In rural Maryland, USA, Travis Reyes savours the simple things.

A cup of coffee on the deck with his wife.

A walk in the nearby woods.

All of it sweeter because, against all odds, somehow, he is still alive.

"I think most of it is stubbornness.

A little too stubborn to die," Travis told 7.30.

In August 2023, Travis was a 20-year-old US Marine Corporal stationed in Darwin.

He was part of the crew of a tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey taking part in an Australian Defence Force-run exercise, Predators Run.

On the morning of August 27, Travis's Osprey left Darwin but didn't make it to the landing zone on nearby Melville Island.

The tilt-rotor crashed in the bush.

"Once we got closer to the island, I noticed that we were over-banked a little bit," Mr Reyes said.

"Then I grabbed onto the closest hydraulic Iines I could, which was connected to the ramp.

And that was all I remember." Three Osprey crew members died, but 20 Marines on board — including Travis — survived.

Emergency physician Dr David McCreary from The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne was one of the first on the scene, as part of a helicopter-based team contracted to provide medical services for the exercise.

"We did a lap overhead of that kind of through and around the smoke and trying to see any sign of any survivors," Dr McCreary said Dr McCreary was lowered by winch next to the crash site.

"[I] arrive at the scene and there's a couple of Marines around, there's some sitting up against trees and there's Travis lying on the ground," Dr McCreary told 7.30.

More than two-and-a-half years later at home in Maryland, Travis still doesn't remember much.

"I woke up on the ground surrounded by a bunch of people, it was very brief, and then I closed my eyes again," Travis recalled.

Scalpels in the chest Travis's remarkable medical journey started in the Melville Island bush, just metres from the crash site.

Dr McCreary was working to stabilise Travis so he could be transferred back to Darwin by helicopter.

"During the proceedings his heart stopped and his breathing stopped," Dr McCreary told 7.30.

"His heart started almost immediately after that." Travis's medical procedures were only just beginning.

He had multiple broken bones.

In Royal Darwin Hospital, his left lung and spleen were removed.

A team from The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne arrived to put Travis on an Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation or an ECMO machine.

The machine works by providing vital life support that cleans and pumps oxygen into the blood when the body can't.

Travis was then airlifted to Melbourne.

He didn't know any of this.

"It's crazy to think that you could be asleep for that long and miss out on all that, and so much is going on and you have no clue," he said.

"It's a lot to think about." At The Alfred, Travis was the focus of an enormous medical effort to get him well enough to be transported back to the US.

Dr Joseph Mathew was the Acting Director of Trauma Services when Travis arrived from Darwin.

He was being treated with huge amounts of inotropic drugs to manage critical heart failure.

"He was very sick, and then he became even sicker." Potentially fatal and invasive fungal infection With Travis's wife Jasmine Policarpio and his parents at the Alfred to support him, his condition took a potentially fatal turn.

An invasive infection, known....