Lance Cpl. Brent Muehle is recovering back home in Windham with his family and friends, after receiving second-degree burns to his hands while pulling a fellow Marine from a burning vehicle and having his humerus shattered by a 7.62 mm round last month in Iraq,

His hair still buzzed and his right arm pinned together by an external fixation, Muehle, 20, said the dangerous ordeal has caused him to re-evaluate the priorities in his life.

“You just learn to cherish what matters,” Muehle said Tuesday. “Small things don’t bother me anymore.”

Muehle graduated from Gorham High School in 2004. A little over a year later, he found himself with two close friends in recruit training for the Marines.

Muehle said the three of them signed up independently of one another. “It was a fluke that we all went to the same boot camp,” Muehle said.

“It’s a pretty special bond I have with the both of them,” Muehle said.

All three friends have now been decorated with Purple Hearts. John Spring, 19, of Windham, suffered a concussion when an improvised explosive device hit him. Matt “Fitzy” Fitzpatrick, 19, of South Portland, now walks with a cane after his six-man sniper team was hit by enemy fire.

Since returning home, Muehle said, he’s been spending time with his friends, watching movies and football. He recently saw Clint Eastwood’s World War II epic, “Flags of our Fathers.”

“Parts of it were hard for me to watch,” Muehle admitted.

In October, while patrolling an undisclosed part of the Al Anbar province, an exlosive device hit a vehicle in Muehle’s unit, followed by a hail of small arms fire. After returning fire, Muehle burned his hands while pulling a fatally wounded soldier from the wreckage. Three Marines and one Iraqi translator were killed.

A week later, Muehle volunteered to walk the point for his patrol, that is, ahead of the unit as a lookout. The previous point man had been killed in the preceding week’s attack.

An hour into the patrol, Muehle said, he was kneeling on a road facing south when an insurgent sniper fired a round from behind him, pulverizing the bone in his right arm. Muehle remembers looking down at his dangling arm in horror before running to cover between two buildings where a Navy corpsman, the Marine equivalent to an Army medic, applied a tourniquet.

Instead of cursing his misfortune, Muehle said, he is thankful the bullet didn’t hit a more vital area.

“It could have gone through my lung and I would have been dead. I’m a lucky kid,” he said.

Doctors don’t know what the long-term effects will be to Muehle’s arm, although some loss of mobility is expected. A medical evaluation will be performed to see if Muehle will be able to go back into service. If he cannot, he will be given the option of taking a military desk job or receiving a medical discharge. Muehle said he hasn’t made up his mind what he wants to do yet.

Later this month, surgeons will be operating on Muehle’s right arm for the third time. Muehle plans to pass the time by having a tattoo artist work on his left. Included in the proposed design is a Marine crest and four angels in memory of lost friends.

Wounded Marine Brent Muehle, 20, at his home this month in Windham. Wounded Marine Brent Muehle, 20, holds a photo of himself and two friends who enlisted in the Marines together last fall. All three have now received Purple Hearts from separate incidents. Brent Muehle in his Marine uniform at the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington D.C.