‘Use it to better yourself’: Army veteran blinded in bombing competes at Warrior Games for Ultimate Champion

Retired Army Maj. Jonathan Turnbull didn’t waste time jumping into the Defense Department Warrior Games.

Turnbull, who was blinded by a suicide bomb in Syria, jumped all the way in, competing in the games’ eight-event competition for the title of Ultimate Champion.

Turnbull’s first event to kick off the weeklong games in San Antonio was powerlifting. He said he finished in the “middle of the pack” in the competition after three lifts in the bench press of 92 kg, 95 kg and 97 kg, ranging from about 202 to 213 pounds.

Despite his own assessment, he drew large cheers each time.

The broadcasters didn’t mince words.

“You don’t need sight to put it up there!” one said.

“Can’t utilize his legs, visually impaired, ready to crush this weight,” said another, regarding his second lift.

“He seems very comfortable, and very acceptive, with this very life-changing injury,” Scott Danberg, chief of military adaptive sports for U.S. Special Operations Command Warrior Care Program, said ahead of the games. “I realize that he’s probably going to have things open to him now in sporting. He’s got this quality to maybe show for the Paralympic Games if he wants to go that route.” 

Turnbull knew on Sept. 11, 2001, he would serve in the military.

Then 15, he was working as a lifeguard at the local pool in Gaylord, Mich., when his boss called him into the office. On the television, he saw the second airplane hit the World Trade Center and then watched the building collapse.

He remembers the talking heads on the network saying, “America has been attacked, Americans are dying and America is probably going to war.”

“The whole time I was saying … ‘One, who thinks they can attack us? And two, who thinks they can get away with it?’ Not on my watch,” Turnbull said.

Turnbull graduated high school in 2005 and went on to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He graduated in 2010 and was commissioned in the Army.

His first assignment was to the 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, Ga. While a platoon leader, Turnbull deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Turnbull was eventually selected to serve as a civil affairs officer in Special Operations. He served in 2018 and 2019 as Special Operations Cross Functional Team Leader for Cross-Functional Team Manbij, supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, in Syria.

Turnbull was supposed to return home on January 15, 2019. About a week before his scheduled departure, the commander over the fight against Islamic State came and asked if anyone would be willing to stay a little longer.

The then-captain signed up for an additional four months of deployment.

Turnbull called his wife, Samantha, around the day before he was supposed to return.

“I said, ‘You know, I’m supposed to come home on the 15th, expect me to come home around April,’ ” Turnbull recalled.

On January 16, 2019, in Manbij, Turnbull and his team were doing a wellness check on a local school when an ISIS fighter in a suicide vest ran up on his team. He detonated the vest, killing four Americans and injuring three, including Turnbull.

Turnbull received medical treatment in Baghdad; at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany; and at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

His father took six months off from work to be with his son in the hospital. Mike Turnbull said his son was in an emaciated state and “had nothing he was really doing on his own.”

Turnbull had a food tube going through his nose, an air tube through his throat, he couldn’t see and he couldn’t hear because his eardrums were blown up in the explosion, his father said.

One day, the doctors determined he was able to communicate when they handed him a whiteboard.

“The physicians were looking to see what was his level of consciousness and his ability to comprehend, because taking the explosion to the right side of his cranium, they were pretty certain that he wouldn’t have memory,” Mike Turnbull said. “Just a pretty grim prognosis.”

Turnbull said in three months he lost 110 pounds, half his body weight when he deployed to Syria.

He spent two years at Walter Reed. He underwent 23 surgeries and was told he coded during three of the operations.

“Things are hard. But you know you can either let these symptoms or your situation define you, or you can use it to better yourself,” he said.

One of the operations in March 2019 removed his left thigh muscle and used it to cover his right orbital socket. Turnbull described the reason for the procedure as keeping the “insides on the inside and the stuff on the outside on the outside.”

Doctors told him he wouldn’t be able to stand for six months, wouldn’t be able to walk for one year or walk on his own for two years. He’d leave the hospital in five years, they said.

He credits his recovery care coordinator for pushing him and being a motivator.

“Do you buy that?” he recalls her asking. “I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ She’s like, ‘I think you can stand up. Why don’t you stand up?’ I was like, ‘Well, the doctor said I couldn’t.’ ”

Again, she pushed back: “Are you gonna buy it? Let’s do it. Let’s do something,” Turnbull recalled.

In that moment, Turnbull stood up. The care coordinator challenged him to take a few steps on his own, which he did.

She quickly went to tell the doctors, “There’s your six months, there’s your one year term. Turnbull will be out of here very quickly.”

That October he ran the Army Ten Miler.

He remained on active duty until 2021.

After retiring, Turnbull and his wife published a book, “Zero Percent Chance,” about his experience.

He continues to work on behalf of Gold Star Families and was elected to the Otsego County Board of Commissioners in Michigan. 

He remembers the four service members lost in Syria — Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan Farmer; Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent; Scott “Scotty” Wirtz, a former Navy SEAL working for the Defense Intelligence Agency; and interpreter Ghadir Taher.

“Honestly, I think about them almost every waking moment, just as much about them, but I think about their families,” Turnbull said.

He has four tattoos, one for each of them, with the “price of freedom” written above, and stays in touch with their families, “as much as they’ll let me talk to them without bugging them too much.”

He and Samantha named their second son “Scotty Jon,” to honor Wirtz and Farmer.

Turnbull described the revealing of Scotty’s name as one of the most important moments of his life. They didn’t tell anyone the name they chose until he was born.

One day he called Scott Wirtz’s mom, Sandy.

“I said, ‘I want to do something. I want to introduce you to somebody. This is Little Scotty Jon Turnbull,’” he said. “The shout of joy that you know, cry that she gave was incredible.”

Sandy recalls her son and Turnbull bonding over the fact that they had moms with the name Sandy.

She also remembers Turnbull’s phone call. She knew that Jon had survived the bombing, but the Wirtz family couldn’t find more information about him.

When he called, they were on the phone for a couple of hours talking about he and Scotty’s deployment and their time together. She remembers hearing Jon’s oldest son, Ian, in the background.

“Because I didn’t know Jon, I was just getting a little uncomfortable with how long we were on the phone,” Sandy said. “Now I know he’s always on the phone and talks all the time.”

She suggested that they end the call but they would talk more. Before they hung up, Jon informed her they were expecting their second child and informed her of the name.

“I was not familiar with the military kind of life. … I was over the moon that this was going to happen,” Sandy said.

Leaving the Army left him feeling a little lost. He stayed in touch with his care coordinator, who put Turnbull in touch with the Warrior Care Team.

Turnbull always “loved fitness.” He grew up playing soccer, football and track. At West Point, where cadets are required to play a sport, he shifted to more “technical stuff” and competed in fencing.

Earlier this year, Turnbull received an email asking people to sign up for the Warrior Games. He had heard about it before, but didn’t know too much about it. After doing some research, he contacted the person to express interest.

“I went out to assessment selection, and I was instantly ... I was back in the family,” Turnbull said. “I was back in the group, I was back with my friends, back where I belong within the community.”

After two weeks trying out for the Special Operations Command team, they wanted him to compete. Turnbull was excited. When they asked which events he wanted to compete in, he replied, “You know, in all honesty, it doesn’t matter. I like all of them.”

He learned he could compete in all eight individual events in the Warrior Games version of the decathlon and earn the most points to become Ultimate Champion.

Turnbull had three months to prepare for Warrior Games — an annual adaptive sports competition designed to enhance the recovery and rehabilitation of wounded, ill and injured service members and veterans — which have brought about 200 competitors to San Antonio.

Training for his events was part of it, but strategy also was a key element.

“In three months, I can’t go from [lifting] 220 pounds up to 350,” Turnbull said. “So refine it as much as you can, but something you’re better at, like archery or the precision air rifle, [you should] focus more on these areas. That way you can get more points when that competition comes.”

Danberg described Turnbull as being in the moment when he competes. When the retired major is away from the sport, he is engaging with coaches and looking to be better.

“I’ve personally been involved in this sport for a number of years, and you kind of know if somebody’s overthinking it, or if they’re doing it where they’re really asking the right stuff and putting themselves in the right position to be successful. I see that with Jon,” said Danberg, chief of military adaptive sports for U.S. Special Operations Command Warrior Care Program. “He’s a very good communicator, very articulate (and a) smart guy.”

Turnbull started last Saturday, competing in powerlifting and progressing to cycling, archery, track and field, indoor rowing, precision air shooting and swimming.

It didn’t take long for Turnbull to start collecting medals.

He took the gold medal in cycling riding a tandem, despite rain hitting San Antonio on Sunday morning before his group took the course. By the time he raced after 11:30 a.m. CST, the rain was gone, and the course was mostly clear of puddles.

After two days of archery, Turnbull won the silver medal. Both he and his father after said they were “proud of the result” and “thought he had good execution throughout the event.”

In track and field on Wednesday, Turnbull added five gold medals — 100 meter men’s dash, the 200-meter, the 1500 meter, 4x100 meter men’s relay that he anchored and men’s seated discus.

For indoor rowing on Thursday, Turnbull came out wearing warpaint and a Viking helmet. He did not wear the helmet during his portion of the 1-minute race.

“Turnbull starting off with the lead in his classification,” the broadcaster said. “What an amazing day he had yesterday. He’s come out swinging!”

No other rower in his classification came close to challenging Turnbull. He walked away adding to his gold medal streak.

Even at the games, he is thinking about his fallen team members.

“As I’m doing my powerlifting, I’m thinking of Scott Wirtz because he was a beast of a man. He could lift far more than I ever could,” Turnbull said.

When he runs, he thinks of Jonathan, Shannon and Ghadir, whose friends and family called her Jasmine since that was the nickname her parents gave her because she looked like the Disney princess.

“Everything I do, like I’m trying to do stuff that will make their family happy, knowing that they may be gone, but they’re not forgotten,” Turnbull said. “I’ll always keep them in my heart and never be able to extinguish that flame.”

The Turnbull and Wirtz families have spent a lot of time getting to know each other over the years. The Wirtz’s went to Jon’s military retirement and every summer they go Gaylord, Mich., to see “little Scotty” and the family.

Sandy made it to the games to see Turnbull in action because it’s “like watching one of her own kids.”

“As time goes on, and we talk, I’m really pleased that someone like Jon was so impressed with my son,” she said. “I’ve told Jon many times before, had Scotty been in a situation similar to what you’re in, I could only hope that he (would) be half the man that Jon is. He is truly such an admirable young man.”