PUEBLO, Colo. – A great American hero, who nearly made the ultimate sacrifice, will perform the first national anthem as part of the PBR’s 2017 Celebrate America Tour, which will honor military members, veterans, first responders and other courageous individuals all season long.

Sgt. John Hyland of Charlotte, North Carolina, a U.S. Army scout who was caught in an explosion in Iraq, had 33 surgeries during his recovery and lost his leg, will be singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on Jan. 7 at Madison Square Garden.

Besides earning a Purple Heart for his service in the Middle East, Hyland also happens to be a big PBR fan, as well as a classically trained opera singer.

That is where this particular story begins.

Growing up in Charlotte, eager to perform, Hyland enrolled in the North Carolina School of Art. A teacher sensed potential, and he started singing opera. He joined the Piedmont Opera Company in the Carolinas and performed arias at the Opera Festival di Roma in Italy. He was even an understudy for “Phantom of the Opera” in New York.

But the opera life was a tough one, and those not named Pavarotti, usually had to take a second job. 

Hyland returned to restaurant work in the southeast where he met a beautiful college girl. Erica and John were married and had two kids. He ran several Hooter’s restaurants, developing a knack for managing and motivating a group of young women in those oh-so orange shorts. Typically, each girl brought more than a thousand dollars a week. 

At the Hooter’s in Washington, where seemingly all 48,000 law enforcement officers were his customers, Hyland befriended several members of the area’s police force. Many men have experienced an epiphany inside a Hooters, but his was unique. Hyland wanted to become a cop. 

He moved the brood back to Charlotte and charted a path for becoming a city cop, starting with a private police agency. The pay was terrible, the conditions dangerous.  The job offered no health insurance. 

He then met a veteran fresh out of the U.S. Army, who extolled the virtues of a military career.

Hyland, then 33, took the army entrance test and scored high enough to choose his path. He wanted to be a scout, an elite position performing reconnaissance, gathering intelligence on the enemy and, sometimes, terminating them.

Hyland was deployed to Iraq. He quickly became accustomed to and craved the adrenaline rush of being part of a small kill team – three or four scouts spending a week in dangerous enemy territory seeking combatants planting Improvised Explosive Devices.

He and his Army brothers, entrusted with each other’s lives, would camp on a mountain on the Iranian border with their binoculars trained on enemy soldiers making the crossing. He’d fix a laser on the target, and Air Force jets would swoop in and blow up the caravan. 

“At my age, it was a pretty cool job,” he said.

On September 11, 2007, Hyland was on a scouting mission 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. He was in a Humvee sitting behind the driver, operating a sophisticated computerized tracking system and a .50-caliber gun that could take an insurgent’s head off from 1,200 meters away.

Even though Hyland felt like he was playing a video game, sitting behind a vivid color computer screen with a joystick in his right hand, this was no routine mission by any definition.

A patrol bringing supplies to an Army outpost had already been hit. A Quick Response Force had been dispatched and promptly blown up. Hyland’s small reconnaissance squad was called on to secure the scene. 

At least, that was the plan. The enemy had orchestrated a textbook setup.

The scouts were travelling over a small bridge when their vehicle ran over two anti-tank bombs attached to the bottom of the bridge, directly under Hyland. The massive explosion threw the Humvee’s 500-pound door 20 meters. Everything behind Hyland was gone. He found himself wrapped around the vehicle’s roll bar.   

“What I remember was a thud,” Hyland said. “I can’t describe it, and hopefully no one will ever experience that sound. It was just a massive thud. Everything got quiet. Then I heard a high piercing ringing. I was shot up into the roll bar, holding on, and we were ambushed, shots going off all around us. The next thing I remember was a medic beside me, giving me shot after shot of morphine.”

Hyland had taped a photo of his wife and two boys onto the Humvee. Sprawled in the middle of the Godforsaken desert, he was screaming for his buddies to get that picture. He didn’t want to suffer the indignity of terrorists finding it and disrespecting his family.

To his comrades, the dazed yet howling scout looked to be fine. He had all his limbs, and his only major wounds appeared to be a banged up, bleeding head and a fractured right leg. 

But on the barren ground, no one could see the soldier’s serious internal injuries. Taking the brunt of a massive detonation, Hyland’s insides had literally imploded. Both his heels were badly shattered. His pelvis was broken in five places and separated from his spine. Both his shoulder blades were shattered. Three lower vertebrae were fractured.

Stabilized on the battlefield by the medic, Hyland was spirited away in a Bradley. Four days later, the medic and three soldiers who rescued him were killed. In his fallen friends’ memory, Hyland wears a bracelet bearing their names which will never come off his wrist.

After a few days in Germany, he was sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., then Brooke Army Hospital in San Antonio. He had 33 operations, including the placement of large pins in his legs and several bolts as long as a finger to hold together his pelvis. 

When the cast came off Hyland’s left leg, the doctors noticed a large pressure wound on the back of his heel. They cleaned and irrigated the infection, but it kept getting bigger. To close the stubborn wound, doctors applied leeches, artificial skin and even the skin from an animal. They tried everything in the book and improvised never-before used tactics to save the soldier’s lower leg. Finally, it had to be amputated.

As he recuperated and began therapy in San Antonio in late 2007, Hyland was helped by a wounded warrior foundation called Soldier’s Angels, which invited him to sing the national anthem at a local rodeo.

“I’d known about bull riding from occasionally seeing it on TV, and I liked it, especially since J.B. Mauney lived right up the road from me in North Carolina,” Hyland said. “Seeing it live, I had no idea how incredibly exciting – and dangerous – it would be. I got to watch in the chutes and immediately realized how badass these dudes are.”

Hyland then began regularly watching PBR on CBS and was hooked. He’d soon get involved in Western sports by performing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the local Tejax Rodeo.

“I didn’t grow up a cowboy, but PBR just grew on me,” he said. “In Texas, there’s a cowboy vibe – that’s what they do. There’s a rodeo here in San Antonio practically every weekend.”

The solider who’d re-enlist in a heartbeat if he could respects how the PBR wears its unabashed patriotism loud and proud.

“I’ve been following (PBR) CEO Sean Gleason and guys like Shorty (Gorham),” he said. “They really get the patriotic vibe happening in this country. They understand what the flag means, and they’re not afraid if that upsets anyone.

“I was impressed by the pledge to stand for the national anthem, signed by the bull riders and bull fighters.  That was really cool and so appealing, considering my own story. These riders really do risk their lives. They get right back on those bulls. That’s inspiring and makes me feel like I can keep getting back up and staying walking and healthy.” 

The Army veteran feels a special kinship with the bullfighters of the PBR.

“It’s amazing how guys like Shorty can step in front of the bull and risk it all for the riders, their brothers,” he said. “It’s a lot like us on the battlefield. We’re not thinking ‘USA! USA!’ You’re concerned about the man and the woman next to you – doing your job to bring them home alive, and they’re doing the same for you. That’s all that matters. You’re not being patriotic.  You start letting your mind slip to that stuff and you’re probably not coming home. And if that happens, you’re letting down the other soldiers.”

Hyland has also become familiar with Jared Allen’s work in providing homes for wounded warriors.  He knows first-hand how impactful that is, receiving a beautiful home five years ago through San Antonio-based Military Warriors Support Foundation.

“It’s so important to have a place to call your own. That really helped me get out of the dark after being seriously injured and having my leg amputated,” he said.

“Nowadays, you have 22 veterans a day killing themselves. Something as simple as knowing you have a home to call your own makes a world of difference, not just financially but mentally in your psyche. It gives you an opportunity to get off your feet and move forward.  It helps as you’re dealing with the weight of ‘why me?’ and ‘why can’t I get better, why do I have all this pain?’ It’s an important part of just trying to move forward with your life after being injured.”

Hyland’s physical therapy is an ongoing process.

When he stands for extended periods of time, he feels the sensation of daggers thrust into his heels. Walking can be a challenge. Chronic pain haunts him. There may be more surgeries ahead. He refuses to feel sorry for himself.

“I believe there’s a silver lining to everything,” he said. “Events in our lives happen for a reason. After getting hurt, I got a do-over. Not many people get the chance to press the re-set button and do what you really want to do.”

That includes singing, especially one song which never fails to touch his heart each and every time.

So on Jan. 7 at PBR’s season-opening weekend, after a cadre of New York City police officers unfurl a giant flag over 750 tons of dirt covering the floor of an arena called the world’s most famous, a would-be opera man from North Carolina who sacrificed so much in a faraway desert for you and me will belt out our nation’s anthem. It will be about 2.5 miles north of hallowed ground where two giant towers came down, an attack on our American soil that would irrevocably change a proud and courageous man’s life. It will bring us to a moment when his rich tenor adds poignancy to each note of that song as he balances a brave body held together by sutures, screws, courage, soul and love on one amazing titanium leg.