The moment a soldier amputated his own leg to save his buddies

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It was supposed to be a routine training exercise.

Ezra Maes and two fellow soldiers were taking part in an overnight training mission in Poland as part of a NATO operation. On that fateful night in 2018, Ezra and his crew had fallen asleep in their 65-ton M1A1 Abrams tank.

The 21-year-old woke up and realized the tank wasn’t just rolling, but speeding down a hill. At first, he thought it was a prank. “Step on the brakes!” he shouted to the driver, who responded desperately that both the parking brakes and emergency brakes had failed.

With no other option, in a tank racing down a hill at 90 miles per hour, the crew could do nothing except brace for impact…and pray.

After a few agonizing moments, the tank crashed into an embankment, causing massive injuries to the crew members inside.

Maes was thrown forward, and his leg get caught in the turret gear. He thought it was broken, but instead of thinking about his own injuries, Maes concentrated on his fellow crew members and how he was going to help them.

Victor Alamo, the tank’s driver had smashed his head through the driver’s hatch and had a broken neck.

Sgt. Aechere Crump, the gunner, was bleeding heavily from a deep cut in her thigh and had dislocated her leg.

It was at that moment Maes realized “Either I step up or we all die.”

In an amazing act of courage and determination, Maes worked to free himself from the gearing. He believed his uniform was snagged on the metal, and by twisting and turning, would be able to get his leg free.

What happened next was unimaginable.

“I pushed and pulled at my leg as hard as I could to get loose and felt a sharp tear,” Maes said. “I thought I had dislodged my leg, but when I moved away, my leg was completely gone.”

And then it got even worse.

Once his wound was free of the pressure from the turret, blood came pouring out.

Somehow, he managed to pull himself into the back of the tank to grab a medical kit.
but started to feel lightheaded from the blood loss.

“I knew I was going into shock,” he said. ‘‘All I could think about was no one knows we’re down here.”

Nonetheless, Maes retained the presence of mind to start shock procedures on himself and ordered his crew to focus on their breathing and use their belts to create makeshift tourniquets.

The crash had destroyed the tank’s radio systems and all of their cell phones were either dead or broken – all except one.

Incredibly, it was Maes’ own phone, but he couldn’t reach it. With one leg broken and the other bleeding profusely, Crump managed to crawl to the phone, and toss it down to Maes. He was able to text a friend and summon help.

Maes doesn’t remember too much about what happened next except seeing his sergeant major running up a hill carrying his leg on his shoulder. Maes recalls, “I wanted to keep it, see if it could be reattached, but it was pulverized.”

Maes ended up spending four months in intensive care, and one year later is still undergoing physical and occupational therapy. He will soon be fitted for a long-term prosthetic leg, a permanent implant that will allow him to “clip in and go.”

Throughout it all, Maes has remained upbeat, positive and motivated.

“I feel super lucky,” he said. “My crew all does. So many things could have gone wrong. Besides my leg, we all walked away pretty much unscathed.”

Despite the seriousness of his injuries from that fateful night, Maes insists he’s been given a second chance at life and believes it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

“I’ll probably say that for the rest of my life,’ he told Fox News. “Every day I wake up and look at it, and I remember how close I was to losing it all. And I’m still here.”

“I managed to survive, and this is just the scar I walked away with.”

Sir, it’s a helluva scar, that’s for damn sure.

And it’s once again a reminder that however irritated you are by traffic, or your coworkers, or the person in the supermarket with 20 items in the ten-item line, you’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

We all have crap in our lives, but we all could sure learn from Ezra Maes’ courage and attitude.

H/T Daily Mail

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