Kabanova, the woman who thinks her husband looks sexy without a leg, acknowledges that heroes aren’t always family. Being alone while Spodin was at the front was “10 months of hell,” she said. When he was injured the first two times, she begged him to come home to her.

Spodin refused. Then, on February 15, he called Kabanova and it sounded different, weak.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“My leg is missing,” he said weakly but, trying to keep the humor, he added: “A part of me will be left behind forever.”

Kabanova begins to cry at the memory. “People thought girls would leave boys after their injuries,” she said fiercely. “No way! It doesn’t work that way.

Spodin’s amputation was imperfect, so he had to undergo another surgery to reshape the stump, and now he’s waiting for the wound to heal so he can get a prosthetic, and then he’s going back to war.

“Amputation is a temporary hardship,” Spodin explained. “These are just new conditions in our lives that we have to adjust to.”