Wise leaned forward, resting his hand on the mud wall. As Michel stepped over him, the radioman’s foot came to rest on a buried mine containing about 40 pounds of explosives.
Wise was blown on his back. He couldn’t see or hear, or move his left arm. When he reached around with his right hand to touch his chest, he noticed that his body armor was gone. He screamed for help. A few minutes later he learned that Michel was dead.
“Look at my guys here,” Wise said, showing the next photo. It was of soldiers dragging him on a stretcher toward a rescue helicopter and yelling to be heard over the sound of the thumping rotors. “They just lost a central member of the platoon in [Michel]. He was an easygoing kid with a great work ethic. Not only do his friends know that he is dead, but they are trying to load me, their platoon leader, into the helicopter. They are trying to take care of me.”
The next several pictures showed Wise covered in blood and lying on the floor of the helicopter. An Air Force medic hunched over his body and pressed an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. The last pictures were of Wise’s soldiers loading a body bag, containing Michel’s remains, onto the helicopter.
Wise ended his presentation with a picture of Michel, taken not long after the platoon arrived in Afghanistan. In the snapshot, the young soldier has short brown hair, blue eyes, wire-frame glasses and a bit of a sunburn across his face.
“The hardest thing was telling his wife and his mother what happened and explaining that you were sorry for their loss,” Wise said.
After the speech, several of the business school students came up to shake his hand. Among them was Guarav Raje, a 29-year-old who had enrolled at Georgetown after a stint at an investment bank. He and Wise had worked closely on a couple of projects during the first few months of school, and he considered Wise a friend.
“I don’t think I realized that the soldiers over there were in that much danger,” said Raje, who like many students was opposed to the war. “I didn’t understand the magnitude of risks that they were taking.”
As he approached Wise, Raje searched for the right words. He was determined to say something other than “Thank you for your service,” something not fleeting, not sentimental, not sanitized.
“It must be difficult to tell your story,” he said.
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