In 2010 Brian Mast, a U.S. Army bomb technician, was working with a team to clear explosive devices for the Army Rangers in Afghanistan when they came upon a river suspected of being mined by the enemy. As the team stopped a fellow soldier fell in. Mast approached to help pull the soldier out but stepped on a land mine instead.
He remembers being thrown up to 10ft away as a cloud of dust was all that remained of the spot. Hearing urgent messages over the radio as his fellow soldiers called for help.
Mast then remembers waking up at a hospital in Washington, D.C. to see that he had lost his legs.
A friend tracked him down afte the ordeal and managed to get a photo of Mast’s family. He tapped it to Mast’s hospital gurney.
“He did it so that the first thing I would ever see would be my wife and my son looking back at me,” Mast said.
Now Brian Mast continues to serve his country. He was elected to the House of Representatives last November.