Saint Patrick’s Day, 2011…a day most people enjoy was anything but that for 20-year-old Austin Cochran.
Cochran graduated from Early High School in 2008, had been in the U.S. Army for nearly 2 years, and then was deployed to Afghanistan. He had been in Afghanistan three short months when his military convoy was ambushed.
In a recent interview, Cochran told BrownwoodNews.com his story of living through an attack on his Army convoy in Afghanistan. The following is his account of what happened that day:
The convoy of 18 vehicles was rolling through a typical Afghan village and stopped when the lead truck began having troubles with its mine roller. Cochran’s vehicle was the last of the group and he was on security detail manning a .50 caliber gun on the MATV (or to quote Cochran, “a Hummer on steroids”). While they were waiting, a group of about 30 children came up to the vehicle and as usual, the soldiers spent a few minutes throwing candy to them. A male that was about 15-years-old came up to the children and patted them on the head and motioned them into a nearby house.
Cochran and his unit thought they were safe with the kids around. Suddenly, the village was a ghost town; everyone had disappeared for about 100 yards.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Cochran told his unit and the driver agreed.
Cochran remembers seeing a male with a rocket propelled grenade in one area he had felt could be dangerous, between the homes. The male popped around the corner of the building and shot the RPG. Before he fired, Cochran thought about shooting him with the .50 caliber gun; however, engaging him would kill everyone behind him. He chose to draw his pistol, but the male had shot the RPG into the 2 foot tall armored plate directly in front of Cochran’s gun, deflecting a direct hit. The explosion was about 8 inches in front of Cochran. Shrapnel however hit him in the mouth, lip and neck and the larger pieces hit his right knee.
The explosion blew the doors open and shattered the glass in the MATV. Cochran didn’t know where he was at first. When he got his bearings, he saw the three other men in his unit pull the driver from the vehicle into the house where the children had run for safety. They shot a few rounds in the air to let the kids know to leave the building, then used the house as a triage for their wounded. The men looked back at the MATV and yelled for Cochran to get out of the vehicle before it blows up.
In his haste, he forgot it was a 12 foot drop from his post. Cochran looked down and his knee was badly injured, in fact, was squirting blood out because the femoral artery had been pierced. Cochran put a tourniquet on it and quickly went inside the house. Luckily one of the men inside, a colonel, was a surgeon.
Apache helicopters surveyed the area from above, and when they deemed the area safe for the men to evacuate, they loaded back into their damaged vehicle and proceeded to FOB Ghazni, a nearby base, that was a half hour away. Cochran was taken immediately into surgery. He begged everyone not to call his wife until he was able to talk to her. He wanted tell his family about the incident and that he was okay.
After 2 hours of surgery to remove 4-5 large pieces of shrapnel, two colonels brought a phone to Cochran and he was able to speak to his wife for the first time since the ambush. He was taken to Baghram Air Base and then flown the next day to Landstuhl, Germany for another surgery. After about 4 or 5 more days, he was flown on a C-17 to Andrews Air Force Base where he spent a night before travelling to Fort Knox where he finally was reunited with his family.
Cochran credits his survival to odd things that “fell in place” that day. Some of these things were:
- Deciding to wear one of the Army issued knee pads, the right one (which helped save his right leg, the left knee pad had gotten lost previously).
- Being in a standing position made the area of injury his knees, had he been standing his torso would have been hit instead.
- The RPG hitting the armored plate around Cochran’s position on the MATV. Usually these are fired and go right through the vehicle they hit, according to Cochran.
- Tying a tourniquet on his leg immediately after he realized he was injured.
- Saying the Lord’s Prayer every day before his unit left on missions.
“I’ll give my medic credit. He is one of my best friends,” stated Cochran. “He saved my life.”
Cochran had advice for other families to help them cope with having loved ones deployed and injured.
“Other than prayers, be patient, don’t let your mind play games with you,” said Cochran. “Our hearts go out to everyone who is going through this (deployment).”
Cochran was in Brownwood during the mobilization ceremony of the 111th Engineering Battalion on April 11 while he was on medical leave for his injuries. It is unknown if he will be redeployed at this time. Cochran was able to spend about a month in Brownwood with family and is currently working to recover from the physical as well as mental injuries caused by the attack and explosion. Friday, April 22, Cochran along with his wife and their 7-month-old son returned to Fort Knox, the base where he is stationed, for physical therapy.
Pictured above (left to right) is the Cochran family: Jackie (his dad), Andrea (his sister), Liz (his wife), Creighton (his son), and Austin. Not pictured is Cheri Cochran, Austin’s mother who is a teacher at EISD.
