Marine Gunny goes back to Iraq with artificial leg

Fox News:

Spanky Gibson was shot by a sniper in May of 2006 while on foot patrol in Ramadi, Iraq. When the firefight was over, his left leg was gone.

But Gunnery Sgt. William Gibson, a decorated Marine, didn't stop serving his country, even after his leg was amputated above the knee. He didn't settle for a desk job stateside, either. He's back in Iraq — his second tour — on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps.

"It's great — it's a great feeling," Gibson told FOX News in an exclusive interview at Camp Fallujah in Iraq.

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It seems like yesterday that Gibson was cut down in a gunfight and left unable to walk without crutches and prosthetics.

"The first thing that went through my mind was, get my weapon out and function," he said. "I knew there was something seriously wrong with me — the round luckily enough severed the nerve, so there was no pain.

"Problem was, I could not get up and stand on my feet because of the destruction the round took."

Doctors had had no choice but to amputate, and Gibson says he steeled himself for the reality of learning to live without full use of his left leg — and moving forward one step at a time.

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"I realized, well, it ain't growing back, so let's start recovering," he said. "Initially, I didn't allow it to affect me to the point of despair ... Now, I roll over and look at my wife and say, this kind of sucks. But you get over it quickly."

By July of 2006, only two months after his was shot, Gibson was back at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The experience was marked by a series of firsts: the first time he got back into his uniform; the first time he walked, with crutches on his new prosthetic leg; the first time he was back training with his fellow Marines. That's when he knew he had to go back to Iraq.

"That was my first step," he said, "the first step to feeling like I was still a Marine."

He remembers all the camaraderie and gratitude coming from the other servicemen and women for the sacrifices he'd made in combat. It was then, he said, when he knew he had to go on.

"I definitely felt the obligation to stay in the Marine Corps and pay back that honor," Gibson said. "Because it is an honor to wear the uniform, and I realized that very quickly."

So Gibson began training in earnest again — only with his new leg, not his old.

Last July when he was swimming in a race from Alcatraz in cold San Francisco waters, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the Marine commander at Central Command, asked him what he wanted to do. Gibson said he wanted to go back to Iraq.

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This is just one of some terrific reports by Fox's Jennifer Griffin who has been focusing on Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan recently. Her reports can be seen on Brit Hume's Special Report on Fox.

Gibson is one of those Marines that demonstrate what a special bunch of guys we have fighting for us. If you listen to the Democrat candidates, you get the impression that there is nothing worth fighting for in Iraq, but fortunately for us people like Gunny Gibson disagree.