Soldier Dives onto Live Grenade to Save his Fellow Troops
On February 9th, Matt Croucher, a Lance Corporal with the British Armed Forces, was traveling with his troop through Afghanistan at dawn, searching for a compound where they believed members of the Taliban were making bombs. It was dark, and the soldiers could barely see a single step in front of their own feet.

Suddenly, Croucher stepped into a tripwire, which pulled the pin out of a grenade that had been hidden in the ground.

"Grenade!" Croucher shouted, to warn his fellow troops.

But as the other soldiers dove for cover, Croucher didn't run away: Instead, to protect his fellow men, he lay his body down on top of the grenade just before it exploded.

"I thought to myself, 'I've set this bloody thing off and I'm going to protect the others,'" he told The Mirror. "So I jumped on the ground with my back to the grenade and used my body as a shield for the blokes behind me."

"My reaction was, 'My God this can't be real'," Croucher's patrol commander, Adam Lesley, told The Times. "Croucher had simply lain back and used his day sack to blunt the force of the explosion. You would expect nine out of 10 people to die in that situation."

When the grenade went off, Croucher's backpack was flung about 30 feet in the air, but remarkably, the brave soldier himself was virtually uninjured, though the incident had left him in a temporary state of shock.

"My head was ringing. Blood was streaming from my nose. It took 30 seconds before I realised I was definitely not dead," Croucher told The Times.

Croucher's fellow soldiers were astounded by his bravery under such extreme circumstances, and he's now being considered for Britain's highest honor, the Victoria Cross, which has only been awarded to nine servicemen since World War II.

If anyone deserves such an honor, he certainly does – but Croucher plays down his act of courage: "To be honest, I'm amazed at the fuss," he told The Mirror. "I was just doing my job. I'd got us into the mess and I wanted to get us out of it."

Marine throws himself on exploding grenade
March 31, 2008 11:12am
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Royal Marine throws himself onto exploding grenade
Saves colleagues and escapes with just a nose bleed
Now recommended for a Victoria Cross

A ROYAL Marine has told how he threw himself in front of an exploding grenade to save his colleagues - and escaped with just a nose bleed.

Lance Corporal Matt Croucher has been recommended for a Victoria Cross, Britain's The Times newspaper reports.

He and three other soldiers were on patrol in southern Afghanistan when Lance Corporal Croucher hit a tripwire attached to the grenade.

The soldier told The Times: “I thought, I’ve set this bloody thing off and I’m going to do whatever it takes to protect the others. I’m very tight with the three other guys. There have been a few times when they have saved my bacon.

“I knew a grenade like this has a killing circumference of about five metres. So I got down with my back to the grenade and used my body as a shield. It was a case of either having four of us as fatalities or badly wounded, or one.”

While Lance Corporal Croucher  was thrown into the air, his backpack took the full force of the blast.

He suffered a nose bleed and the rest of the patrol had minor cuts and bruises.

“All I could hear was a loud ringing and the faint sound of people shouting, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ Blood was streaming from my nose," the soldier said.

"It took 30 seconds before I realised I was definitely not dead.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said it would be months before a decision was made on awarding the Victoria Cross.

"But clearly this guy is very brave. And very, very lucky.”

Amazing! so brave!!! he deserve what ever he will get.
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we had news of that same nature here in the Philippines years back, but the person was not a member of the military nor close to it. She was a 9 year old girl inside a bus who was traveling with her grandma.

Some anti-government revolutionist threw a grenade inside the bus, according to sources the kid un-hesitantly jumped towards the grenade and covered it with her body. The girl didn't survived considering that its only her clothes that separate her from the grenade, but more than 50 passengers were saved including her grandma.

Because of this heroic act, her siblings got a full scholarship from the government, her parents automatically were given jobs, and the family of the survivor also tipped off to build the family a house.

The local government also gives a military honor during the burial and the little girl was officially considered hero.