Georgy raised his head from cover just as a grenade exploded a step away. A shard tore off his left arm. Deafened, feeling no pain, he got to his feet and looked around. Every member of his reconnaissance team was dead; the mutilated bodies were strewn with earth and the branches of felled trees. The shelling ceased; the smoke thinned. Georgy was standing on his own arm. He picked it up from the ground and started back the way the group had come in the night.
He walked roughly a kilometre before a rear‑service lorry found him and carried him—still conscious—to the medics.
After the war Georgy Ivanovich lived more than sixty‑five years without an arm, and never again in his life went to a hospital. From then on a routine blood test felt to him like a battle with the Germans. Even in old age he could still fell livestock with a single blow of his remaining hand, yet his mind clouded at the mere mention of a clinic.
His daughter, grandson and great‑granddaughter have carried a lifelong fear of blood loss.