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During an attack on an al-Qaida hideout in the midst of the war in Afghanistan, Sgt. Christopher Speer walked out into a minefield.

Two Afghan children were lying wounded among the landmines. Speer applied a tourniquet to one, and flagged down a military truck to take the children to a field hospital.

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The Journal of Special Operations Medicine, in a tribute to Speer, wrote that selfless acts like these were celebrated at his funeral, held just weeks later.

On July 27, 2002, Speer would suffer the wounds that killed him when his patrol was attacked near Khost in eastern Afghanistan. Canadian Omar Khadr, 15 years old at the time, later admitted as part of a plea deal agreed after his detention and torture at the U.S. military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay to throwing the grenade that killed Speer. Khadr was eventually repatriated to Canada and released, and now says he isn’t sure whether he threw the fatal grenade.