Michael McNaughton woke about 5 a.m. on ?Jan. 9, 2003. As was his habit, McNaughton called his wife Kim before going out on his next mission.
“She said what she usually says,” he says. “‘Make sure you’re safe, and I love you.’”
McNaughton, then a staff sergeant with the Louisiana National Guard, was serving in Afghanistan. During the previous seven months, his team had cleared about 150,000 mines that had been left behind when the Soviets fled in 1989. On this particular morning, he was checking out an area before his team moved in to clear some of the bigger anti-tank mines.
He was trying to walk in the tracks of the person in front of him, but that man must have just stepped on the edge of the mine that McNaughton set off.
“I saw the smoke and the flames,” he says. “My ears were ringing, and I didn’t know if we were getting ambushed or what was going on.”
McNaughton didn’t want to look at his wounds, fearing he would go into shock.
“I did see a big pool of blood on my right side, so I knew I lost my leg,” he says.
McNaughton’s right hand was tingling, so he knew he’d lost some fingers, and he later discovered the blast had taken a chunk out of his left calf.
He had been at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for about 10 days when then-President George W. Bush stopped in for a visit. McNaughton was heavily medicated from a surgery the day before—he’s had 18 since being wounded—but he was coherent enough to engage the president on a common passion: running.
“One day, Mr. President,” he remembers saying, “I’m going to outrun you.”
Bush offered to have him up to the White House when he felt better, and a little more than a year later, with McNaughton on his new prosthetic leg, they were able to go for a run together.
For someone who had to learn how to run all over again, jogging with the commander in chief was a big milestone that didn’t come easy. A few times during his training, McNaughton took off his $12,000 custom prosthetic running leg and hurled it in frustration, causing sparks as it skid along the ground.
But he kept at it, walking in 5K races, then running in them, then running a half marathon and then, about two years after being wounded, a full marathon. He had never attempted anything close to a marathon before the injury. And along the way, he raised money for men and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It helped me keep my sanity,” he says.
Today, McNaughton is director of outreach for the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs. He’s mostly into biking now, and he’s a big believer in the therapeutic value of exercise and camaraderie for his fellow wounded soldiers. He visits with them when he can; he’s making a trip next month to Walter Reed.
“I go there just to show them—because I’ve been an amputee seven years, going to be eight soon—there’s life after amputation,” he says. “Just because you lost a limb, doesn’t mean you can’t do the things you want to do.”
