Brendan Marrocco Only Soldier to Lose All Four Limbs and Survive;
Heat of Bomb Instantly Cauterized His Wounds
By David Martin
Sooner or later it had to happen - a soldier losing all four limbs and
yet surviving. It happened to Brendan Marrocco on Easter Sunday of 2009
in Iraq, when his vehicle tripped a roadside bomb.
"It just took both arms, my left leg off completely and my right leg was still attached a little bit," Marrocco said, "and killed my gunner - my best friend."
Then there's that nasty scar on his neck.
Brendan Marrocco, 23, works with a trainer at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center in Washington, DC. Marrocco, the first quadruple amputee of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to survive, lost both arms and legs to a
roadside bomb in Iraq on Easter Sunday, 2009. (CBS)
"Yeah, I severed my carotid artery," Marrocco said. "That alone should have killed me."
Carotid artery severed, both arms and left leg completely off - why didn't he bleed to death? The answer is a gruesome irony: the heat of the blast instantly cauterized the same wounds it had caused.
"I was barely bleeding from them," Marrocco said. The same weapon that took half his body saved his life. Just barely.
"I wasn't expected to live," Marrocco recalled. "I died three times and came back." No pulse. "Flat-out dead."
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