Sgt. Bobby Henline: Warrior, Survivor, Comedian.


“… Everybody in the car was killed except Sgt. Bobby Henline, who stumbled out of the wreck, a human torch. “The man I had replaced in the Humvee came running with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames,” he says. “But my skull was burned to the bone.”

Bobby began turning horror into humor at tiny comedy clubs near Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, speaking for all those disfigured veterans who endure whispers and stares.

“You know about skin grafts? I’m a patchwork quilt. Doctors took good skin from my stomach to replace the burnt skin on my head. Now I have to pick lint out of my ear.”

… Bobby dreaded what they would think … But daughter Brittany, just 15 at the time, saw past the scars. “You can look in his eyes and tell — that’s your dad,” she says. “He might look a little different, but he jokes about it, so we’re OK with it. It means so much to me that my dad can still laugh.”

“I went into a drugstore and filled a basket full of scar remover,” Bobby tells them. “The checker says, ‘Think you’ve got enough?’ ”

They roar. They stomp. They love him. On a neon-lit evening in Las Vegas, Bobby’s great tragedy becomes a triumph.”

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/05/30/6748412-wounded-warrior-comic-mines-hilarity-from-horror

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