USMC veteran honored at Salt Lake Bees game

Courtesy photo/Salt Lake Bees

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Robin Griffiths was recognized for his military service during the 'Nominate Your Military Hero' promotion by the Salt Lake Bees.

SALT LAKE CITY — Lance Corporal Robin Griffiths, who served two tours in Iraq in the United States Marine Corps before being badly wounded on Jan. 27, 2005, was honored on June 10 at the Salt Lake Bees game.

Griffiths is the son of Tom and Connie Griffiths. His mother is a former kindergarten teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes School and is still a member of the parish.

Griffiths’ wife put his name in for the Bees’ Nominate Your Military Hero promotion; when she told him he was one of those selected for recognition, “It was a surprise to me,” he said, adding that it was “heartwarming.”

After the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Griffiths felt a strong desire to serve in America’s armed forces, he said. Before the attack, he had been working at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Salt Lake City; afterward, “I thought it was a time and a chance to defend my country,” Griffiths said. “I wanted to see the world, to do something with my life, and that’s what I decided to do.”

Both Griffiths’ father and grandfather had served in the armed forces, which influenced his decision to enlist. His father was “a patriotic influence for me … I wanted to make him proud,” he said.

His father served in the Army and his grandfather in the Navy, but the Marine Corps attracted Griffiths, who served two tours in Iraq from 2001-2005. In between the two tours, he got married. He was deployed again before his wife gave birth to their son, and Griffiths was afraid he might not live to see the boy after the forward operating base where he was stationed in Iskandariyah was hit by an enemy mortar strike on Jan. 27, 2005, he said.

The attack came less than a week before Griffiths and his battalion was slotted to leave Iraq, he said.

On the night of Jan. 27, Griffiths was awakened by the sound of bombs falling around him, and “I remember being on fire, my left side being on fire. I rolled out of my tent and that’s when I realized that this wasn’t a nightmare.”

His entire left side was severely burned and he was unable to move his left arm as he crawled across the ground, Griffiths said.

“I thought I wasn’t going to live through my wounds,” he said.

The thought that he would die without ever meeting his son was “a terrifying factor of the injury,” he said. “I didn’t want my son to have to grow up without a father. There was a lot of motivation (to survive), not just for myself, but for my very young wife and newborn son.”

Griffiths pushed himself off the ground and made his way to another tent, praying all the while.

“I felt like there was some kind of spirit with me,” he said.

A first sergeant stumbled upon Griffiths and, with the help of another Marine, threw him into the back of a Humvee. Griffiths and a dozen other injured Marines were airlifted to Baghdad for medical treatment. Griffiths was put into an induced coma in Baghdad before being flown to Munich, then to San Antonio, Texas to the military’s burn treatment ward.

Burns covered about 33 percent of Griffith’s body and his left elbow had to be fused so that he is unable to bend his arm.

Throughout his long recovery, “my family has been a rock,” Griffiths said. “My son’s a great kid. He’s been a motivation for me to bounce back and recover from everything.”

The injury “is a part of me now,” Griffiths said. Rather than something to be hidden away, it’s something that has been overcome and put in the past, he said.

A non-denominational Christian, he still remembers praying to God as he lay wounded and the experience “didn’t change my faith, so much as reaffirmed it,” he said. “The experience led me to believe that there is a higher power, and that there is a Holy Spirit that was watching over me.”

The Holy Spirit saved him for a purpose, Griffiths said. “I like to believe that purpose is to be a father to my son and now my daughter, and a husband, and hopefully, one day, an educator.”

Griffiths works at Western Governor’s University as a test proctor but he hopes to become a teacher; he sees education’s goal to be similar to that of the Marine Corps, to encourage self-improvement and camaraderie, he said.

At the recognition ceremony during the June 10 Salt Lake Bees game, Griffiths and his family walked onto the field, waving as the entire stadium applauded him for his military service. Griffiths thanked his family for their help in his recovery and Jeremy Horn’s Elite Performance MMA gym for helping to get his body and mind back into fighting shape. He also thanked the Bees for honoring him for his service as a veteran.

“It’s a really nice gesture of the Bees and the Miller family to do that for me and I appreciate it a whole lot,” he said.