Army vet and Purple Heart recipient works to help veterans

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When Dublin resident Sean Clifton talks about everything the physical and social aspects of CrossFit have done for him, he knows what he’s talking about.

The retired U.S. Army master sergeant used the popular fitness regimen to get back in shape – both physically and mentally – after a firefight in Afghanistan left him grievously wounded.

Injury

Clifton – a southern Ohio native who has lived in Dublin for 20-plus years – retired in 2016 after 22 years in the Army. Over the course of his military career, he was a Green Beret and a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, and to Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009, and received the Purple Heart after his combat injury.

“Our primary mission, in its simplest form, was to make the area more secure, and we (did) that by eliminating the threat: insurgent cells, Taliban cells, al-Qaida cells,” says Clifton.

On Memorial Day of 2009, Clifton’s unit was engaged in a firefight with Taliban forces in one of the group’s strongholds.

“I was the first guy through the door of a compound in which there were more than 20 Taliban fighters, and I was shot multiple times by the enemy,” he says.

All told, Clifton was hit six times. Three of the shots were minor – deflected in large part by his protective vest and helmet – but the other three inflicted significant damage.

“I remember getting hit, life flashing in front of me, and then I remember fighting out of that situation to get to a medic and other teammates, to get me out of there,” says Clifton.

He vividly remembers being worked on by medics, being loaded into a medevac helicopter – and waking up six days later at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

One of the Taliban bullets had gone through his left wrist, destroying half of it. Another went through his right hip.

“The round that really beat me up for years to come was a round that hit just under my body armor, beneath my left waistline,” Clifton says. “It punched through my left abdomen, bounced around inside my abdominal cavity and then punched out through my right thigh.”

He spent the next few months undergoing major surgical procedures on an almost daily basis, including reconstruction of his wrist using bone and tissue from other parts of his body, and repairs to multiple organs. His intestines, bladder and kidney were all badly damaged. After the surgical stage of recovery was over, he spent the next two to three years in physical therapy.

Clifton gives a great deal of credit to his family, who were by his side the whole time. He and his wife, Sarah, have three sons, now ages 11, 9 and 6.

Recovery

When he needed a way to get back to being physically active, CrossFit appealed to him initially because aspects were familiar to him. Functional fitness has long been part of the Special Forces’ training methodology, and CrossFit is one of the training regimens one can follow. Of greater benefit to him was the discipline’s emphasis on community.

“The CrossFit community … is (full of) really close-knit folks that hold themselves to a higher standard than the average person, and there’s a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood in the gym when you’re doing these workouts,” Clifton says. “That’s exactly what I needed when I was finally able to be a little more physically active. I needed to be pushed physically and I needed to integrate socially, and the CrossFit community afforded all of that to me.”

Clifton’s gym of choice is veteran-owned Friendship CrossFit. He has been working out there since 2012.

He works with several nonprofits, including larger organizations such as the United Service Organizations (USO) and smaller grassroots groups such as Fallen 15. Several of the groups he works with are fitness-focused, as he knows firsthand the positive effect it has when a veteran gets out, active and capable again.

Clifton knows only too well the temptation to fixate on what an injured veteran cannot do, and he emphasizes the importance of encouraging veterans to embrace fitness and become active parts of their community. CrossFit, he says, is one of the exercise forms that focuses on what the participant can do, and that approach makes it easier for participants to be inspired.

Through his work with veterans’ groups such as Wounded Warriors, Clifton has seen others recover and get themselves physically active and involved in their communities again, just as he did. More than a dozen wounded veterans have come through Friendship in the time hes’ been there.

Advocacy

Clifton may be familiar to Dublin residents; he spoke at the City’s 2016 Memorial Day

observance, seven years after that fateful day in Afghanistan. He talked about understanding those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, ensuring we never forget their service, and supporting the families and communities of those veterans.

“I also wanted to highlight the fact that my career included being gravely wounded in combat, and I wanted everyone to understand that I wasn’t there to talk about the pain that I endured or the sacrifice of my family,” he says. “I was there to highlight the fact that I would do it all over again, even knowing the end result, if we are still able to gather as a community in a free country.”

He also works to bridge the gap between the civilian and veteran communities, in particular helping to raise awareness of the benefits veterans bring to businesses.

Garth Bishop is managing editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.

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