Word: armfuls
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Shrapnel ricochets off the walls of the humvee, hitting Beverly, Jenks and TIME photographer James Nachtwey. Smoke rises from the high-back. Blood pours from Weisskopf's right arm; when he holds it up, he realizes the grenade has blown off his hand. Specialist Billie Grimes, a medic attached to the platoon, sprints out of the third humvee and hoists herself onto the high-back. She uses a Velcro strap tied to her pant leg as a tourniquet to stop Weisskopf's bleeding and applies a field dressing to the wound while loudly asking the three other passengers if they...
ARON RALSTON Gave his right arm to escape from a crushing boulder...
...threw a grenade into the back of a humvee on patrol in Baghdad; Michael instinctively grabbed hold of it to throw it out. Jim, who was sitting next to him, saw it explode as Michael cupped his hand around it. The next image Jim recalled was Michael's right arm, raised up and handless. Jim had been hit by shrapnel in the abdomen, where his armored vest ended, in an arm and finger, and below both knees. Private Orion Jenks, 22, suffered a broken leg, and Private First Class Jim Beverly, 19, lost teeth and lacerated his tongue...
Grimes, 26, a medic who had been traveling in the next humvee, jumped out and began applying a tourniquet to Michael's arm, as close to the wrist as she could, to stop the bleeding. Later, a colonel would explain to Michael that the shrapnel range of an unimpeded grenade is about 15 feet in all directions. In this case, the combination of Michael's hand and the bench below it contained enough of the blast to save the life of everyone in the back of the truck. You can read the full details of the incident in "Portrait...
Ever since the incident, soldiers have been coming up to Michael to thank him for saving the lives of their colleagues. "All I did was follow my instincts," he says. The day before he left Germany, his nurse, Captain Nina McCoy from San Antonio, Texas, held his arm and walked him up and down the hallway for exercise. Michael, 57, was trying to explain to her--and perhaps to himself--that it was good that he was at his age when this happened, saying he couldn't imagine what it was like for younger people who had yet to figure...