Expendable
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http://plbirnamwood.blogspot.com/2012/09/feeling-touch-of-self-pity-consider.html?spref=fb
Corporal Todd S Love, USMC was assigned to 1st Platoon, B Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, when he volunteered to take over the point position during a patrol in Sangin on 25 October 2010. He doesn’t remember the explosion that blasted away his legs when he stepped on a pressure plate that detonated the IED. The platoon Corpsman reached him within moments and expected to find that Love was likely dead, but instead he detected signs of life. As he was giving him morphine, Cpl Love regained consciousness and started talking to the Corpsman about his injuries, knowing that his legs were gone, but glad to hear a favorable reply to the usual question. He then asked about his team leader, Cpl Kyle Thompson, who was hit in the face with shrapnel and lost an eye. In keeping with the dark humor so common among the men in ‘high speed, low drag’ combat units, Love yelled, “Thompson! Thompson! Hey, it sucks to be you right now!”
The heat of the blast had fortunately (all things considered) cauterized his massive wounds, so the Corpsman was able to keep him alive for the hour and twenty minutes it took for the British medevac helo to arrive, and Love’s second stroke of luck was that the helo was able to lift off and exfil despite the large volume of ground-fire, including multiple RPGs, that were directed at it, the door gunner and Love’s Marine cohort being actively engaged throughout.
It was good fortune that kept him alive, but after that, as they say, you make your own luck.
Love’s touch of gallows humor was a clue to the enormous fortitude that sustained him through the months of attention and rehabilitation that took him through care at Landstuhl, Bethesda, and Walter Reed, including the surgeon’s decision that his left hand would also have to amputated below the elbow. How does someone bounce back, or even cope, with the thought of re-learning to live life as a trimembral amputee? Here’s an example:
[video=youtube;IqXyYWbEP9g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqXyYWbEP9g[/video]
[video=youtube;LfhZ9faNG2w]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfhZ9faNG2w&feature=related[/video]
[video=youtube;ICVnKdDZyFE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICVnKdDZyFE&feature=related[/video]
[video=youtube;E6fTSWNuryU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6fTSWNuryU[/video]
