Can't find it right now, but I have a video of an 8mm film from Vietnam. An ACAV (an M113 with a gun tub for the M2 .50 Cal and gun shields for M60s, one on each side) took a hit from an RPG in the gun tub that blew the hatch out the back of the tub. The TC/gunner didn't miss a beat; he emptied the box of ammo into the elephant grass on the far side of the wire, wrassled another box up through the hatch, reloaded the .50, dumped the second box into the elephant grass, and was trying to reload when his crew dragged him down into the track because Charlie was gone. He had done all this one-handed because there was a 9 x ¾ inch splinter of steel through his left elbow. Because they were able to get a medevac into the fire base, the young man, a 20 year old Sergeant/E-5, kept his arm, got a medical discharge, and 10 years later got a replacement elbow. He was a classmate of mine in college, and his platoon sergeant had sent him a copy of the original film that one of the mortar crewmen had taken.
He showed a few of us the film after we'd spent some time drinking. (At that point in time his elbow was fused in a 90° angle.) We convinced him that we needed to get it on video. While watching it the second time with a video camera running, one of the guys who had also been in Vietnam as an artilleryman asked him how he could keep going with only one arm working. He blinked and said, "There wasn't anyone else behind the gun." There was a shadow box in his room with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with V device, a Purple Heart, and a National Defense Service Medal. One of the other guys asked him how long he'd been in Vietnam. "Seven weeks."
It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.
