When a tank crash in Slovakia trapped Spc. Ezra Maes’ leg in a turret gear, he pulled himself free to help save his badly wounded crew mates, severing his leg in the process.
“If I didn’t help myself, my crew, no one was going to,” Maes was quoted as saying in an Army statement earlier this month. “I knew I had to do everything I could to survive.”
The M1A2 Abrams tank crew had deployed to Poland with the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team as part of the U.S. mission to deter Russian aggression and bolster allies in the region.
On the second day of a weeklong exercise in southern Slovakia in September 2018, three crewmembers who had gone to sleep in their tank were jolted awake as the nearly 70-ton machine started rolling down a slope, gaining speed as it went.
Maes, then 20, was the loader on the tank’s 120mm main cannon. He called out to the driver to stop, but the parking brake had failed and a hydraulic leak had left operational systems unresponsive, making emergency braking useless, the Army statement said.
“We realized there was nothing else we could do and just held on,” Maes said.
The tank crashed into an embankment at the bottom of a ravine, tossing its crew around. The tank’s gunner, Sgt. Aechere Crump, was bleeding heavily from a cut on her thigh, and driver Pfc. Victor Alamo was pinned in the driver’s compartment with a broken back, the Army said.
Maes’ leg got caught in a turret gear and was smashed. He thought the leg was simply broken and tried to free himself to get a tourniquet from the rear of the tank to help Crump.
(www.newsnow.co.uk)
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