Transcript: 'Where do you start?'

Audio transcript

Major Thomas Konig: 

And we would be able to so quickly... we just knew what each other was going to do. And so I would get vascular control in the groin so that it didn’t bleed again, when we debrided the limbs. So you could just pull on the artery and stop any further bleeding while we fixed it. And we would just clip and cut, clip and cut, tie, clean up the limbs.

And when they came in... I mean the IED [improvised explosive device] just shreds everything. And the problem with an IED in that sort of environment is it takes earth, dust, foreign objects, animal, human excrement and just drives it up into someone. And so a limb doesn’t - albeit an amputated limb - doesn’t look like a limb. It’s just flailed, it’s covered in mud, everything’s stuck. There’s blood, mud, etc, etc. And so you think: 'Well, where do you start?'