My Story: Why I Started the Battle Buddy Response Team®
In 2007, I was deployed to Iraq at just 18 years old with the 814th Engineer Company. We were stationed in Habbaniyah—a combat zone that didn’t make headlines but left permanent marks on those of us who served there. I wasn’t wounded by enemy fire, but I was injured in combat conditions—injured by my own unit’s decision under the weight of war.
One day, while setting up a float bridge in full gear, I was ordered to lift one of the massive steel ramps by myself. These ramps weren’t meant for one man. This one was stuck in the wet sand along the riverbank, locked down like a suction cup. But I followed orders. That moment tore through my back, hips, and insides. I pissed blood for a week. I couldn’t walk, sit, or sleep without pain.
They gave me medication—painkillers, muscle relaxers—but no real support. No evaluation. No relief. I was 18, in pain, and felt completely abandoned. One night, with nothing but agony in my body and silence around me, I took every pill they gave me. I didn’t want to wake up. I wasn’t trying to get help—I just didn’t want to hurt anymore.
I was found and medevac’d immediately—first by helicopter to a hospital in Baghdad, and then flown by C-17 to Landstuhl, Germany. That’s where I woke up.
At my bedside, an officer came to speak with me. I told him everything—about the injury, the pain, the pills, the silence from my unit. He looked me in the eye and asked me a question that would shape the rest of my life: Do you want to go back, change your MOS, or get out?
I chose to get out.
I was given an honorable discharge. By 19, I was home—and broken. Physically damaged. Emotionally wrecked. No guidebook, no direction. I was homeless. Isolated. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I didn’t even know if I deserved it.
That’s why I created the Battle Buddy Response Team®.
BBRT wasn’t born from a medal. It was born from pain. From knowing what it feels like to suffer in silence. From surviving a system that doesn’t always know how to catch those who fall. I made a promise in those darkest moments: If I make it out of this, I will spend the rest of my life making sure no one else goes through it alone.
We don’t care if you have rank, ribbons, or recognition. We care that you’re still breathing. We travel nationwide to respond in-person to veterans and their families in crisis—because I know exactly what it feels like when no one else shows up.
I may not have a Purple Heart. But I carry lifelong injuries and invisible wounds that will never fully heal. And I fight every single day to be the voice and presence I never had.
This is my truth.
This is my mission.
This is why BBRT exists.
—Samuel Rock
Founder & Combat-Injured Veteran
Battle Buddy Response Team®
#battlebuddyresponseteam
