Always looking to protect fellow soldiers, Walding noticed an area near the wounded that needed to be covered. He took one step toward the location then felt something slice through his leg. The force knocked him off his feet; he flew a few feet in the air and landed near that overturned tree. The pain was excruciating. It felt like someone had smashed his lower leg with a sledgehammer.
“What the fuck?” Walding screamed.
When he glanced down, he saw blood, ligaments, tissue, and bone. A round had filleted the lower part of his right leg. It was barely attached to his knee. Trying to keep his wits, Walding knew he had to find cover before he could take care of his wound. He crawled to the shrub. It wasn’t much protection, but without it, he would be completely in the open and an easy target for a sniper.
He turned over and sat on his ass and stared at his leg. At that moment he knew his leg was gone. There was no way to save it.
Shit, there goes my SF career, he thought.
Sanders bolted over to him. “Damn,” he said.
Walding pulled a tourniquet out of his pocket and turned to Sanders.
“Man, I need you to help me with this.”
“Sure,” Sanders said breathlessly. Walding knew his teammate was jacked up. He has every right to be. He just saw my leg hanging off, Walding thought.
Sanders slipped the tourniquet above the wound and tightened it. But Walding saw spurts of blood continuing to flow from the injury.
“You may want to tighten this tourniquet a little more,” Walding told Sanders. Sanders complied and the blood stopped—for the moment.
Walding was seriously injured but he promised himself he was going to keep fighting. The lyrics of one of his favorite songs popped into his head: I’ll have you know, I’ve become indestructible. So he lifted his rifle and resumed firing. But every time he moved, his leg hurt so much he would growl. Damn leg.
He needed the pain to stop. He needed to function—to be combat effective. So Walding did the unthinkable. He turned the lower part of his injured leg—the area below the knee—toward his groin and removed his bootlace. Then he tied the lower leg to his thigh so it wouldn’t flap around. It was a drastic measure, but one he had to take to stay in the fight.