US soldier and crewmates fought for survival after battle tank crashed. He bravely amputated his leg to save them
Some incidents might change a person's life completely. However, many people still choose to keep moving forward. One soldier who self-amputated his leg to save himself and his colleagues from a life-threatening situation is a remarkable example. The then 20-year-old Spc. Ezra Maes knew that it was a life-or-death situation when the battle tank with a few crew members crashed into an embankment. Although he was severely injured, Maes kept pushing himself to save the people around him, per Brooke Army Medical Center.
"If I didn't help myself, my crew, no one was going to [survive]. I knew I had to do everything I could to survive," Maes expressed. Around 2018, the army had deployed Maes, an armor crewman stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, to Poland. He was supposed to support a joint training mission called Atlantic Resolve. On the second day of their week-long rotation in Slovakia, Maes and the other crew members were exhausted. So he fell asleep in a 65-ton tank along with two other people. Maes woke up suddenly as the tank was heading downhill. "I called out to the driver, 'Step on the brakes!' But he shouted back that it wasn't him."
The parking brake had failed, so the crew started working on an emergency braking procedure. However, that failed because of a hydraulic leak. The tank was going down at a speed of 90 mph, and the crew knew that there was nothing they could do to help. "We realized there was nothing else we could do and just held on." They crashed into an embankment, and the man was thrown across the tank. His leg was caught in a turret gear, and he felt the full force of the blow. Maes thought that his leg was broken. Nonetheless, the soldier felt that he had to free himself so he could help the gunner, Sgt. Aechere Crump, who was bleeding profusely from a cut on her thigh.
"I pushed and pulled at my leg as hard as I could to get loose and felt a sharp tear. I thought I had dislodged my leg, but when I moved away, my leg was completely gone," Maes recounted. He was losing blood at a fast rate, but he pushed that thought aside and did his best to get up and get a tourniquet from the medical kit. The man had started feeling lightheaded, so he tightened his uniform belt to use it as a makeshift tourniquet instead. Crump had managed to stop her bleeding with a belt, so Maes called out to her to radio for help, but there was no signal. Suddenly, the man's phone started ringing, and Crump got it to him with great difficulty. The soldier could send a text to a friend, who reassured them that help was on the way.
Maes was taken to a hospital and spent months in intensive care as he recovered from his various injuries. "I feel super lucky. My crew all does. So many things could have gone wrong. Besides my leg, we all walked away pretty much unscathed," the man shared. "When something like this happens, it's easy to give up because your life won't be the same and you're not wrong. Life will take a 180, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing. Don't let it hinder you from moving forward." Maes was in the process of getting a prosthetic leg at that time. He was also thankful for his phone service, so the crew could call for help.