Here's a touching love story of an wounded marine returning home to marry his girlfriend.Marine Sergeant Ty Ziegel already had his life planned out, he would marry his girlfriend Renee Kline upon returning from his second tour of duty in Iraq.
But one fateful day a suicide bomber hit his truck, tearing apart his body and making him among the 20,000 soldiers that have been wounded in Iraq.
When Marine Sergeant Ty Ziegel woke up from his coma, he was still in a fog of drugs. He knew his fiancée, Renee, was there and sensed her love for him. She had been playing with his feet because there was so little of him she could touch. He was told of his injuries but was so out of it, he thought: “Whatever.”
As the scale of his injuries sank in, his heart tightened. One arm was a stump and his remaining hand had only two fingers. Later, his big toe was grafted on in place of a thumb. One eye was blind and milky, as if melted, and his ears had been burnt away. The top of his skull had been removed and inserted by doctors into the fatty tissue inside his torso to keep it viable and moist for future use. He was a mess.
Renee lived with Ty at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas for a year and a half, sharing Ty's every hope and fear. Their relationship became stronger than ever, and Ty and Renee moved back to their hometown in Illinois in July 2006, and got married in shortly thereafter.
More images after the jump.
Image Gallery: ReduxPictures
Source: TimesOnline via Presurfer
Tags: Wounded | Marine | War
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