When a powerful roadside bomb blew Spc. Marcus Carr's armored vehicle into the air as if it were a toy, people had reason to wonder if he'd survive the blast, let alone walk again.
He suffered a concussion, a traumatic brain injury, two broken legs, a lost spleen and a badly damaged pancreas, but that wasn't all.
There was a fractured pelvis, other broken bones, a severed nerve in his wrist and a ruptured artery behind his jaw that caused a stroke.
On Monday, he stood with two other soldiers as Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the Army's vice chief of staff, pinned the Purple Heart on them. While it was a big deal that the service's No. 2 commander would honor them, Carr, 28, of Roy, Utah, conceded he'd have been happy to receive the medal in his room at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort San Houston, where he has spent the past 18 months.
“The best fortune I could possibly have is being here,” Carr said. “How the heck I did survive they have no idea, but I'm still here, I'm still alive, I'm still kicking.”
Soft-spoken, he calls himself humble. Close calls often have that effect on people, and Carr is far from done with his ordeal. Rods now do the work of bones crushed in the July 16, 2011, blast. Parts of his body were blown away. TBI has complicated once-simple tasks like remembering the names of old friends.
A thin black metal wristband ensures he won't forget one buddy, Cpl. Raphael Rodrigues Arruda, who was killed in the explosion. A native of Brazil, he was 21.
“In the very beginning, I was pretty much trapped in my own mind,” Carr explained. “It was really hard to talk to people. ... So I pretty much would be giving like one-word answers to a few sentences here and there. Now that's gotten a lot better.”
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