On Oct. 6, 2013, Block and his fellow Rangers were on a mission to dismantle a group of insurgents planning suicide bombing attacks in the area. As the Rangers entered the target compound, a suspected suicide bomber detonated herself near the troops.<\/p>\n
Block was thrown 35 feet into a haphazard minefield. Four other soldiers died on that mission and nearly two dozen others were wounded.<\/p>\n
Because of the bomb, Block lost his right eye and suffered multiple lacerations to his legs, and burns and shrapnel wounds on his left side. The blast shattered his nose and right cheekbone and caused his left lung to collapse.<\/p>\n
After more than year of recovery and multiple operations, Block continues to work on his recovery, conduct Ranger physical training multiple times a day and share his story.<\/p>\n
Block has spoken at leadership courses, mentored fellow wounded warriors, and even counseled the Oakland Raiders football team about resilience, perseverance and recovery. His goal is to inspire and motivate others while remaining a Ranger.<\/p>\n
Block was honored as the 2014 Military Times Soldier of the Year during a July 30 ceremony on Capitol Hill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m glad that SGT Block will be there and I won’t. I’m not a big fan of Congressman Walz, either. I know TSO is, but I can’t get past the fact that Walz ran for office on being a Iraq War veteran, but he supported the war from Italy. <\/p>\n
None of that should cloud SGT Block’s moment, though. It’s an honor to be invited to the SOTU address and I congratulate him. He certainly earned this moment for himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sergeant Thomas Block of the 3rd Battalion, 75th Rangers has been invited by Democrat Congressman Tom … Sergeant Thomas Block invited to State of the Union Address<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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