9/11 Warriors: A Call to Arms

Retired Army Col. Gregory Gadson doesn’t really like guns.

He wound up in the Army because he wanted to play college football and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, came calling. Turned out, the game and the military had a lot in common. Gadson retired last summer after serving more than 26 years.

He was stationed in Hawaii on 9/11.

“I got a call from a good friend at 3:30 in the morning,” he recalls. “He told me to turn on the television. I asked him what channel. He said it didn’t matter.”

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That’s how 9/11 began for him. Three years later, he deployed to Afghanistan. But it was the expansion of the battle, the Global War on Terror, that changed his life.

Several months after he led his unit from Fort Riley, Kansas, to Iraq, he attended a memorial service for two soldiers who’d been killed. On the way back to their base, he and his security detail were struck by a roadside bomb. He survived massive blood loss and infection, but eventually became a double amputee.

He talks a lot about how life can change in an instant.

Life and change were big themes during his first run with the New York Giants football team. His former teammate, Mike Sullivan, was a defensive coach for the NFL team when they weren’t doing so well early in 2007. Sullivan visited Gadson as he recovered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“Our nation has an opportunity to create the next Greatest Generation,” said Gadson.

Later, he invited Gadson to speak to the team. The colonel talked to them about team work. He told them to ignore the hype because the only thing that matters is watching out for the guy next to you. He told them he was alive because of the guy next to him.

And then a strange thing happened. The Giants started winning. Gadson became team co-captain. The Giants beat the New England Patriots at the Super Bowl that year.

That clear morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the lives of many changed, in an instant.

“Those lives were taken away in a moment,” he reflected.

Gadson doesn’t think about tomorrow because he said you never know if you’re going to have one. He does think about the future, though, for the thousands of service members who’ve fought in the war on terror.

“Our nation has an opportunity to create the next Greatest Generation,” he said. “They’re awfully creative and awfully determined and awfully dedicated and loyal, and I don’t know that America really understands that. One of my goals is to share that gospel, and to have employers and educators see this talent because it’s the leadership that can take us into the future.”