'Miracle' Marine refused to surrender will to live

[82Marine89]

My eyes watered as I read this. Now he is guarding the streets of Heaven.

The young Marine came back from the war, with his toughest fight ahead of him. Merlin German waged that battle in the quiet of a Texas hospital, far from the dusty road in Iraq where a bomb exploded, leaving him with burns over 97 percent of his body.

No one expected him to survive.

But for more than three years, he would not surrender. He endured more than 100 surgeries and procedures. He learned to live with pain, to stare at a stranger's face in the mirror. He learned to smile again, to joke, to make others laugh.

He became known as the "Miracle Man."

But just when it seemed he would defy impossible odds, Sgt. Merlin German lost his last battle this spring — an unexpected final chapter in a story many imagined would have a happy ending.

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[ranger]

[Sitarro]

He is definitely an astonishing inspiration and an extraordinary example of a Marine in every sense. When people think they have it bad, that the price of gas is too high, that they stubbed their toe or someone criticized the size of their ears, they need to read this hero's story....... he had everything taken from him except what he held onto inside of him, he didn't let it get him down, that is heroic. He is no longer in pain, that is a good thing, but his memory and story will live on through the foundation he started, "Merlin's Miracles". Seems there are a lot of extraordinary people with the name Merlin.