A video of a retired Marine amputee doing everything he can to climb a hill that had crosses placed in honor of his fallen comrades has quickly gone viral! This is an amazing inspirational show of unwavering determination.
Josue Barron was injured in Afghanistan in 2010, losing his left leg and left eye when a fellow Marine stepped on a roadside bomb.
Barron said it “took me five years to get up there” but “I knew I had to get up there some way somehow.”
That included removing his prosthetic leg because it became a burden, and crawling up the incredibly steep hill while his fellow veterans cheered on his every move.
Via the Marine Corps Times:
Some would say the two-minute video captures everything that is best about the Marine Corps — a one-legged vet pushing through immense pain to conquer a colossal hill that memorializes fallen comrades. Beside him, brothers in arms shout words of encouragement and motivation. Within him, the memory of lost Marines provides strength to endure.
The climb was part of a five-year reunion that honored the Marines and families of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, which completed Afghanistan’s deadliest deployment in 2011.
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“After a while my body went numb, but I wanted to get up there,” he said. “I have friends up there, and there was no way I was coming back down without reaching them.”
The friends of whom he speaks are names engraved on nearly two dozen wooden crosses. Marines put them up to honor their fallen, and the site has become hallowed ground. It is so special that a team of seven leathernecks rushed to rescue the memorial crosses just before wildfires consumed the hill in May 2014.
“We used to do that climb before we deployed, but the crosses didn’t go up until after that so I had never seen them,” Barron said. “It took me five years, but I made it.”
Watch the report on Barron’s incredible climb below (longer video here) …
Barron was humbled by the attention he’s received since the video went viral, but declared “If someone sees me overcome my challenges, maybe they will think twice about overcoming theirs.”
Josue Barron – An American war hero, a veteran, an inspiration.
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