“Not Ready to Quit”: SSG Beth King

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Staff Sergeant Beth King. King served as a crew chief and maintainer of a Chinook Helicopter in Afghanistan. When her aircraft was hit by an RPG, she suffered serious invisible injuries that went untreated for 18 months.

SSG Beth King:

My name is Beth King. I was a staff sergeant in the United States Army as a 15 uniform, which is a Chinook maintainer. As a secondary MOS, I was a crew chief.

I grew up military. My dad was in the Navy. His dad and my mom's dad served. I have so many family members that served. But my parents had five kids, and my dad was able to support us through his military career.

I had my son around almost 25, and by the time he was five, I was still struggling to be able to really provide a meaningful life. Everything was a struggle. I always felt like I wanted to join the military, but I'm an identical twin, and my twin didn't want to go with me right out of high school, so I didn't go. I put off going. I went to college, played some soccer, ended up having a kid, and decided I needed a better way to support him. Looking back over my past, I was like, you know what? My dad was able to support all of us in the military. That's maybe not a bad solution. I went and talked to a recruiter, trying to figure out which branch I wanted to go into.

One thing I learned from my dad's career was that sometimes... He did, I think 22 years, and he got out, and he had a hard time finding employment just because he had so many different qualifications. It was just hard to find a civilian job. So in my mind, when I was selecting what I wanted to do, I was trying to find something that would have a civilian side after the fact. Which is how I ended up with army aviation as a crew chief.

I had a Navy father. I'm not 100% sure he was really understanding why I would choose the Army. I think mostly he was just happy I didn't choose the Marines, to be honest.

Well, I actually enlisted specifically for the Chinook. That was actually one of the reasons why I went with the Army. Depending on how you score on your ASFAB, you have the most control over what you're actually going to do. I was doing my research before I selected, and the Chinook in combat has two pilots and three backenders. That means I had three opportunities to make flight crew. The Black Hawk only has two backenders. Here in the States, the Chinook still needs two, and the Black Hawk only needs one. Obviously the Apache and the Kiowa don't have any backenders. If I actually wanted to fly, which I did, my best odds were to go with the Chinook. Going into the Army, I wasn't really even sure what a Chinook was until I said, okay, these are the odds, and then I researched it. But it's not like I had some great love for a tandem-rotor helicopter. It was all about a means to an end. Being a mechanic and a crew chief, there are all kinds of open doors in the civilian sector once I finished my career.

It's the best aircraft in all of the military. Okay. Well, if we look just at the Army for a second. It flies faster, it flies higher, and it carries more than any other aircraft. It can do everything from medevacs to infills to exfills, to cargo, to bringing large amounts of water, food, and ammunition to people that are in desperate need. It was an aircraft that made me feel like I had a mission. Black Hawks are either surveillance, or their medevac, or their VIP for the most part. Medevac, I'm not saying it's not a good calling, but we also can do medevac with the Chinook. Because of the altitude issues of Afghanistan, Chinook is actually the preferred aircraft. It is more versatile given on what the weather is, because heat can determine how high you can climb and all those factors. It is the best aircraft, in my opinion, my humble opinion. Non-biased.

I ended up, I enlisted, I went to Fort Jackson for basic training. Then from there I went to Fort Eustis. I did my AIT or Advanced Individual Training there. I did really well. Things was going great. I think it was eye opening to me. I didn't realize how few women were in the field going into it until I got to AIT. It's a company of 200 something, and there's 20 women. It was like, oh okay, so we're definitely... There's not an even playing field over here.

I worked really hard. I think I had a slight benefit over my other counterparts because I turned 30 in basic training, and I had a five-year-old at home. I was very focused. I was there to do a job, and I wasn't playing around, and I wasn't out there to have a good time. I was away from my kid. I missed him. I wanted to work hard and get home. I think in a lot of ways, it really motivated me to work harder at PT, work harder in the classroom, get my stuff done, and then that was entry.

I think it was a rollercoaster. On one hand, I was super excited to get to actually do my job, put all the time in training and hard work I've put into use. Like I said, I have a long military history, so there was some pride in that. I had obviously some fear. I was a single parent at the time, and it was really hard to leave my son. But I felt blessed in the fact that, like I mentioned before, I have an identical twin. He stayed with her the whole time. If I was gone in training or deployments, he looked like one of her kids so he fit in. It was easy on him. He wasn't constantly have to answering why his mom wasn't there, which is I think part of the hardship. I think sometimes part of the struggle as we deploy is worrying about our children. I felt like he was in a good place. I knew he was being cared for and that he looked like he belonged. To be 100% honest, other than war movies, I didn't really have any real experience at that time. My dad was in Vietnam, but he never really talked about his service at all while I was growing up. When I went to basic training, it was nothing like the movies. It was nothing like all the Vietnam veterans I had talked to, what they said basic training was going to be. So going into combat, I wasn't 100% scared. I was worried about my son a little bit. But I think I was just excited to do something. To be honest, deployment is probably my favorite place to be, and I sadly only did it once. But back home in training, you have all these factors, all these things going on around you. Once I got to Afghanistan, it was the job. I woke up, I went to the aircraft, I got it ready for a mission, I flew a mission. I came home, I put it to bed, I went to bed. I got up, I went and readied the aircraft. If I didn't have a mission that day, I just worked maintenance along the whole line, help out other people with their crews. But every day was exactly the same. It was all mission-driven. I didn't really have a ton of time to worry about too many other factors. It just seemed so much more simple. In a way that it doesn't really make sense. Because we were in country for a month the first time I saw any enemy fire. I was there for less than maybe 30 days, and I saw some stuff. Then a month later, Christmas day, I saw my first RPG Airburst right outside my aircraft. There were things going on that should have been terrifying, but I think part of me was just like, I felt invincible, I think, a little bit because the aircraft is so awesome. We trained for this stuff, and nothing had actually come into contact with us. It was all sightings. It wasn't actual interaction.

Now, it obviously changed in July when we had our incident. After that, war looked different to me. But up to that point, it was doing a job. We'd come home, and sometimes we'd find bullet holes in our rotors or stuff going through. But it was stuff that you don't realize is actually happening while you're flying. I think I was a little naive when I first got there.

It was a little bit weird. At first, I had some heartburn. I was the only female in my unit. I'm the first female in my company that ever fully progressed to crew chief. They had one female before me, and she failed. When I came in, they had told me that if I didn't do well, that they're probably going to take a long break before they tried any other females. I felt a little bit of pressure that I had to succeed and I had to do it quick.

When I first came in, because I was the only female, they made me house separately from everyone else. I think I felt a little bit isolated. I'd get messages last. Flight plans would change, all this stuff would change, and then I'd get this last minute notification and have to run. But shortly, I want to say maybe two or three months into the mission, I was able to convince them that I should be allowed to move into the B-huts with my guys.

Obviously, they were worried about perception as I was the only female, so they decided they'd put me in the commander's B-hut. I had my first commander in the same B-hut. I had to figure out I won't get in any trouble. But it was just very close-knit. You do everything together. You have a bad day, you have a bunch of people around that fully get it. There's just that sense of, sometimes you don't even need to speak. It was just you'd have a bad day, and you all just sit around and drink some coffee, or rip it or something stupid. Just sit there. Our crew shack, they had a game system. A lot of times the guys would go play some video games after a long mission. Just something to unwind. Then sometimes it was just being in the presence of other people that fully get the things you're seeing and doing. That just really helped. In a way that my family back home would love to be there for me, but they just can't. Other than my twin who I can just sit there and not speak and feel like she gets me.

Afghanistan, we did all nighttime missions. I think when the mission started, it was 12:00-ish or a little bit before 12:00, and we were hit around 12:55, 12:59. I can't remember exactly. It was late. But for a week we had been setting up for an air assault. The issue with ground troops in Afghanistan is the terrain is horrid. It's hard to move equipment, it's hard to move people, it takes too long. A lot of times the Chinooks would come in and pick up a crew and their stuff and move them to different positions that it was closer to their target basically.

We spent a week in and out of this one valley just dropping off pieces of equipment, dropping off people, back and forth. Coming into the valley, there had been a lot of show of force that whole week. We were getting shot at. Some Dushka fire, we'd shoot back, it stopped. This last night, the pilots were like, "I think we want to fly higher tonight to avoid any of that." We had 13 people, a John Deere Gator, a bunch of weapons, a bunch of ammo. We had all this stuff. He's like, "I think I just want to fly higher. It means we're going to have to circle to lose altitude, because there wouldn't be enough time to come back down." We're like, "All right, that sounds like a good plan." That's what we did. We were flying at a higher elevation. We're coming through, absolutely no gunfire that night. Everyone's like, "Wow, that's weird. That's actually nice." We come in, we get to right outside Honaker-Miracle, which was the FOB name. It was right there in the Pech River Valley. We start circling to lose altitude, and about 400 feet off the ground an RPG comes through the belly of the aircraft, at a forward angle, and went right into the gator. I was on the ramping about four feet or so from where the RPG came in. It went into the engine of the gator and exploded, which ignited the gas line and caught the aircraft on fire.

Now, because the gator was there, I think is the only reason they were able to land the aircraft. Because otherwise the trajectory, it would've severed our drive training. We would've lost all ability. Really the gator saved us.

So the fire starts going, and the aircraft starts shaking. The wiring harness underneath was all severed, so the pilots had absolutely no instruments. Everything was lighting up, warning, warning, warning. Everything was wrong. But they still had control. They were able to continue down, but as the air flows through, basically it was pushing all the fire back towards me on the ramp. The aircraft was all kinds of shaky, so I was getting jumbled around. In Chinook, we have what we call a monkey tail, which is basically a cargo strap that goes from between our shoulder blades to some point on the aircraft so that you can't get thrown too far basically. I was hooked in, so I wasn't too worried. As I'm inching backwards up the ramp trying to get out of the fire, my boots are starting to singe a little bit. I'm like, oh, this is not good. I hit my head off the F transmission pan, and somehow I get knocked out. I'm not sure whether I just shooked out or if I wasn't aware of how close I was. I stepped one step too far. I went over the edge and I just dangled by my monkey tail for the last 100 feet, 150 feet of descent. Just shaking like a little ragdoll.

When they landed, they were right side high. All the rotor blades all hit off the ground on the left. Rotor blades were going everywhere. We had ammunition inside the aircraft cooking off in the fire. It was a little fireworks show in there, which really ruined fireworks for me for the rest of my life, I think. I don't like the sight of them, I don't like the sound of them. But we got down and I realized in the shaking, my comms, my mic button was hung up. I could hear them in my ears. I lost consciousness there for a second. I come back to them trying to figure out if I'm still alive or where I'm at as they're trying to get everyone off the front of the aircraft.

I finally grabbed my mic cord and I'm like, "I'm here. I'm up. I just need to come in to unhook myself." I crawled back into the aircraft, unhooked my tail, went to jump off, but then my vest got caught in the hinge. I had to come back up again into it, work my vest off, and then I jumped to the ground. I don't know how far it was. I want to say it was probably just a quarter of a mile we were from the FOB we were trying to land in.

We all gathered up on the side of the aircraft and we said, "This is no good. We have to leave. Everything's cooking off inside." The pilot decided that we were just going to run to the wall and tried to get someone to talk to us through the window of the tower in the wall around the FOB. That's what we did. We all ran up to the wall. We got permission to enter. We all, one by one helped everyone climbed through the window. We got into the FOB, and then the Air Force PJs came to get us and bring us back to our FOB for the night.

We were in landing profile too. The ramp was technically up, but the tongue was sucked in. I think that's where the issue was. I had just raised the ramp. Like I said, we're getting ready to land. I had just pulled the ramp up so we could land without damaging anything. But the tongue was in because it was so hot. We'd like the air flow. We usually flew with the tongue down. Plus it gives you another sector to shoot from if you need to.

I think the pilots, at least one of the pilots, I don't know if they knew after the fact. Because we had Apaches that were flying Overwatch with us. I think they caught a lot of it on video. But I know at least one of the pilots didn't realize that I had gone out the back, and I think that's why they were all panicking when we were on the look for, I came back through and was able to find where my mic cord went to.

I was so amped up on adrenaline. I think it was the next day. I don't think I even slept. I laid down. I don't really remember sleeping. I remember laying down and just being fitful. When I got up, my face was killing me. My head was killing me, and my back just hurt. I went to the med doc and the flight surgeon. He was like, "Well, you were in an explosion and a hard landing. You're going to be sore." I was like, "Okay." "Here's some Motrin. Here's some water, have at it."

It took us four days to get cleared back to duty. Two of the people in the crew decided that they were done combat missions. They weren't going to fly again. I was tempted, but like I said, being the only female and knowing that if I wasn't able to hack it, I might be preventing other females to have an opportunity. I felt like, well, now that they backed out, I can't. I can't. I was in a lot of pain. I was confused. Sometimes I'd use completely the wrong words when I was talking. I was having so much anxiety. It would get time to get ready to launch, and all of a sudden I was vomiting. Or I was just sick to my stomach. It was bad. It was 18 months since the incident before I got any medical treatment at all. I think that's part of the problem with how my story ends. That was the biggest factor. My push to advocate and educate and others is knowing that had I sought medical attention sooner, I probably could have saved most of my military career.

TBI is a traumatic brain injury. For a long time, they thought it had to be a physical hit to the head, and they're finding that in all honesty, that the concussive blasts are enough to do some serious injury, which was the case in my story. Some of the first symptoms I had were headache, confusion, dizziness, aphasia, losing words, stammering, stuttering, irritability, quick mood changes. Obviously if you had these symptoms before a blast, it may not be the TBI itself. But the quick explosions was something I had never had issue with. I had always been pretty restrained and well composed. That should have been a huge red flag that all of a sudden I'm just like my fuse is lit at the drop of a hat.

No one in my chain of command fully understood what TBI was really, other than obviously a hard blow or something. But I think, I'm not sure that any of them realized how serious it could be just being four feet from a blast. A lot of my symptoms got placated to, I was just being hysterical and maybe it's PTSD, I'm just stressed out. I went through this hard thing. I just need to suck it up and move on. There's a mission to do. There's a mission to do. Not wanting to be weak, not wanting to be seen as weak, not wanting to ruin every other female that came after me, chance. When I was asked to please continue with mission, I did.

About a week after, I noticed my legs started swelling weird. My right side got weak feeling and just heavy. All these things. My speech was messed up. My headaches 24/7, I couldn't get rid of. My face was killing me. I was just in pain and I was miserable.

But about a month after the incident, I actually ended up breaking my wrist in two places. I got grounded and I was no longer flying mission. I was just doing ground maintenance for the last two or three months of my deployment. It was the last two months that I was just doing ground. I got home and still complaining of the headaches and body pain. I was getting ready to PCS. They said, "Look, you just wait until you get to where you're going. If you do it now, if you seek medical now, it's going to hold you up. You're not going to report on time. You're going to have all these issues." I said, "Okay, I can do that. I can be a good soldier. You want me to wait? I'll wait." We got home, within two months, three months, I was in a new duty station. I asked about medical because I was still having these headaches. My balance was off. I started falling. My foot started dropping at this point. On my right foot, had foot drop. All these things kept adding up. They were getting ready for deployment. They asked me to hold off for the mission's sake.

Finally, it came to I had to get cleared by a neurologist because I had too many months in a row reported headaches, daily headaches. They had to send me to a neurologist who looked through my chart, saw the incident I was in, and said, "How long were you in TBI treatment?" I was like, "What are you talking about?" I didn't even know what a TBI was at that point. She's like, "You definitely have a TBI. We're dealing with all these other things. I will not release you back to flight duty until you're seen through the TBI clinic."

Then I go from neurology and TBIs where I start learning about what was actually happening in my brain. I think that was part of what was so hard for me was I had all these things going on. I was continuing to degrade and get worse, and I didn't understand why. Some parts of me just thought I was nuts. I was having all kinds of emotional dysregulation. I would get super upset at really small things, but I couldn't pull it back in. I would just explode. Everyone's like, "Oh, it's just the PTSD." It's just this. It's just that. But it was more to it than that. I think they line up together, so they overlap each other. But I feel like the greatest purpose of any of this is that I could go back out and tell other people, if you're injured, you know your body better than anyone else. If something is wrong, get help. Don't wait. The mission is not more important than your wellbeing. One is, if you really think about it, in the state I was in, I could have done a lot of bad. I could have messed up. My words weren't coming out right. I would use the wrong words. I would lose balance. I could fall. I have been a detriment on many missions. It is important to value ourselves enough to be best for the mission. A warm body isn't all that's needed for a successful mission.

I just feel like really my military family really was just that, they were family. I think being medically retired, I drew a divide there, which left me feeling very isolated and separation. I'm left in the civilian world with people that don't understand what I've been through, what I've seen, what I've done. It's hard. How do you relate to someone when they want to talk about a traffic jam and how it would inconvenience their day. Yet the traffic jam is triggering your PTSD because you feel like you're a target?

When I got out, I was in El Paso, and it looks like Afghanistan. You're in a bowl. They have all these mountain ranges around you. They have towers up top. Sometimes the light will hit them, and it'll glisten just right, and it's triggering. My military family got it. I could just be like, "Oh my God, this is killing me." They're right there with me. Then civilians would be like, "Oh yeah, it was horrible, I had to wait an extra 10 minutes." It was a hard transition, I think, into civilian life. I definitely miss my military family. I have a handful of people that I still have contact with. I think some of it, it gets hard for them sometimes, I think. The issue is that, especially my crew, they all continued with their careers. I was four foot from where the RPG came in. I was the most severely injured. I don't know if sometimes I just feel guilty about the fact that they're flourishing. They're going on, and I lost my career. I'm assuming that's what's going on. I don't really know. Usually I touch base with most of them on our live day. After that, they got their lives, and they're doing good things. It's just sometimes things are hard to understand. There was a greater loss than just my career when I was medically retired.

Traumatic brain injury is so complicated that we don't really fully understand all of it or how much can be recovered from. Usually, the VA standard of care is two years of therapy, and then you're done. Because in the first two years, you're going to have the fastest, best responses. You're going to grow the most. Then it really slows down after two years. But at two years, I was still stammering and stuttering. I struggled to get a sentence out in a way that others could hear me. I still have slight stammer and stutter. You really have to listen to it or know what you're hearing to hear it, I think. But it was really bad. I was unintelligible at times. I struggled. It caused some neurological issues because we took so long to get treatment. Flying missions for another month after the TBI, not getting brain rest, I just continued to slowly worsen it.

I ended up advocating for myself to stay in physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy for six years. If you google me and look for stuff from interviews from 2019, and then you listen to this podcast, you'll understand the difference is night and day. In 2019, I still struggled to sit upright. I was leaning all the time. I was jerking still. The brain is amazing. They're learning more and more every day about how there is really no end to improving. The gains get slower. I think sometimes people become less motivated to stay at it because they're not seeing the growth. But I don't even know what the right word is, but because of the different interviews I've done, I'm able to look back and go, oh my gosh it's night and day.

I still have things that bother me. I sometimes still have a hard time understanding if someone says something, I may not fully get what they're saying, or I might have a hard time getting my point across. It comes out a little crooked. Communication is probably one of the things I struggle with most on a day-to-day basis. I still have a lot of the quick upsets. I've gotten really good at realizing what is happening to me and well, I just need a minute.

This is hitting me funny, just give me a second. In the beginning, it wasn't like that. It would just like, a fuse would go and I would lose it for hours. It's a lot of work, I think. But I feel like that is where I started realizing I really want to push the narrative of seek help. Advocate for longer care. At two years, my doc was just like, "Well, this is where you're at. You need to find acceptance." I was like, "No, I can be okay being here today, but I'm not ready to quit trying to improve. I'm worth it.” Nobody more special than anybody else, but I really hope that people will hear this and know that they are worth the effort. They are worth the time.

The TBI, like I said, I had a lot of neurological effects. It weakened the right side of my body. When I first got out, I felt like I couldn't do anything. My body was just, I had all this pain. Headaches and just had foot drop and neuropathy on my right side. I started, I went to a couple of cycling programs, Soldier Ride, with Wounded Warrior Project. I went on a couple other programs. There were so many agencies out there to help. But it got me moving again. I had spent four years from injury to when I started actually finding adaptive sports, doing absolutely nothing. I was dark and I just sat around because I didn't know how to adapt. My body was failing. I had migraines 24/7. I couldn't keep my balance. I couldn't sit up straight. I was falling over. All these things related to my TBI. Then I started doing adaptive sports. We didn't realize I had some issues in my spine where I had some veins that had been pretty nicely compressed due to all the shaking. I went from just cycling to doing track and field. Track, I did in a specialized wheelchair. It has one tiny wheel out front, a long boom, and you look like you're a turtle. Your legs are curled up under you and you're just pushing the wheelchair around this track. That position cut off blood supply to both my feet. Which probably wouldn't have been a big deal had it only been like here and there. But I was training up for Warrior Games and Invictus and I had these big goals. I was spending hours in this chair. All of a sudden my neuropathy in one foot became severe pain in both feet. That just continuously got worse. We didn't realize it probably spent two, three years training several hours a week every week. I wasn't real smart back then so I didn't take a lot of rest days or time off. I didn't take training breaks. It's what got me out of bed. I was still struggling with mental health and depression and anxiety. My injuries got worse is what I'm trying to get at.

About three years ago, the VA said, I went to them and I was like, "Look, I'm using this cane. I'm using these walking crutches. I'm still falling all the time. I don't feel safe. What can we do about my feet?" They put me in a wheelchair. They said, "This is probably a better way for you to get around." I was like, "But what can we do about my feet?" They're like, "We don't understand nerve pain. There's nothing. You've done all these medications. You're going to have to learn to live with the pain." I was angry. I was like, "I asked for a treatment and you gave me a mobility device."

About a year into it, I had met some other athletes that had talked about their success with amputation, below the knee amputation for a complex regional pain syndrome. Which is currently what I'm diagnosed with in both my feet. I have TBI and all that neurological stuff. I have issues throughout my spine and complex regional pain syndrome. That is the last three years have been advocating and going through trial and trial and this medication, that medication, spinal stimulators. Like doing everything else possible to lead to no other option. That's where we're at. In a few weeks we're going to proceed with doing the first leg. Because of the brain injury, they want to wait to make sure that it actually... The way they do it now, I'm not just getting an amputation, but they're going to basically tie the nerves back in so they won't grow neuromas and it should complete the circuit. My brain should register my foot's not there. I shouldn't have as many phantom pains. Pain should be overall way better than what I'm dealing with right now. Hopefully that would mean prosthetics and backup and walking and not stuck in a wheelchair where my legs work, but my feet do not. Because of the brain injury, that's why the huge gap of time between surgery one and surgery two is they want to make sure that it actually works. That the damage in my brain, I'm not still going to receive pain even though it's not there.

When I first got into sport, adaptive sport, I did sports growing up. I was always very competitive. I liked to win. But it was all team sports. It's funny, it's like now in my adaptive world, I prefer individual sports. I don't know why, but I do. In the beginning, it is what got me to get out of bed. Because I was going through these things that I was uncomfortable with. I was unfamiliar and I didn't want to look like an idiot. I didn't want to show up at these competitions having not trained. The exercise itself obviously helps with depression and helps with anxiety. But the fear of failing helped get my ass out of bed when I was depressed and didn't want to face the world. Because there are days where my body just absolutely hurts. There are days where my mind is just like, I just can't people today. I can't cope. I still have nightmares sometimes. I still have just days where I just don't want to deal. Anxiety is real and depression is real and they can be crippling. I think having something to force me out of bed, in the beginning, that's all it really was. Then the exercising brings up endorphins and all these things and it's really good for you and it makes you feel better. Then your brain over time goes, oh, I get out of bed, I feel better. But then it gets to this point where for me, I found javelin and I love it. I also threw shot put and I threw discus. Shot put, the movement for it still hurt my body. It just sucked. I wasn't horrible at it, but shot put itself wouldn't motivate me enough to keep practicing. It didn't feel good. Then I went to a comp. I got classified and realized I now only had shot put or javelin, and I had never seen a javelin before. That was in 2021, I had never seen a javelin. They changed my classification. That's all I could throw now, shot put or javelin. I went and ordered a javelin. Today, I think Paralympics, me bettering myself. When I first picked up that javelin, threw it for the first time to where I am now. It's like this, how far can I go? How much better can I get? I would be lying if I said I didn't want to make the Paralympic team. But the truth is, I could miss it in 2024 and still be happy if my trajectory is headed in the right direction. It is end of the day, most important thing to me is am I better today than yesterday? Something about my throw, my life, in all my plans, I just want to consistently be bettering myself for myself, for my family, for the world.

I want tomorrow to be better than today. I think that is the driving force for me mostly. But yes, I would love to go to the Paralympics, but the truth is I just like being better. I like improving. I like growth. It is like all this effort is not meaningless. All this pain and suffering has led to me improving, then it's worth it. I don't know. That might sound cheesy, but.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Staff Sergeant Beth King. To learn more about King, and how the Wounded Warrior Projected aided in her recovery, visit the link in the show description.

Thanks for listening to Warriors In Their Own Words. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We’re always looking to improve the show.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.