Groberg was a freshman attending the University of North Carolina–Wilmington and saw the images of the World Trade Center burning.
More than five years later – on the morning of Septem– the memory of his uncle’s death came back to him. As my mother would tell me upon returning from Algeria, the only saving grace was that uncle Abdou had been shot through the heart.” “As a 12-year-old, I learned my uncle wasn’t just killed in battle: he was beheaded, dismembered and his body parts shipped back to my extended family in a box. “Florent, I know that this is going to be hard for you to hear,” his father said. In February 1996, Groberg arrived home from a class field trip to find his mother was not there. He spent 8 th grade in ESL (English as a Second Language), in 9 th grade he attended regular English classes and by 10 th grade he was in Honors English. He knew at first some people made fun of his poor English but the more he was around other people, the faster he picked up the language. It’s going to be uncomfortable and you’re going to have some doubts.” He did his best to make friends and found playing sports helped a great deal. When asked during an interview what advice he had for such children, Groberg said, “Immerse yourself. It is the type of transition thousands of immigrant children must make every year. I don’t suppose most people think of the early Rambo films and Platoon being tools for teaching a language, but that’s exactly what those movies did for me.” “I realized my English had improved a great deal when I began to watch and understand classic war movies in English, without subtitles. “Adjusting was not easy,” writes Groberg in his book Eight Seconds of Courage: A Soldier’s Story From Immigrant to the Medal of Honor. At first, Groberg settled with his parents near Chicago but then the family moved to Bethesda Maryland.