Sweat, Sacrifice and Camel Spiders: Marine Corps Museum's New Exhibits Capture Global War on Terrorism

Retired Maj. David McGrath on Wednesday stood in front of a new exhibit in the National Museum of the Marine Corps that depicts a harrowing moment of combat he experienced, one emblematic of the Global War on Terrorism -- or as he put it, "a day in the office."

A life-sized model of McGrath, molded from a cast of his own body, is shown calling in a medical evacuation for a turret gunner thrown from his hatch after his up-armored vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device during a 2010 counterinsurgency mission in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

A massive crater pocks the ground under the vehicle as a corpsman tends to the gunner and McGrath -- then a captain with Special Operations Task Force 82 -- is speaking into a radio. It was one of the new exhibits shown to reporters this week in the museum that depicts pre- and post-9/11 Marine Corps actions, and each of the countless details in the 20,000 square feet of galleries tells a story like his.

"We did this. I had my sleeves rolled. These are the glasses I wore. These are the boots I had," McGrath said of the process it took to bring that moment to a real-as-can-be depiction for the museum. "And you try to make it as accurate as possible."