Paris, France. (September 8, 2024): If any one person personifies America’s willingness to fight and never give up, it is Sergeant First Class Elizabeth Marks. In this photo by Major Nathaniel Garcia, SFC Marks, an elite swimmer, joins her comrades after winning the Silver Medal at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Summer Games. Marks won Team USA its first medal of the games with an incredible performance in the women's 50-meter freestyle.

Marks is the daughter of James Marks, a U.S. Marine veteran who served during the Vietnam War, and she attended a military style high school graduating at sixteen. After attending community college in Arizona, Marks joined the Army in July 2008 at seventeen where she trained as a combat medic. During a deployment to Iraq, she was severely injured, and, after a long and painful recovery, she was fitted with a prosthetic leg.

Part of her recovery therapy involved extensive time in swimming pools that soon became her sanctuary. She developed into a world class para-swimmer, yet adversity struck again when she contracted a mysterious lung disease. Unable to breathe, Marks was placed into a medically induced coma and attached to a lung machine. She nearly died.

Despite this, Marks competed in the 2014 Invictus Games in London at the invitation of Britain’s Prince Harry. She won the Gold and, at the awards ceremony, dedicated her medal to the hospital staff that saved her life. In the 2021 games in Tokyo, Marks became the Army World Class Athlete Program’s most decorated athlete, breaking the all-time world mark in the women’s 100-meter backstroke. She achieved this feat despite having her left leg amputated in 2017 and continuing visual and breathing problems. She left Japan with a Gold, Silver, and Bronze medal.

In this year’s games, Marks continued to battle the lingering effects of her near-death experience in London which severely restricts her breathing causing her to become disoriented. She often needs help leaving the pool and a trainer must be present while she recovers.

Marks, who was inducted into the Army Women’s Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 2017, is a sixteen-year veteran who also serves as a spokesperson for the Army and female Soldiers at various public events including the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Exposition and Meeting in Washington D.C. Her story continues to inspire her fellow soldiers and a grateful nation.