Pfc. Cody Nusbaum jumped instinctively when a man in an Afghan National Army uniform suddenly emerged from a grape grove and turned on him, firing his rifle and throwing grenades.
The incident outside Kandahar left Nusbaum with 11 bullet wounds and destroyed his right hip, ripped up his bladder, severed a femoral artery and claimed one testicle. The Army flew his parents to Germany, where he was expected to die, but Nusbaum, 23, rebounded.
After arriving in San Antonio a year ago last week, he's undergone 57 surgeries.
“The sad part is one of the bullets went through him and killed his sergeant,” said Nusbaum's father, Rick Nusbaum Sr., 59, of Camden, Ohio, who is living here to care for his son.
The assailant, an insurgent wearing a stolen Afghan army uniform, was part of a growing trend of grim “green-on-blue” shootings, those carried out by supposedly friendly forces against NATO troops.
The attacks have occurred for years in an increasingly bitter guerrilla war.
Through today, 76 of them have taken place since 2007, with 114 coalition troops killed.
They have risen sharply this year, with two occurring in the past week, prompting the U.S.-led coalition to announce Sunday the suspension of training for 1,000 Afghan Local Police.