Marine Corps veteran Charlie Linville on Thursday became the first combat amputee to reach the top of Mount Everest’s 29,035-foot summit. While on tour in Afghanistan in 2011, a buried IED exploded on Linville. After more than a dozen surgeries on his foot, he decided to have his entire leg surgically amputated in 2013. The Heroes Project, which helps injured veterans climb mountains, heard Linville’s story and recruited him to the nonprofit. Tim Medvetz, a former Hells Angel biker who runs the organization, said: “Out of all of the military branches, he enlists in the Marine Corps. Then he gets out of boot camp and decides, ‘I’m going to start defusing bombs, one of the most dangerous jobs in the Marine Corps.’ Then he tells the doctor, ‘Cut my leg off.’… I’m like—that’s the guy. That’s the guy.” Linville, of Boise, Idaho, said of his climb: “I was looking for something to completely change myself and really get rid of the demons that were created from war.”Correction: In 2006, New Zealand’s Mark Ingliss became the first person with amputated legs to scale Mount Everest, followed by India’s Arunima Sinha on a single prosthetic leg in 2013. A previous version of this report incorrectly said Charlie Linville was first.