SHERRARD, Ill. - Call it fisherman's luck. The prosthetic hand of a severely wounded retired National Guard sergeant - which had been lost in 18 or 20 feet of water - has been recovered.

Dustin "Dusty" Hill, 26, was fishing for crappie from his pontoon boat. He and a partner had a good day, 50 catches. Hill was taking in his rod and spin reel when - kerplunk - it slipped into the deep water at Fyre Lake, near Sherrard, along with the electronic prosthetic right hand.

Hill, whose home is at Fyre Lake, is a bilateral upper extremity amputee, wounded in a fiery suicide bomb flash near Baghdad. Bilateral means he has lost both hands.

When his pole and electronic hand dropped into the water just over a week ago, his exclamation was, "Oh -- (expletive deleted.)" His fishing partner said the same thing.

They watched the hooklike hand, locked to the fishing rod, disappear into the lake.

"I never thought I'd see the hand again," says Hill. "We were fishing over sunken branches. No one would ever be able to find it."

That was not quite so. His electronic hand - muddy and of water soaked - was pulled from the bottom of the lake on Father's Day. It was a search of compassion to help a veteran who had been twice declared dead after horrible wounds and burns near Baghdad.

"Neighbors around the lake rallied when we learned that Dusty's mechanical hand had fallen into the water," says Mike Prock, a neighbor of Hill's. Prock's wife, Song, says, "Dusty is our hero. We had to help."

Hill could identify the approximate spot where hand and rod fell in, but that was a guess at best. Free dives by swimmers without any sophisticated equipment were of no use. Fellow fishermen circled in boats with their "fish cameras," devices that are claimed to spot fish in the water. In the murk, they could see nothing. Members of the Fyre Lake Sportsman's Club tried to hook onto the rod and hand, which they knew were down there somewhere.

Several days passed until someone - it's not certain who - suggested the name of a professional diver, Scott Jones, who runs Scuba Adventures in Bettendorf. Jones was told of the injuries that Hill had received when his Humvee was rammed by the driver of a suicide bomb car near Baghdad on Sept. 21, 2004.

Jones' response was immediate. "I'll dive to find that hand. It's the least I can do for all this guy has done for us."

On Father's Day afternoon, Jones, in mask, outfit and full diving gear, began the search. He was tethered to a boat carrying his daughter, Lauren, and Tom Creen, a dive master.

"The bottom of the lake was a mess, and it was cold down there," Jones says. "Everything was a tangle of trees, 18 or 20 feet down. I couldn't see a thing; all I could do was search with my hands. After about an hour, I felt the fishing rod. Then, the hand attached to it. I brought it all up. Wonderful."

The hand was covered with mud. Whether it can be repaired is a question, but that will be up to the Veterans Administration, which provides such devices to amputees. The hands are said to cost anywhere from $30,000 on up.

Prock was so thrilled that he organized a barbecue for Jones and his crew. "It was wonderful for him to come out on Father's Day to find Dusty's missing hand. Scott wouldn't charge a thing for his services."

Sitting at the dining room table of his home on Fyre Lake, after another morning of fishing, Hill is amazed that the hand was found. He cleaned off the mud, washed it, and figures it is going to need quite a bit of repair by the VA. Meantime, he has the use of an emergency electronic hand.

He is a smiling, assured young man who does not act bitter about the wounds brought by war. He holds the recovered hand in the stub of what remains of his left hand, which looks like a gnarled fist. He lost his right arm above the wrist, and this is what holds the socket for the electronic hand that went into the water.

"I'm glad to get the mechanical hand back, but really happy, too, that my Cabelas' rod was still attached to it," he says. "My fianceé, Sarah Harvey, gave that rod to me last Christmas. I know she'd never give me another if that rod was lost." He smiles a lot, insisting that he wants no sympathy about his terrible injuries.

He recites his injuries by rote: "I lost both my hands, my right eye and one ear. Loss of hearing in one ear; not the one I lost, but the other one. I had burns over 33 percent of my body. Everything was broken."

His right ankle was shattered and is held together by screws. That is the same for his left kneecap. He cannot quickly pick up his left foot because of nerve injuries, but he says, "I get along very well." A titanium rod reinforces his broken left femur. Scars from burns cover his face and back. He laughs, "Have I forgotten anything? Want to hear more?"

He keeps insisting that he has no complaint, so long as he can sit in a boat and fish.

"Depressed?" he asks. "Not me. I'm just getting along fine, no pain, and I'm going to get married pretty soon." He walks with apparent ease around his home that overlooks Fyre Lake. He expects to find work soon through Wounded Warriors, an organization that employs injured servicemen.

Hill joined the Illinois National Guard in Galva in 2002. He thought it would be interesting after working on a farm and at a trailer company.

In Baghdad with the Illinois Army National Guard's Battery E, Hill was a gunner, poking through the top of a Humvee. He remembers nothing of the incident that blew him out of the vehicle, landing him in a fiery puddle of fuel. While others in his outfit fired at snipers, Hill was pulled away from the fire. Those in his outfit said he was screaming, "It burns, it burns." Much of him was on fire.

He was hurried to a hospital plane, but it turned around and returned to the base because they thought Hill was dead.

"But I came out of it, and then in Germany, they thought I was dead again." Sgt. 1st Class Mike Bumphrey, one of the first to reach Hill, told National Guard Magazine, "I'll be honest with you, I thought he was dead."

Back in the United States, Hill was hospitalized for more months than he can remember.

"Some of the guys were in the same shape as me, but I joked around with them a lot, and pretty soon it helped their depression. I remember one guy who lost his hand, and they were going to transplant his big toe so he would have a thumb."

Because his right arm supports a socket, Hill's prosthetic hand does wonders. By manipulating arm muscles, the hooklike hand can pick up an egg without breaking it and he can button his jeans.

"They can give me a hand with fingers, but this hook - that's what I call it - can do everything that I need or want to do. The socket has batteries that I plug in at night just like a cell phone. I fasten a strap and can even shave."

He insists that nothing bothers him.

"I've got to deal with what I have and go on."