Korn’s Jonathan Davis with Jeff Lodinsky, a State Department civilian wounded in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber. From ‘Wounded Warriors’ short film.
Borisow, who comes from Davis’ hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., got to know him in 2010 and stayed in contact. Later, he asked her to help him meet troops in South Korea, but she was stationed elsewhere.
“So I just told him that, ‘Hey, if you ever end up touring near a base that I’m at, I promise you I’ll do what I can to try and get you on base; you can hang out with troops,’” she said.
The opportunity arose after Borisow moved to Ramstein Air Base, where she is the installation emergency manager. After she saw Korn would be touring in Germany, she extended an invitation to Davis via the band’s online chat room.
“I said, ‘Hey, you’re going to be near the base, if you’re interested in coming to the base, let me know and I’ll do my best to set it up,’” Borisow told Air Force Times. “He said, ‘yes,’ and he gave me all the contacts to his management to try and help make that happen – and I just made it happen.”
Davis was so moved by meeting wounded warriors on his first trip that he decided to pay tribute to U.S. troops at concerts afterward, said Sébastien Paquet, Korn’s photographer and videographer.
“He really felt really connected with them and he felt like that was his purpose: to be there and try to cheer them up and hear them out – and for them to for them to feel like somebody cares about them,” Paquet said.
So when Davis returned to Landstuhl for his second trip, Paquet documented the experience. The toughest part of the film was when Davis spoke to State Department civilian Jeff Lodinsky, who was wounded by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.
“It was hard me to not cry as I was shooting it,” Paquet said. “Those two guys had never met before, Jonathan and Jeff, and you could really tell there was a really strong and deep connection between those two guys.”
In the scene, Lodinsky is obviously in a lot of pain as he recounts how he was wounded.
“I saw the bastard – he looked at me in the eyes,” said Lodinsky, obviously in pain. “He looked at me in the eye, just like you are, and he pushed the button. Can you imagine being that cold-blooded?”
The bomber, as it turns out, was a 16-year-old boy, he said.
“You know what, I don’t blame him,” Lodinsky continued. “But it’s that brainwashing by people older than him, trying to mold him. No kid is born a suicide bomber.”
