“What did losing my hand have to do with my country?”

The grenade was thrown in my vehicle, and I grabbed it to try to throw it back out, cause it landed next to my buddy, and he was driving and I was sitting passenger. I grabbed it, tried to throw it back out, and when I did that, it fell between my legs, down on the floorboard. So when I reached down to grab it again, I had it in my right hand, and it detonated. It went off. It took my hand off, it…I got some shrapnel in my wrist, my legs were shattered. My right leg was broken, my left leg was shattered, it was pretty much destroyed,.…

There’s times where I’m glad I’m alive, I’m glad I made it. And then there’s times where I wish it would have killed me, cause it’s hard. I mean, not only just the fact that I lost my hand, and I have to deal with that every single morning when I wake up. But, I can’t run, there’s things I can’t do. Everything that I do in day-to-day living, I have to try extra hard. People would come up to me and say, “You did a wonderful thing for your country.” What did losing my hand have to do with my country?

Robert Acosta, U.S. Army specialist.

The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends. Dir. Patricia Foulkrod.