African American History Month Highlights Wounded Warrior Pt. II

This month, we bring you stories of African-American Wounded Warriors captured by the Department of Defense in honor of African American History Month. These are inspirational stories of overcoming adversity and challenges. This week, we highlight former Specialist Danielle Green-Byrd(U.S. Army), who was originally profiled by Defense Media Activities as a part of their Wounded Warrior Diaries Series by Lt. Jennifer Cragg in January of 2009.  Specialist Danielle Green-Byrd was a Women's Basketball  star at the University of Notre Dame before joining the Army, and deploying to Iraq in 2004.  In May of 2004, shortly after returning from her wedding in the United States,  Specialist Greene-Byrd was manning a station in Baghdad, when her post was attacked by insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades.  "I looked over at my left leg and saw my uniform busted open,” she said. “The initial hit, when I first went down, I thought that I was about to die in Iraq, on the rooftop, in the sand, in Iraq. To me, that was the hardest moment -- to think that at 27 years old, I was about to die.” She said that at that moment she was “waiting to die.” Specialist Danielle Greene-Byrd did not die, she was medevaced back to the United States, and recovered at Walter-Reed Army Medical Center.    It would be a long road to recovery, as she lost she arms in the attack, but never lost her faith.  Her video diary story of triumph was captured by Lt. Cragg in her Wounded Warrior Diary series. If there was any doubt that nothing could hold back Danielle Greene-Byrd, last year, she participated in the Adaptive Sports Foundation Skiing Clinic after finding them through the Disabled Sports USA and the Wounded Warrior Project.