2024 HONOREE
U.S. MARINE CPL (RETIRED) KELSEE LAINHART
Kelsee Lainhart made the decision to join the Marine Corps just a month after her seventeenth birthday, soon after beginning her senior year of high school. Curious about careers in the FBI, maybe even the CIA, believing she’d pursue one or the other as a lifetime profession, she knew military experience and a college degree would help pave the way. “I can accomplish both in the Marine Corps,” she told her parents, “It will give me a leg up once I’m ready to try to get into one of those agencies—after I finish my enlistment. And, I can go to college while I’m in the Corps.”
Her parents had reservations. Her father, a former Marine knew she could find herself in harm’s way. Iraq, Afghanistan. Syria; there was a good chance she’d find herself deployed. Reluctantly, they agreed.
In June of 2019, almost immediately following graduation from small town, East Central High School, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana (population around 5000), Kelsee left for boot camp. She celebrated her eighteenth birthday at Parris Island. By November, her mother and father, other family too, her brother Gage and younger sister Kaci, all proud (Kelsee had graduated from boot camp), drove the ten hours from Indiana to Parris Island. Marine Private First Class, Kelsee Lainhart, marched across the parade ground, eyes right as Platoon 4042 passed in front of the reviewing stand and her family.
By summer 2020, her unit began training for deployment. Kelsee, already a lance corporal, was growing into her job as an intelligence specialist, a military role more challenging than she’d initially expected; lives depended upon good intel. She learned how to gather information—terrain assessments, area demographics, language, customs, culture, the likelihood of hostile activity or risk, weather – all the intelligence Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) need if and when they might be called on to respond to a situation with boots on the ground—anywhere in the world and at a minute’s notice.
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In March of 2021, Kelsee boarded the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, deploying as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit. On board the ship, she met Sergeant Nicole Gee and Corporal Molly Lewis. All three women, each from different units, developed a friendship. By mid-August. Kelsee, Nicole, and Molly landed in Kabul’s Hamid Karzai Airport, Afghanistan, joining Marine Corps Female Evacuation Teams (FETs). Their job meant searching Afghan women and children trying to reach evacuation checkpoints inside the airport.
Consoling children became a routine task for the women Marines on all the FETs. FET team members, their male counterparts too, would take a child, usually a four or five-year-old, and try to comfort as best they could. Kelsee and Nicole, other marines too, gave food and water to the refugees, especially the children. Everyone recognized that the older children understood the pain their mothers were in. Everyone could see the sadness, the fear, in the children’s eyes.
On August 26th, late in the afternoon, Kelsee and Nicole (Molly stayed behind), joined Marines (men), at one of the last entry points to the airport, Abbey Gate. Outside the gate, Afghan men, and women waved papers, trying to pass onto the airport. Nicole and Kelsee, positioned close to one another behind a Jersey barrier type wall—waited. If necessary, they’d turn back the Afghan women trying to move past the wall.
A woman approached Kelsee. She had a toddler and an older boy, a child still, with her. The older boy reached the wall, straddled himself on top. Kelsee, in an effort to get the boy down, stretched out on top of the wall to reach him, Nicole, just a few feet away, was preoccupied with another woman.
Both women were blown back by a suicide bomber’ attack. Nicole killed instantly lay on the ground. Kelsee, alive, seriously wounded, called for help.
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Days after the attack, in the ICU at Walter Reed, Bethesda, Kelsee woke from a medically induced coma. Surgery on her arm, while she’d been asleep, had gone well. Shrapnel, as much as could be, was removed. Conscious now, the stamina of youth on her side, she’s alert, questioning everyone about her injuries and still wondering about Nicole, learned that Nicole had been killed.
Kelsee’s injuries are extensive and severe. Most of the ball bearings that riddled her body during the attack, and nicked her spine, have been removed. Some remain. One is lodged in her skull. Pummeled by a supersonic blast, a force that bludgeoned her body so savagely that nerves and tissue along her spine seem damaged beyond healing. Rehab and physical therapy five days a week at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, doesn’t promise that Kelsee will walk again, but it’s the best hope, that if there is a chance, they’ll make it happen.
In between the physical therapy workouts, there’s a first semester of college wrapping up. Kelsee and Oli, her service dog, travel home to Indiana on weekends, the trip, five hours one way with a pit stop. By Sunday night they’re back at Ryan. Monday morning, when her eyes flutter open, there’s a hope filled wish for just one more miracle.
