# data[].attributes.headline
TODAY’s new puppy has a new purpose: To help our nation’s heroes

# data[].attributes.subject
TODAY’s new puppy has a new purpose: To help our nation’s heroes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
TODAY's new puppy has a new purpose: To help our nation's heroes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Earlier this year TODAY said goodbye to Wrangler, our first puppy with a purpose, after he spent 16 months based in Studio 1A while he trained to become a guide dog. But now TODAY has a new puppy with a new purpose, partnering with America's VetDogs, an organization that's helped hundreds of our nation's veterans find freedom again.

# data[].attributes.headline
CBS show spotlights Enka's Gretchen Evans, decorated Army veteran

# data[].attributes.subject
CBS show spotlights Enka's Gretchen Evans, decorated Army veteran

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CLOSE

If Gretchen Evans ever decided to have a little fun with her resumé, it would be some fantastic reading.

It could easily say: "Deadly accurate grenade thrower, former spy, accomplished marathon runner and occasional owl rescuer who gave birth in an Army field hospital and led men in battle on numerous occasions before nearly dying in a mortar strike seeks to make your organization an amazing operation."

"I am a badass," Evans said with a laugh, sitting in her comfortable Enka home, which she shares with her husband, Robert. "I'm crazy bad."

Petite and completely deaf from a combat injury (she speaks and lip reads expertly), Evans is honestly not one to brag about herself. A recipient of the Bronze Star for valor and heroism in combat in Afghanistan - just one of a very long list of commendations - and a veteran of military campaigns all over the globe, she's just telling the truth.

That innate badassery is part of what attracted a television film crew to Evans' story, which will be included in a nationally broadcast documentary called "Courage in Sports" that profiles badly injured veterans from each branch of the military. It airs at 5 p.m. Nov. 4 on CBS, presented by Arrow Electronics.

Evans was selected through her connection to No Barriers, a nonprofit whose "No Barriers Warriors" program improves the lives of veterans with disabilities through intense experiences in challenging natural environments. Evans' first No Barriers Expedition was a trip to Colorado to summit a 14,000-foot mountain.

► SEE ALSO: Boyle column: Paul Endry retains optimism despite accident, paralysis

Jordan Robbins, who works with No Barriers through its Asheville office, said they were moved by Evans' story and how she managed to regain her motivation to live after the trauma of nearly dying and losing her military career. Evans speaks on behalf of the group at times. She recently traveled with No Barriers founder Erik Weihenmayer - the first blind person to summit Mount Everest - to Nepal, where they took a group of youths to ride horses at the base of the Himalayan mountains.

Robbins said Evans is a particularly motivating speaker.

"She'll talk about what it's like having a career in military and having that be your whole life, and then because of an accident having that all taken away," said Robbins, who also heartily recommends reading Evans' book, "Leading from the Front."

"She's phenomenal - not only a badass but also hilarious," Robbins said. "The book is both absolutely hilarious and completely heartbreaking at the same time."

Command Sgt. Maj. Gretchen Evans served 27 years in the U.S. Army, including nine deployments overseas. She was badly wounded in a mortar attack in Afghanistan in 2006. (Photo: Courtesy of Gretchen Evans)

The bronze star combat experience

In late January 2006, Evans and her unit got orders for a dangerous mission in a remote part of Afghanistan. Bad guys had holed up on a mountain, emerging at night to terrorize Afghan villages that were friendly to U.S. and NATO forces.

Normally, someone as high-ranking as Evans - she retired as a command sergeant major - would not go along on such a mission, but Evans wanted to be with the inexperienced newer soldiers.

"I've never been the kind of leader who kind of sat back and listened on the radio," Evans said, noting that she gained the respect of her soldiers through loyalty and love.

Twin-engine Chinook helicopters dropped Evans and her men off at the bottom of the mountain, where they were to launch a three-pronged attack. Their intelligence told them they had the Taliban outmanned and outgunned.

Almost immediately, the mission went awry. As soon as they started jumping out of the chopper, they started taking mortar fire.

Evans and about 15 other soldiers got separated from the larger group.

► SEE ALSO: Asheville VA home to new Vietnam Veterans Memorial

"There was nowhere to go but up the mountain because behind us was nothing but flat ground, and we would have been mowed down by machine gun fire or AK-47s," Evans said. "So we started running up the mountain. In the first two minutes, I lost three soldiers who were shot. Mortally wounded."

The rest of them hunkered down behind rocks. Then they started "leap frogging," with one group providing suppressing fire while the other advanced, then switching roles.

Evans quickly realized she had two problems: She was running out of real estate and running low on ammo. She was on the radio constantly asking for air support, but she and her soldiers were so closely intermingled with the enemy that was impossible.

The enemy also had rocket-propelled grenades, making it especially dangerous for helicopters to come in.

"So we decided we were going to run to the top of the mountain and make a last stand," Evans said. "We didn't really have any other choice."

A daring Chinook rescue

They leap-frogged to the peak and stacked up their remaining magazines.

"We thought to ourselves, 'Here it is. OK.'"

Before they made that final plunge, Evans heard one of the most beautiful sounds of her life: a Chinook coming in, with two Apaches flanking it.

About 30 feet below, on a small level area, the Chinook made a daring landing and dropped its landing gate. The Apaches fired hellfire missiles at the enemy while Evans and her soldiers loaded their three wounded men and everyone else remaining onto the Chinook.

"I remember thinking, 'I just spent a lifetime on the mountain,'" Evans said. "I couldn't remember anything else. It was like my whole life was right there."

The three who were shot were part of her personal security detachment, a loss that still haunts her.

Back at the base, Evans went around to the Chinook pilot to thank him, as she suspected he'd disobeyed orders to come in for her and her troops. The pilot said he'd been listening on the radio and couldn't just leave them on the mountain.

Without doubt, Evans said, they would have been "overrun within minutes" had they stayed atop the mountain. As the highest ranking noncommissioned officer in the Army, and as a female, Evans knows her fate would have been especially grisly.

"I would've been on CNN begging for my life," Evans said. "It also would've been really, really bad for the morale of my troops and the military. I'll be honest with you - I said, 'That's not happening.'"

She made it clear to the soldiers that one of them would have to take her out before capture. "Or I'll do it myself."

Evans was awarded a Bronze Star medal for valor and heroism. For years, it never sat quite right with her.

U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Gretchen Evans receives the Bronze Star from Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry. Evans served 27 years in the Army before being badly injured in Afghanistan in 2006. (Photo: Courtesy of Gretchen Evans)

"It took me a long time - because I lost soldiers on that day - to equate that Bronze Star with what happened on that mountain," Evans said, her voice cracking slightly. "Because it felt like I was being rewarded, and yet I lost soldiers. It was hard to reconcile those two things."

Time has eased the pain a little, but she still struggles with memories of the day.

"I'm a little wiser and a little older now, and it doesn't quite sting as bad, but still..." she said.

A near-death experience in Afghanistan

A Texas native, Evans joined the Army at 19, shortly after high school. She spent 27 years in the service, rising to the highest enlisted rank, command sergeant major.

In 2006, she served in that role over all of the U.S. Army's bases in Afghanistan. On Feb. 16, 2006, Evans flew out to a forward operating base in the eastern part of Afghanistan to check on troops, riding in a Blackhawk flanked by two Apache helicopters bristling with Hellfire missiles.

"I don't know if they were laying in wait, but as soon as I landed and got out of my helicopter, we started taking mortar fire," Evans said. "It was coming in like rain, just peppering us."

The base had reinforced concrete bunkers, and Evans and her fellow soldiers scrambled for them.

► SEE ALSO: 'What am I supposed to do now?' Veteran suicides persist despite national attention

"These rounds are landing, and I'm yelling at my troops, 'Get in the bunkers! Get in the bunkers!'" Evans said. "And then one landed about 10 feet from where I was standing."

"The two guys standing next to me did not even survive the blast," Evans continued. "For me ... it kind of just picked me up and threw me."

Here pictured at an Afghanistan orphanage, U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Gretchen Evans served 27 years in the U.S. Army. She was badly injured in that country in a 2006 mortar attack. (Photo: Courtesy of Gretchen Evans)

At just under 5 feet 3 inches and 100 pounds, Evans went airborne, sort of horizontally, other soldiers told her later. She slammed into a bunker wall head first.

She was medevaced to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, then to Landstuhl medical base in Germany, where Evans was put in an induced coma for a couple of days.

When she woke up, a young Army doctor stood nearby, a dry erase board in hand. He flipped it over, and it read, "You're deaf." Evans wrote back, "Forever?"

"And he said, 'Yes,'" Evans recalled. "So I knew right then and there that my career was over."

A global military career

That career had started out in intelligence gathering about the country's enemies, morphed into a counter-intelligence role wherein Evans essentially worked as a spy, then led to leadership roles in multiple combat engagements. She logged time in hot spots all over the world, ranging from Iraq and Afghanistan to Panama and Kosova, with nine deployments in all.

But in 2006, Evans' body was peppered with shrapnel, she had suffered a traumatic brain injury and total hearing loss, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I tell people I didn't care so much about being deaf, I didn't care I had a traumatic brain injury, I didn't care that I had all these pinholes all over me," Evans said, noting that the mortar that took her out had been packed with razor blades, screws and feces. "What really kicked me in the gut, what really kicked me to the curb was the fact that my career was over in an instant - 27 years."

She didn't have a plan B, or even really any place to go.

"I had been going back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan for a few years," Evans said. "In my opinion I didn't have any good career qualities - taking over small countries? That's all I had done for the past 27 years."

She laughed, but she knew she had a long journey ahead.

Fighting depression, seeking a way forward

For a while after her injuries, Evans thought she might end up like some other wounded veterans who know nothing else but military service and can see no real path forward. She's candid about it.

"I went into a pretty bad despair," Evans said. "I would say I was suicidal. I didn't really want to be here. I was kind of like Lt. Dan (in the movie 'Forest Gump') - 'Why didn't I just get killed on the battlefield?' I could have gone out a hero, like any warrior - you gave your last full measure and didn't have to live with all these injuries."

Then a friend of hers, "a battle buddy," told her about an incredible expedition he'd taken with No Warriors. He insisted that Evans would love it, in part because she used to push her soldiers so hard on marches.

"I had tried everything - meditation, medication, swimming with sharks, therapy, prolonged exposure - anything that was out there," she said. "I really tried, because I wanted to get well and I wanted to get better. I wanted to get out of this funk I was in."

Want to stay informed about news from around Asheville? Do that, plus support local journalists, by subscribing to the Asheville Citizen Times.
Click here to sign up for a digital subscription.

She honestly didn't think No Barriers was going to be the "silver bullet," but she believed in her battle buddy and thought it was worth a try. First she had to talk with a physician at No Barriers who makes sure candidates can handle the physical challenges.

Evans recited her litany of injuries.

"He goes, 'You're exactly what we're looking for,'" Evans recalled. "I hadn't heard those words in a long time. So I went, and it really was life-changing for me. It really was a silver bullet for me."

No Barriers' motto is, "What's Within You is Stronger Than What's in Your Way." Evans found that to be the truth.

Her star turn on TV

When the CBS show "Courage in Sports" reached out to No Barriers for possible candidates for this year's show, Evans was a natural choice.

Jill Leibowitz, a senior producer with Intersport in Chicago, which produces "Courage in Sports," said Evans embodies exactly what they're looking for: someone whose story will "resonate with viewers all over the world."

"Her heroic service and her actions in the Army, plus her ability to overcome severe disabilities, that portrays courage in the purest sense, and it inspires those who are experiencing the same tragedies," Leibowitz said.

For the show, Evans drove a race car designed by Arrow Electronics for former Indy car driver Sam Schmidt, who suffered a cervical fracture during a practice run in 2000 that left him a quadriplegic. Called the Semi-Autonomous Motorcar, or SAM, the car's acceleration and braking are controlled with breath tubes, the steering by eyeglasses with motion sensors.

Evans and an employee from Arrow, also a veteran, took the car for a spin on the Blue Ridge Parkway a couple of months ago.

"The guy that was riding with me forgot that I was deaf, and so he tapped me on the shoulder," Evans said. "I forgot I was driving and turned (my head) like this, and I almost drove us off a cliff on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I was going about 70 mph."

Evans, now 58, is an accomplished distance runner, as well as an avid cyclist and hiker. She completed the U.S. Marine Corps Marathon last weekend in Arlington, Virginia. On a recent run in Enka, she saw a baby owl by the roadside and took it home, then worked on finding a rehab specialist for the bird.

She lives in Enka with her husband, Robert Evans, a former Navy chaplain, and their two dogs, including a service dog, Aura, which helps her with tasks like answering the doorbell. They've moved here two years ago, the 27th place Evans has called home.

Evans has a grown daughter, Danielle Pullman, born in that field hospital in Korea, and her husband has two grown daughters from a previous marriage.

By the way, Evans learned she was pregnant essentially by accident - she had parachuted out of a plane for training and didn't feel right afterward. Protocol required the doctor to run a pregnancy test, and it came back positive.

'Something changes within you'

Life is good now for Evans and her husband, but she certainly understands the depression and angst former soldiers go through. Finding people who can overcome this is "miraculous," Evans said, and inspiring.

"Once you are in combat, something changes within you," Evans said, adding that she's mitigated about 95 percent of her injuries, including the PTSD. "But every once in a while, an anniversary date, a significant date or a memory will come up and you get overtaken by a sense of loss. You question your decisions you made as a leader."

In her book, Evans compares herself to the scarecrow in "The Wizard of Oz." Near the climax of the movie, Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow are heading toward the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, but the witch sends out the dastardly flying monkeys, who attack and pull the stuffing from the Scarecrow.

The Scarecrow can't put himself back together. His friends have to do it.

"I feel like that's what happened to me - I feel like I left stuffing in Grenada and Honduras and Panama and Somalia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Afghanistan," Evans said. "When I got injured and the career ended, I had to have people help re-stuff me, but now I think I'm back on the Yellow Brick Road, and I've certainly gotten to Oz, I think."

Upcoming Gretchen Evans events

* "Courage in Sports" - A TV documentary highlighting Gretchen Evans, Command Sergeant Major (Ret.) and veterans from each branch of the military who've overcome adversity. Airs at 5 p.m. Sunday on WSPA Channel 7, the CBS affiliate.

* Wicked Weed appearance - Gretchen Evans will also be speaking at 1 p.m. Nov. 11 at Wicked Weed's Biltmore Avenue pub for Veterans Day appreciation. She'll speak about the significance of Veterans Day and read excerpts from her book.

Read or Share this story: https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2018/11/03/cbs-show-spotlights-enkas-gretchen-evans-decorated-army-veteran/1843784002/

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
CBS show features Enka's Gretchen Evans, Army veteran who won Bronze Star in Afghanistan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
CLOSE If Gretchen Evans ever decided to have a little fun with her resumé, it would be some fantastic reading. It could easily say: "Deadly accurate grenade thrower, former spy, accomplished marathon runner and occasional owl rescuer who gave birth in an Army field hospital and led men in battle on numerous occasions before nearly dying in a mortar strike seeks to make your organization an amazing operation."