Navy SEAL MrBallen on Being Hit with an Enemy Grenade During Gunfight

and so as soon as this gunfire started I'm standing in this relatively small you know Spotlight that looks like a flashlight from God is shining down but I can only see it on my nods and it's flashing and so as the light is flashing around me I'm standing there I'm not shooting doing anything I'm behind the guys that are engaging and I watched this grenade come over the wall and it was like in slow motion and every time the light flashed on my nods I would see the grenade and then it would flash again it

would disappear and I'd see it again and it would disappear and I would see it again when it hit my shoulder like it was the slowest thing even though it happened in like a fraction of a second but over the course of like 6 hours there was I wouldn't say it was a constant gunfight cuz it wasn't but it was a constant presence of the enemy there and we knew they were there but we could not find them and finally it's late as hell it's you know 10 o'clock at night or whatever midnight this part

I I remember it fairly well but you have to keep in mind I was not on comms with the person who is talking to us I don't really know what happened but I know the result of what happened our fire team so our fire team was you know a handful of seals there's some partner Force as well we happened to be physically closest to the front of zargar where like the entrance to zargar was and there was a drone or there was some unmanned aerial vehicle in the sky that was flying overhead and it picked

up on what looked like military military AED men so MS hdle behind a wall near the front of zargar and they have you know the person who's controlling it I think they were in Las Vegas they had no way of knowing if they were carrying a weapon and I I don't think at the time we were able to use that as positive ID for weapons you just you could assume they did but you know you don't know and so it was like you have these suspicious menlook people huddling behind the wall on the way that

you would be going to leave so perhaps they're waiting to Ambush you or they're setting up an IED who knows so we happen to be the closest to these these guys and so our fire team leader who is he's he's on dev grew now he's a legend I'm not gonna say his name but he's he knows who he is and if he's listening to this you're the man um he's like let's just go over and see what these guys are doing and so we looked at our little grg map and we figured out where we're

going to go and based on where we believe these guys were huddling we thought we could come down this Alleyway and arrive at this other wall the short wall you know it's like a te intersection you'll you'll arrive the short wall right in front of you and in theory you could poke your head over this wall and look out across this this field if if you will and on the other side at the other wall that's like you know hundreds of meters away would be these these guys that have been spotted by the camera however

somehow or another it did not get relayed to us that these guys were not on that wall they were huddling behind the wall we were walking up to like a foot away from us and so we didn't know that and we were very sneaky we we made our away you know down this Alleyway and it's like totally silent it's dark we're on nods it's a lull in in all the gun fighting it's like silent it's eerie and we walk down this Alleyway and we get to this T intersection where again all we're going to do

is poke our heads over the wall and just give it like a sitre on like who these people are what are they doing do they do they look like a threat what should we do but instead I didn't see them because I did not I wasn't the guy who looked over the wall we get to the swall and we've been so quiet that no one's heard us and our team lead and one of the other new guys they poked their head over the wall and they just come back down and they're like they're right there

and they haven't hurt us by this point so no one's making a word no one's saying anything and we all just look at each other and my team lead he just gets down on one knee and he looks at the other new guy not me the other new guy and he just lightly Taps his leg like stand on my leg and start engaging the enemy and so like in in the space of like two seconds it's like suddenly there's gunfire going this way and these guys on the other side of the wall who were absolutely

Fighters that's the other thing how many were there I think well when we were there we thought there were two so so two people was our assessment when we literally got there but after the fact I've heard conflicting reports about there being up to seven people on the other side of the wall there is a video of it and it's grainy enough that there's no way that you could actually tell but there's at least two there could have been seven I honestly don't know because what happens next is such a blur I when they peaked

over the wall they became our our guys immediately knew like these are they have guns they're these are combatants and so he signals him like we we have to engage they're going to engage us cuz they haven't hurt us yet and when we began engaging them they were holding grenades at least we believe with the pins already pulled like waiting for this moment if you find us and you take us out we're going to let go of these grenades and take you with us and in the middle of this initial volley from our end going

over the wall these grenades two grenades at least I think it was two came over the wall and one of them actually hit my shoulder and then bounced to the ground next to me and you got to understand that it's nighttime I'm on night vision and so for people who have not been on night vision you know it's like we we had these they're called ANS PV 15s or something where it's like it's actually grayscale so it's not green and and yellow or whatever it's it's like gray and blue it it almost looks HD but

uh with night vision you can pick up infrared light that you can't with the naked eye and the Drone overhead that was basically providing support for us had a a a spotlight an IR Spotlight on the place where we were so we're in a spotlight but it's a spotlight you can only see on night vision and they were flashing the spotlight because we're in the middle of a of a contact at this point and they needed to signal to the other aircraft what was going on and so they're like flashing the strobe and so as

soon as this gunfire started I'm standing in this relatively small you know Spotlight that looks like a flashlight from God is shining down but I can only see it on my nods and it's flashing and so as the light is flashing around me I'm standing there I'm not shooting doing anything I'm behind the guys that are engaging and I watched this grenade come over the wall and it was like in slow motion and every time the light flashed on my nods I would see the grenade and then it would flash again it would disappear and

I'd see it again and it would disappear and I would see it again when it hit my shoulder like it was the slowest thing even though it happened in like a fraction of a second because I'm like that's a grenade and I'm going to die now you knew it was a grenade 100% could not have been more clear it was a grenade this is It's I tell people that in this moment which went so badly my brain was able to function at a level that is it never has before and I really believe it was

like it was operating out of you're actually on the brink of dying and so your brain is doing everything it can to save you and so it's like hyper processing what's going on around you and it makes time slow down it makes every millisecond feel like 10 minutes and so I really did have this weird moment of knowing this grenade was about to detonate and I didn't know if it would detonate here here here here here who knows but if it detonates here it's blowing my head off I'm I'm dead and so I remember as

it came over my first thought was oh my God please detonate below my head so at least I can have an open casket funeral and my family can identify me and so when it hit my shoulder and it began Falling Towards the ground I was actually relieved I was like pH it's going to blow up here and still totally kill me but my head will be intact my family can see me and then it hits the ground and I'm like oh I might survive this and then all of us just kind of like turned and

like did our because it's totally chaotic no one even knew where the grenade went and it's like we all kind of like turned and then it detonates and it just felt like someone had taken a handful of rocks and just kind of chucked them at me it didn't hurt at all but my recollection of what happens from this point until medac is not the way that it actually happened my memory is I fell to the ground and I couldn't stand up again I'm in this we were in a uh the alleyway we were in is

actually where the sewage ran it was like you know all the sh and piss going through the the and so I fell into a puddle of like sh and I unable to move I'm trying to pull myself forward and the whole time there was an active extremely close quarters gunfight happening because now those dudes are engaging back even though that's the thing people don't know is even if someone's been mortally wounded like immediately they'll keep fighting because that's just what happens and so it we didn't even know how if we even hit them they were

acting like they were totally fine yeah I mean a lot of times especially if we're using green tip guys wouldn't even realize they were being shot exactly take 10 15 maybe 20 rounds before it's over and so I my memory again is like I know this gun thing is this fighting is happening like a foot away from me and I'm also aware of the fact that from my perspective there was an opening at the end of this so it's a T intersection right so we were looking across the head of the tea thinking that's where

they're going to be and they're on the other side of the wall I fall and now I'm looking towards like the the one side of the tea if that makes sense I'm looking in that direction and there was an opening in the wall where in theory the people that were were engaging on this side of the wall the bad guys they could come around and come into the area where we are and so I was I was I was thinking to myself I'm probably bleeding to death I can't move and I I was up like

this looking straight ahead and I'm looking at this opening in the in the fence in the wall waiting for a fighter to come around and shoot me like 100% that's what I'm either going to bleed to death right now or another grenade is going to come over the wall or someone's going to come in here and finish me off and I had just I accepted that that was going to happen and when I really couldn't move myself what began running through my mind before I thought I was going to die was like what will my

obituary say and not from a oh oh boy I wish it was more full it was more just like factual like I wonder what it'll say will it say John Allen or Jonathan Allen will it be in my local paper or will it be in like a bigger newspaper will this be a news story or will it be kind of forgotten about like I was just thinking about it practically like hm I wonder what my funeral will be like and so it's just a very matter of fact I just knew for a fact I was

going to die uh but then the our medic uh whose name is who is a hero like in the truest sense of the word there's six guys that have been affected by these grenades like concussed I mean I had shrapnel enter my leg and the backs of my legs and my hip and I'm bleeding to death and another guy he had shrapnel enter his lungs and collapsed his lung and so he can't breathe we had a guy who was so concy like couldn't speak you know he's like totally out of it I think there was

a couple of shrapnel injuries I mean everybody's hurt but the one guy who wasn't badly hurt was our medic and so instead of engaging the enemy he basically went into practically a suicidal mission of just trying to protect the people that were hurt like he was just grabbing guys didn't wasn't even trying to pay attention to what was going on and dragging them to safety and he dragged me to safety and he laid over the top of me as like bullets are coming in it's like also once the gunfire started the other fighters in the

city they just began arbitrarily shooting generally in the direction of the gunfighting it's like you could easily hit your own dude but they don't care so it's like RPGs and and it's nighttime and no one even knows where the shooting's coming from and my medic is just calm as can be he's a seal too he's laying over me he's like hey it's going to be fine dude all good he's he's feeling my legs he put tourniquets on my legs he's like I think I got you stable and then afterwards my interpreter who I was very

close with his name is um he was like crying cuz he thought I was going to die and he literally laid on top of me had no weapon nothing and laid on top of me until it was time to move just to protect me even further um but he kept going back down to to pull guys out of The Fray and it would turn out the our jtac who was also with us he ended up calling in an air strike and it basically hit the dudes on the other side of the walls the threat was

more or less neutralized but there was still gunfire kind of coming in sporadically but yeah he just went in and pulled everybody out along with another guy uh who was not a medic but he was the really badly concuss guy he wound up going back in and pull a a bunch of guys out um and then the helicopter couldn't get in it was such an urban environment it was too risky with the gunfighting that even you know the the PJs the the best you know par rescue jumpers who could come in and do these types

of extracts they just like couldn't do it and so we had to run about a mile through the city to the only place where they could extract us and as we did I'm toured and barely can walk I'm kind of hanging on to other guys and just people are shooting at us arbitrarily like as we're running almost like a movie like running down the road not even trying to like take cover just get the out of here and then we get in the the helicopter me and the other really badly hurt guy we hopped in

the helicopter and it was like a hot extract it was pretty gnarly and I remember the one of the guys on the the Hilo he said do you want morphine cuz I was talking and Lucid but definitely was in and out a little bit but I was I was aware of things and I remember I said no because I I actually still believed there was a pretty good chance that I could still die from my injuries and I wanted to be aware of what was happening and I remember making that choice because I thought I

was still going to die and that's like so profound to think I did that no matter where you're watching Shan Ryan Show from if you get anything out of this please like comment subscribe and most importantly share this everywhere you possibly can and if you're feeling extra generous please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts