‘I just gotta keep pushing’: Indio Marine wounded in Kabul airport bombing reflects on Veterans Day
INDIO, Calif. (KESQ)Salvador Lule was 20 years old when a suicide bomber attacked the Kabul airport in the final days of the war in Afghanistan.
Five years later, the Marine veteran and Purple Heart recipient from Indio says he spends Veterans Day thinking about the people he served with.
“I wonder where they’re at. I hope they’re doing good,” Lule told News Channel 3 on Tuesday at Indio’s new veterans memorial. “I think it’s just a time of pondering and looking back and just being thankful.”
Lule said he joined the Marine Corps in July 2019, right out of high school, and served until 2023. He is a 2019 graduate of La Quinta High School, Desert Sands Unified School District confirmed in 2021.
He said he deployed to Jordan in April 2021 with Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. That August, as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, his unit was sent to help evacuate people from the Kabul airport.
“Within 48 hours, we were boots on the ground in Afghanistan,” Lule said.
On Aug. 26, 2021, a suicide bomber attacked the airport’s Abbey Gate. The blast killed 13 U.S. service members, including 11 Marines, a Navy corpsman and an Army soldier, along with about 170 Afghans.
“There is where I was injured, received my Purple Heart there,” Lule said. “We lost a lot of good men and women there.”
Among those killed was 22-year-old Cpl. Hunter Lopez of Indio, also a La Quinta High School graduate. Lule said he knew Lopez.
Lule said he was near the explosion. He said he suffered a traumatic brain injury, shrapnel wounds to his left arm and burns around his mouth and chin, and he lives with post-traumatic stress disorder. He said he has had two oral surgeries.
In 2021, Lule’s family told News Channel 3 he was treated in Germany before being flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Lule described life since the attack as “challenging.”
“I was 20 years old. So it’s a lot to endure as a young man,” he said. “But, you know, I just gotta keep pushing.”
He said the reception he got when he came home was overwhelming.
“The amount of love that was being poured out by the country during that specific event was insane to see,” Lule said. “I felt very welcome.”
Asked whether he feels appreciation from the community in Indio, Lule said, “I do, sir. I do.”
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