pantslessprogressive: “He studied each photo....

“He studied each photo. When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes. ‘Thank you so much,’ he said.

I pointed to one of the pictures with the piece of wheat. I told him I had brought it with me. He couldn’t believe it.

He was leading a group of 10 Marines through a wheat field when there was an explosion. He doesn’t know how far away, maybe a few yards. He was thrown into the air, and landed with a thump in the field, a searing hot pain raging in his neck. He had been hit by a huge piece of shrapnel from a bomb and a major artery was cut. Britt believes the improvised explosive device was hidden and somebody triggered it from a distance, though he can’t say for sure.

‘My only thought was my wife,’ he said recently from his hospital bed in Virginia, where the 22-year-old Marine has been recuperating and rebuilding his life and health.

His speech comes with a great deal of difficulty these days, and sometimes he is hard to understand. During the many surgeries that followed his injury, he had a major stroke and is partially paralyzed on his right side. […]

I knew him only for a few minutes in that helicopter, but I believed we would meet again one day, and I hoped to give him that small, special piece of wheat.” - AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, on being reunited with Cpl. Burness Britt, a Marine she photographed in Afghanistan. She spent several months searching for Britt and finally reunited with him this month.

(this post was reblogged from thedailyfeed)

The Inimitable Tiff

Notes