The Iraq war is a new kind of hell, with more survivors -but more maimed, shattered limbs - than ever. A revolution in battlefield medicine is helping them conquer the pain. When Brian Wilhelm realized he'd been hit, he grabbed an M-16 and dove out of his truck to return fire. As he lay on the ground, another soldier in his convoy tied a tourniquet around his shredded leg to stanch the flow of blood, but it snapped. While bullets ricocheted around them, a gunner improvised a second tourniquet using a crowbar and field dressing. Willhelm's buddies laid him out in the back of a supply truck, where he prayed and pressed his hands against a block of ice while they waited for the medics, afraid that if he passed out, he would die. He was 21 years old, a Fighting Eagle with the Army's Eighth Infantry, deployed northwest of Baghdad. Back home in Colorado, his wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter.
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