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Air Force Tech. Sgt Nancy Kasberg, AFCENT Combat Camera Superintendent, was returning home from Afghanistan to her husband Staff Sgt. Damon Kasberg, combat broadcaster, and her daughter Kalea mid October 2018. During her Rest and Recuperation she received a call from her office that her husband wasn’t feeling well. Nancy picked her husband, Damon, up; thirty minutes later Damon expressed that the full-body tingling feeling he had was getting worse. Within the next hour an unruly pain coursed through his body as he lost the ability to walk.
“The feeling was the worst pain I had felt in my life,” Damon said. “I thought I was going to die. It was the kind of pain that makes you want to vomit.”
During the first month in the hospital, Damon was accepted into the Syracuse military photo journalism program; a program he had been denied the last two times he applied. It was unclear whether he would be able to attend the course. Full recovery was estimated to take 10 months and he was supposed to move to New York in 6 months. It took Damon nearly 2 months to recover his ability to walk assisted.
“I wasn’t involved in any of the talk about Syracuse. My leadership handled that. I just wanted to be myself again,” Damon said.
Damon was able to recover well enough to attend Syracuse. Although he hadn’t gained complete strength back, he ran nearly 100 miles every month and challenged himself to perform two Murphs: which is a workout consisting of running a mile, performing 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 unweighted squats and then running another mile. All this was done while achieving a 3.9 GPA. Damon’s time at Syracuse was changed due to COVID-19 and he spent the last 3 months attending class online while in Charleston, SC with his family. During his last semester he received orders to the 1st Combat Camera Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base, SC. He enjoyed his time there but it wasn’t long lived. Damon went up to a Med Board and was informed that he would be medically retired. He took it in stride and decided to train as many airmen as he could before his time in-service was up.
“I think it made it a lot more full circle. They always tell us to give it as freely as you got it and I think this was that opportunity to give me a little more closure. All the knowledge I got for free from Syracuse and from all the great leaders I've served with could be shared before I got out; which is what I wanted to do at the end of my career.”
His retirement ceremony was on June 4, 2021 at the Red Horse Auditorium on Charleston The room was packed with military members, highschool friends and family. His father Robert Kasberg Jr, and step-mother Kathrine were in attendance as well as his daughter Kalea. Damon’s brother Eric brought his son Riley and daughter Emerson. Damon’s wife Nancy was still deployed, but her three sisters made it. Although Nancy could not be their in-person she did make a heart-warming video that explained the journey she and Damon had been on but also the sadness and confusion of seeing Damon leave the military.
“Who would have thought you would be getting medically retired,” Nancy Kasberg said in a video she made for the ceremony.
Damon was brought to tears after watching his wife’s video and receiving his flag from a Senior Airmen of the Charleston AFB Honor Guard. He dried his tears and made his way to the podium to give his speech, taking time to address and thank every person that had an impact in his life, starting with his father but also including people he met at every base during his career. After the ceremony, Damon invited everyone to his home and spent the entire night making mojitos and tequila sunrises for the party.
“You can’t help who you are sometimes, I don't know. Everything coming up to the event was so hectic. I wanted to make sure everyone that came to see me had a good time. It’s my nature, I think,” said Damon.
The day before the ceremony, he drove to Folly Beach to run by the shore at 6:30am. Damon ran 3.15 miles while the sun rose over a lighthouse offshore. No one is sure what caused him to lose the ability to walk. There is reason to believe he suffered from Guillain-Barre Syndrome: a rare disorder where a person’s own immune system damages their nerve cells causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis, however his original diagnosis was transverse myelitis. Damon lost a lot and although he couldn’t return to the life he had before October 2018 he chose to stay strong and keep running.
Damon will be officially medically retired from the Air Force on July 24, 2021.
| Date Taken: | 07.07.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 09.02.2021 12:51 |
| Story ID: | 404431 |
| Location: | HILL AFB, UTAH, US |
| Web Views: | 218 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Air Force Staff Sgt. medically retired after losing the ability to walk, by SSgt Franklin Harris, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
