like that's, we're not even going to worry about that.
24:15I remember waking up on the ground, my head ringing and just totally concussed, trying to
24:24figure out like, how did I just end up on the ground?
24:27I remember hearing a shooting going on.
24:30I remember not really being able to see anything and just this cloud of dust and just total chaos.
24:36My first thought for whatever reason was I just got hit by a car and it just, whatever,
24:42you know, whatever hit me, my body just was like, whatever just hit you, hit you so hard.
24:48It felt like a car, but right away, I'm like, there's no way a car hit me.
24:52Maybe a mortar landed next to me as I was walking into this compound and exploded.
24:57And then I started to hear somebody else yelling and screaming kind of off in the distance.
25:01So I thought, all right, I'm on the ground.
25:04I couldn't move.
25:05I was kind of stuck on the ground.
25:07It felt like, but I felt somebody yelling or I heard someone yelling off in the distance.
25:11So I just thought, all right, just, just kind of sit here and be cool.
25:16It sounds like there's a gunfight going on.
25:18My teammates are probably in the middle of a gunfight, like engaged in something.
25:23They will come find me, especially with this kid over here screaming.
25:25And then the next thing I realized, I was, I was back in my body the best way I could explain it.
25:35And it was, it was me screaming and I felt myself screaming and I, I was back in my body.
25:41I was just screaming as at the top of my lungs.
25:44And I remember hearing one of my teammates over me going, holy, oh my God, holy.
25:51And it started to get real chaotic and, and just, you know, supernatural in a way of what was going on.
26:00And then things started to slow down.
26:04I wasn't bouncing back and forth as much.
26:07And I remember it was, it was getting, it was getting hard to kind of stay with it.
26:15And, uh, I remember thinking to myself, this random thought just popped in my head.
26:23Uh, this picture that I had of my wife and son, it was like a three by five photo that was on the wall of my room back in the firebase.
26:31And it felt like I was in the photo and my wife and son were like reach in the photo.
26:37They were like blowing me a kiss.
26:39And the, you know, I was in the photo and it felt like they were reaching out to me.
26:42And, uh, I just remember saying their names like over and over, like a mantra, Peyton and Gina, Gina and Peyton, Peyton and Gina, Gina and Peyton.
26:52I just felt that whatever was happening to me, I had no idea, but something bad was happening.
27:00I'm going to sit here and stay with it because I got to get back to them.
27:03Nothing's going to take me away from them.
27:05I'm going to get back to them.
27:06Um, sorry, Gina, just thinking like the last thing my, my teammates would be able to tell my wife was that I, I said, I'm, I'm sorry for, you know, for dying.
27:15Part of the reason that I'm alive is they put tourniquets all over my body.
27:19Um, they couldn't give me any morphine because my, my breathing was, my breathing impulse was so weak and shallow that if they gave me anything, my medic was worried if I, you know, if that would just really put me over the edge and they wouldn't be able to wake me up.
27:31Um, a medevac came, apparently that was a whole ordeal in cluster too, that they had to work around, got me on the medevac, get to the Kandahar trauma center.
27:41I don't remember any of that.
27:43Um, because I was, I was out, I was somewhere else mentally.
27:46They ended up putting 75 units of blood back into me.
27:49The human body only holds like 10 to 12.
27:52I ended up waking up in launch to Germany three days later.
27:55One moment I was screaming chaos, having these visions of my wife and my kid.
28:08The next thing I wake up in Germany.
28:10So I'm totally confused what's going on.
28:12It feels like my five senses had been reset, but I felt this kind of female presence next to me or a doctor next to me at least.
28:18And they say, uh, Captain Harrow, do you know where you are?
28:22Do you know what happened?
28:22And I said, no.
28:24And she said, you stepped in an IED.
28:27I'm sorry, but you lost both legs above the knee.
28:30A major piece of your right arm's missing, but they're going to save your arm.
28:34You're just missing two fingers on your right hand and two legs.
28:37And I'm like doing the math and I'm like, all right, two fingers, legs, but I still got my dick, right?
28:42My dick is still there.
28:43And she's like, yes.
28:44And I passed back out.
28:46And that's like one of the only memories I have of waking up in Germany.
28:50You know, I'm on so many narcotics and pain pills.
28:53And also at the time, which I found out later, I had a lot of infection going on.
28:58So I was up to like 104, 105 fever.
29:02I would wake up, not know where I'm at, wake up, throw up.
29:08And like, it was kind of like this, kind of like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from.
29:12The first time I talked to Gina on the phone and she's like, Benny, you know, I love you.
29:17I love you.
29:17How are you doing?
29:19And I'm like, hey, I lost my legs.
29:22And she's like, I know.
29:23And I remember saying, I'm going to run a marathon.
29:27And she was just like, all right, Benny, you're going to run a marathon.
29:31Like, all right, it, I don't have legs, but this isn't going to stop me.
29:34Like, whatever it is I got to do, I'm going to do.
29:37The first two weeks, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I was going in for surgery for washouts to wash out the infection from all the dirt blown up into me.
29:45Week three and four, I was more conscious.
29:48I was more aware of, like, what was going on.
29:50I wasn't going in for surgery as much.
29:53This was kind of all closed up.
29:55I woke up.
29:56And once I started to realize what was going on, all my hands were broken.
30:00My fingers were broken.
30:01This obviously was all bandaged up.
30:03Both my eardrums were blown out.
30:05I was on morphine, two different types of Oxycontin.
30:09Then I'm also on ketamine, different types of, like, nerve medicine to help, like, just kill my nervous system and the pain.
30:16I would have these bouts of nerve pain where I would feel, it would feel like my feet getting ripped off of me.
30:24And it would be this hot, stinging, like, sensation of my feet being crushed.
30:29And really what it is is my lower appendages aren't there.
30:33My brain sending a signal to my, where my feet are, but not getting a return signal.
30:39I mean, it hurts so bad, I don't want to tell them.
30:41And I just wanted them to keep feeding me the ketamine when I would shut my eyes, I would see, like, death in his, like, cloak with his, like, scythe, like, in my room.
30:53Like, either looking over me or I'd see him, like, sitting in my chair.
30:57And so in a moment of clarity, one night they were giving me my cocktail of pain pills and I said, no, I don't want them, I'm good.
31:07And for the next, like, three days, there was nothing I could do except just, like, breathe it out.
31:12So after about, like, three, four days of dealing with all that, I just kind of broke through this, like, mental plateau.
31:19And I didn't need any pain pills and I didn't need any nerve medication.
31:23I actually got out of the hospital at, like, the two-month mark from inpatient to outpatient.
31:29When I got injured, I was 215 pounds when I stepped on the bomb.
31:33But waking up in the hospital, I went from 215 to 135.
31:38And I had to totally rebuild myself.
31:40I really had to start from scratch.
31:42But got myself in shape again and tried to start learning how to walk on prosthetics, on full-size prosthetics like I'm on now.
31:51But because so much of my right leg got taken off in the blast, I couldn't wear full-size prosthetics without my right leg falling off.
31:59It was just very frustrating and it felt like nothing was working, right?
32:03Like, I am mentally ready to go.
32:05I'm physically ready to go.
32:06But I just don't have the equipment and I can't get up and walking and I feel like I'm stuck in this wheelchair and I'm at a dead end and I don't know what to do.
32:16Everything that I was, this alpha male, athlete, green beret, but I'm stuck in a wheelchair and I can't really carry my son around and spend Disney with him like I did before.
32:29And my wife says, well, it sounds like you just need to, like, grow bone or, like, lengthen your limb.
32:34And I'm like, yeah, like, how do we do this?
32:37How do I do that?
32:38I just started to do all my own research on bone lengthening, Wolf's Law and how bone regrows and osseodistraction, which is the technical term of bone lengthening.
32:48I just want to grow my femur a little bit.
32:50Can this be done?
32:52And they said, yeah, no, obviously we know about this procedure, but we've never done it on an amputee.
32:57However, we'll put you in touch with some doctors that have done something similar to amputees.
33:04I have to send my x-rays up to the guy up in Minnesota.
33:07He introduces himself.
33:08He says, Ben, I'm Dr. Dahl.
33:10I see your x-rays.
33:12I can get you two to three inches of bone.
33:14My femur, which was probably about the same size as my finger here at the time, what he did was he broke it in the middle, drilled a hole up into it at the very distal end to create, like, a cavity.
33:28Installed this device that looked like two AA batteries on top of one another.
33:33And then on either side of the brake, he screw in the device.
33:36It was attached to a radio receiver that was buried underneath my skin by my hip.
33:42So four times a day, I took a radio transmitter, found the receiver that was buried underneath my skin by my hip, put on my stethoscope, pushed the power button, and I would count nine turns.
33:54It was like a reverse vice.
33:56So it would kind of, like, unscrew, and it would lengthen my broken femur.
34:01So after about 11 months of lengthening a broken femur, I ended up setting two medical world records for the shortest stump lengthened on an amputee and then for the most bone regenerated on a human.
34:13Because instead of two to three inches of bone, I ended up regrowing about five and a half inches of bone.
34:18And I got myself up and walking.
34:20I guess it was about, like, a two and a half, three-year process.
34:22Because I made myself patient zero and I refused to live life in a wheelchair, this became a procedure that they actually started to do for other guys at the hospital at Walter Reed.
34:34I was born in Brooklyn, New York, grew up on Long Island.
34:43My summers I spent living with my family down in North Carolina.
34:46So I had best of both worlds of learning about sweet tea, but also having enough, like, city street smarts, like, growing up on Long Island.
34:54You know, I was a serious lacrosse player in high school.
34:57I was getting recruited by top D3 schools and some pretty good D1 schools.
35:02I knew two things.
35:04I knew, number one, I wanted to continue to play lacrosse in college competitively.
35:08I knew I wanted to try and win a national championship.
35:11It really just narrowed down to West Point or Annapolis.
35:15And I was getting recruited by both programs and loved both schools.
35:20I felt at the end of the day that I kind of got the most love from West Point and they wanted me a little more, I guess.
35:26I wanted to play lacrosse at the highest level.
35:29It just worked out that going to the military academy and joining the Army was the path that I took.
35:35After graduation, I did infantry officer basic course in ranger school.
35:39I was already airborne qualified.
35:41We deployed for 15 months from 2006 to 2007 to Iraq, where I was a mechanized infantry platoon leader in Iraq.
35:49When I was in Iraq, I actually had the opportunity to work with three separate special forces teams.
35:54So I always kind of knew about special forces and Green Berets.
35:58I focused on like the little victories of it.
36:06And that was something I learned going back to like the military training, like small victories, right?
36:13Like it was a hard day.
36:15It sucked.
36:17But guess what?
36:18You're going to have a hot meal.
36:19That's a small victory.
36:20I remember taking my first steps after I got fitted, you know, post all the bone lengthening and knowing like, all right, now I'm able to start.
36:31It was like I was able, I felt like I literally closed a chapter and I opened up a whole new chapter of, I knew it was going to be challenging of having to figure out and learn how to walk again.
36:41But I'm ready to go.
36:43Like I've been waiting two years, like up to this point.
36:47So I'm ready to go.
36:49It's funny.
36:50It's intimidating.
36:52You're like everything that I've done in my life, jumping out of planes and combat, but wearing your legs outside in the real world where it's not all even and there's no parallel bars.
37:04You're like, whew, this is a little, this is a little freaky, right?
37:09So the legs I'm wearing right now, they have a carbon fiber sockets and then they're basically made out of, I guess, aluminum, titanium and some plastic components.
37:21But what it is, is it's really two microprocessors inside the knees, something crazy, like 90 times or 60 times a second.
37:29The computer is figuring out where it is because there's also a gyroscope in there, kind of where it is in time and space.
37:36And then also based off of the input on the sensors on the foot of like how much weight I'm putting on it for it to give me either less or more hydraulic resistance because they're hydraulic pistons in the back.
37:47And so because it's a computer system, it gets charged by a battery.
37:52The battery can last me really anywhere from like three to five days, depending on how much I'm walking on it.
37:57And it takes about two to four hours to charge it.
38:01And the knees themselves, everything, the sockets and the knees are probably about $70,000 a leg.
38:09The effort it takes for me to keep my balance, the effort it takes for me for my core strength, the effort it takes for me to engage my knees and to walk, especially on uneven terrain, it's like 140% more effort.
38:24So like if you walk a mile, I'm walking four miles.
38:28The next time we came down to Disney, I didn't bring my chair.
38:31I walked all three days and I remember wearing my heart rate monitor, just my GPS, just to also keep track of how much I was walking.
38:42It felt like I was back at selection.
38:43At the end of every day when I would take my legs off, I would have blisters, bloody at times, super sweaty, super uncomfortable, super tired.
38:53But every day I did like, you know, 25,000 steps and I was able to do it.
38:58One of the things that really helped me getting comfortable or being comfortable with discomfort again was skiing and monoskiing.
39:11And I never skied growing up.
39:13I always played hockey.
39:14There's this program called Veiled Veterans where they take people from the hospital that, like myself, that never skied or, you know, missing limbs and they teach them how to do adaptable skiing.
39:24I did monoskiing where I basically had to sit like in a bucket and underneath you there's one ski and you have two outriggers and that's how you kind of turn.
39:33For the first day, I, you know, it was all so new to me and like intimidating.
39:37But once again, I was just like, all right, I'm going to swallow my ego and pride and do this and try and figure out what this is.
39:43And just being able to like explore the mountain and do like do the same thing that able-bodied people were doing.
39:51And gaining that confidence actually helped me learning how to walk of like, all right, right, you know, walking around in two prosthetic legs.
39:59It's just like skiing, it's balance and transition and it's just having some confidence and just kind of going with it.
40:06Besides skiing, like I said, I was playing sled hockey, which once again was like an event where I had to kind of like swallow my pride.
40:13I eventually sucked up my pride, went down to the rink for a practice and got on the sled, you know, back on the ice and I was falling over.
40:21But there's something about being back on the ice and playing hockey again that I was like, all right, I want to teach myself how to do this.
40:29I went and tried out for the U.S. men's national team after they won gold medal in Sochi.
40:33I didn't make it.
40:34They had two goalies at the time that were really good.
40:36They weren't looking for another goalie.
40:38I was thinking about it.
40:39I was like, well, I know I qualify for Italian citizenship because I married an Italian citizen and we live outside of Italy and we've been married for more than three years.
40:47And I know Italy has a sled hockey team.
40:49I ended up going over Italy a couple of times for like training and to play in some like international friendlies and was playing with the entire national team at the Paralympic level.
40:59People stare or kids stare.
41:02I get it.
41:03You know, they're curious.
41:04Kids come up and want to see like what's going on.
41:08They can't help themselves and they'll touch my legs.
41:11Usually if it's like an adult that tries to touch my leg, I'll slap their hand and be like, what are we doing?
41:15Probably never going to end up running a marathon.
41:18I've done a couple of marathons hand cycling, but honestly, it's not because I just, it's not because I don't want to.
41:29It's just, I feel like there's no like need to, like to prove to myself.
41:33You know, there's other things I've done to prove to myself that sucked that, all right, you did it.
41:38You can still do it.
41:39Besides being a full-time dad, I am president for an aircraft management company called PAMJets.
41:46We're basically the flight department for people that own private jets or businesses that own their own aircraft.
41:51And we staff it and take care of the maintenance and help with all the logistics that goes into operating and owning a private aircraft.
42:00I started a podcast called Team Harrow.
42:02I wanted to use my story more as a platform where it's not just solely about me.
42:08I wanted to create the ability for other people to come on and share their stories of resilience or just cool and amazing things they've done as an athlete, as a coach in the military, or even just in the business world.
42:21You know, what I did, it was a full contact sport.
42:24This is, unfortunately, part of it.
42:28You know, it's like in hockey, going into a corner to fish out a puck, like you're going to get hit.
42:33You know, this, eventually things like this happens to either you or your friends.
42:38I don't really call, it is funny when people call it like my accident, as if like, you know, which I guess accidentally this happened, but I don't refer to it as my accident.
42:47It's my injuries.
42:48I got injured.
42:49My SF teammates and people, my friends, I mean, they just see me like kicking and they're so happy to see that.
42:56Obviously, they know I have a major obstacle to overcome, but, you know, they'll tell you it's, if anybody's going to do it, Ben's going to be able to do it.
43:19I'm going to be able to do it.
43:26I'm going to be able to do it.
43:28I'm going to be able to do it.
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