A paramedic who treated three Fort Hood soldiers said they survived by clinging to a tree branch and, exhausted, kept asking about their missing fellow troopers.
Ultimately, the bodies of their nine fellow soldiers were recovered from the flooded Owl Creek. The group of 12 soldiers had been riding in a military vehicle when it was swept away from a low-water crossing during a training exercise.
Jeffrey Mincy, EMS supervisor for Coryell Memorial Medical Center, described the scene when he arrived at the north end of the sprawling Army post on Thursday morning.
"When I first saw the vehicle, the only thing I could see out of the water was the tires," Mincy said in an interview with NBC News. "It was probably, you know, 15-20 yards across, very fast moving, very rough water."
The rescued troopers were laying on a dirt road nearby.
"All three of them were obviously exhausted, they were taxed, they had no energy left," he said.
On the way to the hospital, they told medics the incredible story of what had happened.
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"They'd felt water coming into the bottom of the truck and then the truck rolled," Mincy said they told him. "You know, I asked them how did they get out, and they really didn't know. They just knew they were just grasping and happened to grab onto a tree limb."
Meanwhile, searchers frantically looked for the other nine troopers, yelling from the side of the raging water, he said.
There was no answer.
"Seeing how fast the water was moving and hearing from the boat teams that were in the water, where we were finding debris, it was – it was an ominous sign," Mincy said.
Mincy, a veteran and father of a veteran, said it was frustrating.
"We're trained to fix people, and so we get there and want to fix people, and when there's nobody else for us to fix, the frustration level goes up pretty high," he said.
Even in their exhaustion as they were getting help, the three rescued soldiers weren't thinking of themselves.
"They wanted to know how were the other soldiers," Mincy said. "They wanted to know if we found any, you know, where were they, how were they doing, and, unfortunately, there wasn't any good news to share."
