Anger Management

The Wounded Warrior turned pro.

- Curt Sampson

On a searing day in late September 2009, in a dusty village in southwest Afghanistan, insurgents and coalition forces locked in ferocious battle. A Taliban fighter in a fortified mud hut aimed his Dragunov sniper rifle at a U.S. Marine Raider whose infuriatingly accurate machine gun had just eliminated a cadre of resupply men on mopeds. The sniper loaded a bullet the size of a big man’s middle finger. He squeezed the trigger. The projectile zipped through the concussed, smoky air at Sgt. Aaron Silton.

A shell propelled by a Dragunov travels at about 2,700 feet per second, about 10 times as fast as a golf ball hit with a driver by an elite player. Not that Silton thought in golf terms. Not then. He’d been a soccer, hockey and lacrosse player for the Westford (Mass.) High School Grey Ghosts. He and his buddies swatted range balls at the Kimball Farm Driving Range from time to time, but that was about it for Silton and golf.

The bullet reached its target—Silton’s head—and he fell hard into a thorny tree. His comrades yanked hard on his left arm to get him out, maybe a little too hard. It got worse. At the hospital in Kandahar, Silton suffered a massive stroke to the left side of his brain, and the right side of his body went numb.