Yeah, Right, Whatever

OK... so this happened a year ago. I just saw it for the first time. It's one of the stories that make you say "wow... wonder what God's got planned for him now" because, according to a lot of people who should know what they're talking about, Spc. Channing Moss should have be dead three times in one day.

March 16, 2006. Southeastern Afghanistan. A fierce ambush and bloody firefight. It was over in a flash and Moss was left on the verge of death.

He was impaled through the abdomen with a rocket-propelled grenade, and an aluminum rod with one tail fin protruded from the left side of his torso.

Yes, you read that correctly. He took an RPG to the gut (well, technically, the hip- it went through his left pelvic wing). And, spoiler alert, he lived to tell the tale.

The RPG might have exploded and killed them all, he said, had it not lodged in Moss’s body.

The projectile bored into Moss’s left hip at a downward angle, tearing through his lower abdomen and pulling with it some of the fabric from his uniform and his black web belt. The tip of the device stopped just short of breaking through the skin on Moss’s upper right thigh.

...Platoon medic Sgt. Jared Angell, Moss’s best friend, pulled his buddy behind the passenger seat and used every piece of gauze and bandage he had.

“Luckily, his belt was there because it kept the RPG from going all the way through,” said Angell, 24, who was a specialist at the time.

...When he (Major Oh) saw the tail fin of the RPG round, he yelled, “everybody get out!”

“I had never even seen an RPG before, but I figured anything with a rod and fins on it had to be a rocket of some kind.”

Oh asked for volunteers to stay in the operating room and help him save Moss’s life. Several soldiers raised their hands.

Oh and his volunteers strapped on body armor and helmets. They called in a two-man team from the 759th Ordnance Company (Explosive Ordnance Disposal).

... But Oh believed something could be done for the wounded soldier before him.

He “was still talking to me,” Oh recalled. He choked back tears as he explained: “When he comes in like that, there’s no way you can give up at that point.”

After the EOD team arrived, Oh warned the volunteers one last time that the surgery could cost everyone their lives.

When all was said and done, Moss was alive and well, the surgical team didn't get blown up, and the doctors received commendations for their work that day. Here's a video of the story (only watch it if you're like my dad. By "like my dad", I mean the kind of person who enjoys watching actual footage of surgeries and would have no problems asking his surgeon if he could watch his own operation).