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Hey folks, I'm Michael Garofalo and right now we're hard at work on the next season of the Story Corps podcast.

But today, we're going to share a story from our Military Voices Initiative.

20 years ago, Marine Staff Sergeant Nick Bennett was deployed to Iraq,

to a region known as the Triangle of Death.

That area saw some of the highest number of casualties of the entire war.

Bennett's assignment kept him on base, running the internet cafe, but that's not where

he wanted to be.

So he requested to join a security team led by Sergeant Major Dan Miller.

Why did you want to join my combat team?

Both of my grandfathers are World War II vets and I've always wanted to follow in their footsteps.

And you had come forward and you were like, hey, I want to get out and help the mission.

A lot of Marines, that's how we're trained, if we're going to go fight.

Yeah, you want to face that fire. One day we gotten a call to come to the command post.

I heard a whistle come in over my left shoulder

and I knew what it was and I knew I wasn't coming home.

The rocket took off the back part of my right leg for my wrist bones, took off the back part of my hand, chipped a bone, my back. The shell casing impaled me in the right shoulder and I took

shrapnel in my left side and arm. And I remember Doc told me to keep you awake and so I was tapping you on the face and then the

...