Death In Combat Hinges On The Tiniest Margins

Photo: Jesse Holder, a 173rd Airborne trooper, was wounded in 2007 while serving in Afghanistan by shrapnel from an RPG round. Courtesy Jesse Holder

One Inch: Death In Combat Hinges On The Tiniest Margins -- NBC

Four soldiers, four battles — and, between them — four total inches separate the slim expanse between death and life.

One died because his armor plating wasn’t one inch higher. Three survived by that same tiny fraction, left to mull the unanswerable: "Why am I still here?"

In the final days of 2012, the somber tally of American service members wounded in action in Afghanistan surpassed 18,000 while the number of U.S. military men and women killed there eclipsed 2,040, according to the Department of Defense.

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My Comment: I have been told that combat is sometimes like that .... with luck (or bad luck) always coming into play.