Female Amputee Proves No Arms Needed to Lift Up a Brother

War took her arms, but not her humor, compassion for other vets
News Tribune
Adam Ashton
December 14, 2015

Captured from Kleenex YouTube Video

Wounded in 2007, former JBLM bomb technician now helps others heal
Mary Dague appears in an upcoming zombie movie backed by veteran groups
Spanaway woman also featured in a new art book, a collection of images of war amputees

As a little girl, Mary Dague daydreamed that she’d grow up to wield superpowers.

She got them in Iraq.

That’s where she put herself between an explosive and her team on an Army bomb disposal squad. She “hugged the bomb,” losing her arms to shield her partners from the blast.

Now a double amputee, Dague is still saving lives.

She defuses veterans coping with traumatic experiences, using a combination of frank talk about her own life, dark humor and an online persona called Mary Wondernubs.

She’s walked people back from the brink of suicide and grieved with spouses of fallen troops.

“I would not be sitting here right now if Mary didn’t answer the phone,” one veteran tearfully said in a recent video that Kleenex produced to highlight Dague’s outreach. “I would not be sitting here right now.”

Dague, 31, says she’d prefer to hide in her Spanaway home with her husband, playing video games and inviting over choice friends. But in the eight years since she lost her arms, she’s come to recognize she has a gift for helping others heal.

She works with a black humor common among veterans that shows she understands the lasting repercussions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that she won’t let them hold her back.

“I couldn’t let this whole incident change who I was,” she said. “Otherwise, they win.”

One of her T-shirts calls her a “thumb war champion;” another depicts a short-armed Tyrannosaurus rex declaring “worst drummer ever.”
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Wounded Warrior
Kleenex Brand

Captured from Kleenex YouTube Video