“I WAS ON FIRE, I SCREAMED FOR MY GOD AND MY MOTHER”

July 11, 2021

Rob Lauer Political Reporter

Last week, Republican Nevada Candidate for U.S. Senate Sam Brown announced his campaign to replace U.S. Senator Cortez Masto on Twitter. But then Twitter actually placed a sensitivity warning screen over Sam’s tweet of his burnt face on the 4th of July.

Sam Brown told his story this week in an oped attacking Biden’s chaotic exfil from Afghanistan. Sam Brown served in Afghanistan as a Captain in the U.S. Army when he was injured.

As reported in GQ:

Captain Brown was in the Kandahar desert when he knelt at the edge of a blast crater and raised his flaming arms to the Afghanistan sky. He’d already run through the macabre slapstick routine of a man on fire, trying to put himself out by rolling on the ground. He’d resorted to pelting his face with fistfuls of sand. That failing, he’d run in helpless circles. Finally he’d dropped to his knees, lifted his arms, and screamed Jesus, save me. Each scream drew fire deeper into his lungs. Behind him his Humvee was a twisted inferno. Bullets whizzed around him. His men were scattering, taking cover, moving dreamily in clouds of so-called moondust, that weird powdery talc, which hung in the air and gave the soldiers the appearance of snowmen. It was going on dusk, and in the fading light the enemy gunfire blazed behind the walls of the village.

Kneeling there, on fire, he’d resigned himself to death. All he’d wanted to know was how long? How long would he have to burn? How many more torturous fractions of a second would he have to remain alive?

His gunner, Jensen, had come to his rescue, extinguishing the fire with sand, helping him to his feet. Running for cover, Brown had kept his arms held out in front of him, as if he were carrying an infant that he did not know what to do with. The sleeves of his uniform were burned off, with patches of the desert camo fused to his skin, and the visible bits of his own flesh either meat-raw or charred black. It felt as though his gloves—made of thick leather and fire-retardant Nomex—were somehow cooking his hands.

In Sam’s own words:

As an infantry platoon leader one September evening in 2008, I was riding with in a M1151 Humvee in Kandahar. Another platoon north of us was taking fire and we advanced to help them. Then, our Humvee erupted in flames. We had hit a roadside bomb, an IED.

 I nearly died in Afghanistan

In an instant, I was on fire. I screamed for my God and my mother. I was rolling on the ground. The fire would not stop. I threw sand in my face. The flames burnt on.

I don’t know how long I fought the flames. It seemed like forever. It might have been 30 seconds. Daylight was fading. My men were scattered.