Miscellaneous
Dust trailed behind a civilian truck carrying thirteen Afghan citizens in March of 2010. It was likely a normal day for them going about their business. Their normal, however, meant navigating a war-torn landscape where forces from a host of countries battle the Taliban. Herat Province, Afghanistan, was far from normal. Boom! The bus hit an IED, killing five. The other eight lay in or near the vehicle. Nineteen-year-old Jerod Osborne, an army medic, arrived on the scene having barely missed the IED in his vehicle. As his training kicked in, he quickly triaged the wounded and provided battlefield medicine. For the newly arrived Osborne, his first taste of working as a medic involved saving many grateful civilians. For that, the Army awarded him a Bronze Star. His actions impressed his commander, Kyle Bruffy. “It was good to see the kid running in there. He proved himself.”1 Osborne spent his growing years in Royse City, Texas, a small town thirty miles east of Dallas. The downtown buildings make visitors think they’ve stepped back in time. It’s one of the first towns where folks say they live in East Texas as opposed to those closer to Dallas. This podcast tells the story of Army medic Jerod Osborne.