Last February, the English photographer Giles Duley stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan while covering an American infantry patrol. Via the New York Times: “I remember looking up and seeing bits of me and my clothes in the tree, which I knew wasn’t a good sign,” he said. “I saw my left arm. It was just obviously shredded to pieces, and smoldering. I couldn’t feel my legs, so straightaway and from what I could see in the tree, I figured they were gone.” Mr. Duley had become, in that flash, a triple amputee. Now he risked swiftly bleeding to death. He recalled uttering a single word: “bollocks.” As the American soldiers he had been walking with rushed toward him and began tightening the tourniquets that would save his life, a fuller line of thought took flight. Rather than tally what was missing, Mr. Duley counted what remained. “I thought, ‘Right hand? Eyes?’ ” — he realized that all of these were intact — “and I thought, ‘I can work.’” CJ Chivers, The New York Times. Bomb Took 3 Limbs but not Photographer’s Can-Do Spirit.

Last February, the English photographer Giles Duley stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan while covering an American infantry patrol.

Via the New York Times:

“I remember looking up and seeing bits of me and my clothes in the tree, which I knew wasn’t a good sign,” he said. “I saw my left arm. It was just obviously shredded to pieces, and smoldering. I couldn’t feel my legs, so straightaway and from what I could see in the tree, I figured they were gone.”

Mr. Duley had become, in that flash, a triple amputee. Now he risked swiftly bleeding to death. He recalled uttering a single word: “bollocks.”

As the American soldiers he had been walking with rushed toward him and began tightening the tourniquets that would save his life, a fuller line of thought took flight. Rather than tally what was missing, Mr. Duley counted what remained.

“I thought, ‘Right hand? Eyes?’ ” — he realized that all of these were intact — “and I thought, ‘I can work.’”

CJ Chivers, The New York Times. Bomb Took 3 Limbs but not Photographer’s Can-Do Spirit.

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