Max Cleland

  b. 1942 | American politician

At The Bottom

— 1968

Over the next weeks and months, Cleland endured extraordinary physical and psychological pain.

Captain Max Cleland, a 25-year-old soldier from Atlanta, woke up five hours after a grenade shredded both his legs and one of his arms.  He had been looking forward to leaving Vietnam and only had a month left of his tour when he was asked to set up a radio relay station during the battle of Khe Sanh.  After being dropped off by a helicopter, Cleland stooped to the ground to pick up a grenade that one of his soldiers had dropped.  It exploded.  By the time Cleland regained consciousness, he had lost a tremendous amount of blood and was lucky to be alive, but as he drifted in and out of a haze of morphine and despair, he wondered how he could possibly live out the rest of his life.  Over the next weeks and months, Cleland endured extraordinary physical and psychological pain.  “Inevitably,” he wrote in 2009, “I was left feeling like I had fumbled the ball.  Game over, and I lost.  No one had shot me.  No one had thrown the grenade at me.  I had blown myself up and ruined my life.  It was all my fault.”