Specialist Devin Hagar had been in Afghanistan only long enough to go out on his first patrol when his platoon came under heavy fire and his squad took evasive measures.
India's Jagran Post reports Hagar's squad leader started to guide his men across a river, when Hagar was directly targeted by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).
"I turned and put one foot up on the riverbank and that's when I saw the back-blast of the RPG and the guy's silhouette and a silver thing with a red tip coming at me," Hagar says.
"I just looked at it and thought, 'What's that?' Then it hit me in the leg. I looked down and just thought, 'Awesome, my leg is still here'. It was like a big dude hitting you in the leg with a baseball bat. It was a pretty good thump."
One of the soldier's nearby saw the RPG bounce off Hagar's leg and explode in the dirt, while the struck specialist made his way to cover.
Using his rifle as a crutch he made it to a helicopter Medevac with another guy who'd been shot and spent a few days in the hospital where the wound bruised and scarred, but that was it.
"It was pretty surreal, like it wasn't happening," he says. "I couldn't stop smiling, I was laughing the whole time, thinking 'That was awesome'. I'm just glad I wasn't blown into a hundred pieces."
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