A 9 inch knife in the brain. (Well, I don’t exactly know if you can, but this guy did.)

Army Sgt. Dan Powers was working to keep pedestrians away from the scene of an explosion in East Baghdad when he was hit:

Powers was walking away from the cordoned area when it hit him — a near-knockout blow that felt like a “clothesline tackle,” he said. But Powers stayed on his feet, spun around and slammed his raven-haired assailant to the asphalt, prodding the skinny Iraqi man’s face with his M4 barrel. Riley, his squad mate, pounced and detained the assailant.

“I remember being pretty pissed off,” Powers recalled to Air Force Times. Adrenaline throbbed in his veins and blood soaked his shoulder. A medic, Spc. Ryan Webb with the 118th Military Police, was tugging at his arm, demanding that he “sit down, calm down and leave the knife in.”

The knife? What knife?

“They said, ‘You’re stabbed’ and … I remember seeing the handle,” Powers said. “There was no pain because the brain has no pain sensory nerves. It was all surface, like someone punched me in the head.”

Stabbing is pretty rare in today’s military. In fact, Powers was only the second person to be stabbed during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Powers was rushed to a nearby medical facility, where one of the Army’s top neurosurgeons advised the doctors on the ground on via his laptop. He was then evacuated to the US in a rare nonstop flight.

Amazingly, the only brain function that seemed affected was his balance.

After a few months of rehab, Powers is back to normal. Oh, and he’s rejoining his original company, you know, right after he makes his first parachute jump.

As for the stabber… Powers testified against him in Iraqi court via teleconference.

He’s not sure how the trial turned out, but he’s told that the Iraqis planned to “lengthen his neck a little bit.”

Powers handles the whole thing exactly as you’d expect:

Powers acknowledges that his survival tale, circulating within the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, is “the stuff they make movies out of.” But the soldier in him bristles at the notoriety — or the suggestion that he’s some kind of hero.

In his version of the story, the Army, Navy and Air Force moved the world to save one man’s life.

And he’s just some guy who got stabbed in the brain.

I’d encourage you to read the whole original tale. It’s worth it. And hot damn our military rules.

Source: The Original Story, The Follow Up Story, and h/t Look True North.