The Iraq veteran who lost all four limbs

Brendan Marrocco should be dead, said Lizette Alvarez in The New York Times. Fifteen months ago, the 22-year-old Army specialist was driving a Humvee in Iraq when a roadside bomb shredded the vehicle, killing his best friend and leaving Marrocco near death, with both his arms and legs blown off. Yet he survived, becoming the first veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to have lost all four limbs in combat and live. Today he’s a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he’s been astounding doctors and fellow patients.

With the help of four prosthetics, Marrocco can now write legibly, send text messages to friends, and walk for 15-minute stretches. He admits that his recovery has been beyond difficult. “It really would have been nice if they left me with even one hand,” he says. “This does suck.” He jokingly refers to other hospitalized soldiers with less severe amputations as “the paper cuts,” and when he boarded a plane to see some of his Iraq buddies, he blurted out, “Look at all the legroom I’ve got!” His personality has won the love of a hospital intern, and the two have discussed marriage. Marrocco jokes that he wants a daughter, if only so he can greet her future date at the door with the words, “You should see what happened to the other guy.”

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