Say Anything Blog

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May 7, 2007, Baghdad: Lt. Col. Gregory Gadson is driving back from a memorial service honoring two American soldiers killed by a roadside bomb. Shortly after 9:30 p.m., he notices the flash of light just outside his vehicle. Then he hears the sound.

He knows what is about to happen next.

Seconds after the blast, he is thrown from his vehicle and lay on the ground. He is surprised that there is no pain. He quickly loses consciousness.

Three days later, as close friend and former Army football teammate Will Huff holds Gadson’s hand on the airlift to a military base in Landstuhl, Germany, the words Gadson had told Huff keep coming back.

“What I’m doing might get me killed or maimed some day,” Huff remembers Gadson telling him. “But it’s the only way we’re going to win this war.”

Huff quietly wept as he sat beside the unresponsive Gadson.

Feb. 3, 2008: As the Giants line up against the Patriots for Super Bowl XLII on Sunday, Gadson will be on the sideline, watching the game from his wheelchair, a million thoughts and emotions racing through his mind as he ponders his unlikely journey: from being minutes away from dying in the streets of Baghdad to one of the greatest sports spectacles on Earth. And why he has somehow come to serve as an inspiration for the Giants on their improbable run to the Super Bowl.

It will be exactly a year to the date Gadson left for Iraq.

“You think about the fact that you might not come back,” Gadson said. “You certainly don’t think, ‘Will I come back with no legs?’ It’s not anything I could have comprehended.”