More from the article ...

... The soldier, just 19 years old, survived a mine explosion. By the time he reached the Superhumans Center in Lviv, where Mohan and two other American doctors worked and taught for a few weeks last spring, he'd had makeshift surgery with a metal plate inserted to hold his jaw together.

"Unfortunately, he developed an infection," Mohan recalled. "And so, when he came to us he basically was missing a big chunk of his lower jaw, and he was draining pus."

In a 10-hour operation, Mohan and his team "took part of his bone from his leg with an artery and a vein attached to it ... and we screwed that into his jaw."

He saw the results on a return visit to the Lviv hospital this past fall.

"It healed great and he came back to see us in October and he had grown a beard," Mohan told me.

The kicker: "He was back fighting on the front lines. It was bittersweet. We were happy because he was happy, but it was just a matter of time before something else happens. It almost felt like, is everything we're doing futile?" ...