Four Soldiers Died in the Humvee. The Fifth Walked Onstage at the Comedy Store and Bombed — Then Kept Going.

April 7, 2007. Staff Sergeant Bobby Henline was three weeks into his fourth tour in Iraq, 82nd Airborne, riding in a Humvee with four other men. An IED detonated underneath them. He was the only one who got out. Burns covered about 40 percent of his body. The fire reached his skull. His left hand would later be amputated. Something like 50 surgeries and grafts followed, months at Brooke Army Medical Center, a face the world would stare at. He joked with nurses anyway. Headlocks. Bits for other wounded men. An occupational therapist told him to try stand-up. He thought she was kidding. She made him pinky-swear.

August 2009. Medical trip to Los Angeles. Open mic at the Comedy Store. He has said it went badly. Almost no laughs. One joke landed. That was enough. He went back, several nights a week, and built a name as the WellDone Comedian — material about burns, a prosthesis, and the way strangers look at him. Clubs across the country. The documentary Comedy Warriors: Healing Through Humor. A part on Shameless. The jokes were not a costume. They were how he stayed in the room.

He and his wife later founded Forging Forward, a nonprofit for veterans, service members, first responders and their families — retreats, purpose, suicide prevention, the unglamorous work after the blast. The explosion took four friends and most of the face he had. What he kept was the thing the therapist heard in the burn unit. Years later he stood under lights and made paying crowds laugh at the scars he once had to learn to live inside.

Sources

• Bobby Henline official site and Forging Forward foundation
• Wikipedia biography and Army NCO Journal profile (2014)
• Wounded Warrior Project feature