We heard that his doctors had been amazed that he had even made it that far, given the nature and severity of his injuries. He must have been very strong, they said. He was. Bolding’s death came as a severe shock—prior to it we had all assumed that his recovery was assured. I had been checking with our doctors and corpsmen every day to find out anything that they knew (they had a direct line over the radio to the other doctors throughout the theater), and together the Marines and I tracked Bolding’s progress from Baghdad to Kuwait to Ramstein, Germany. When we heard that he had arrived there, all of our conversation suddenly shifted away from questions surrounding the probability of Bolding’s survival and toward debates on the extent of his healing. In my hope, I told my men that today’s prosthetics were excellent and that there was even a very slim chance that Bolding’s own legs would be re-attached. On June 3, though, I assembled Joker One at the house, and, trying desperately to maintain my composure, told them that Bolding was dead.
