Hillah, Iraq.
I actually woke up early, and figured I would see if the Staff Sergeant was interested in a run. I was getting dressed when he knocked on my door to see if I wanted to go to breakfast. I agreed, and then asked why his index finger was bandaged.
“We got attacked by an IED on the way back from Baghdad last night.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“No, sir. So….you wanna get breakfast?”
Before I go any further, everybody is okay.
The convoy was headed back from Baghdad last night, and got stuck behind a special convoy searching for IEDs. Our guys opted to cut to the other side of the road to get ahead of the IED searchers. They moved to the other side of the road, and sped up to pass when an IED went off. I will pause for a moment for you to make you own joke on the efficacy of the IED detector people, or the wisdom of passing the guys looking for IEDs.
The Staff Sergeant took a small piece of shrapnel in the index finger, and the gunner took a small bit in the right arm. They quickly assessed the damage to themselves and their vehicle, and opted to continue on. They returned to Camp Charlie without further incident.
The Staff Sergeant with ‘wounded’ finger:
The shrapnel that the gunner took was still in his arm, as determined by a metal detector.
I saw the gunner later, and he showed me his wound which was covered with a napkin and duct tape. I asked why the medics didn’t dress it, and he grinned and told me that they had, but he took it off to see if he could still do pushups. He was mostly annoyed because the arm wound is going to throw off his workout routine.
We took the guys down to the Army hospital in the nearby camp to get some X-Rays (and get the shrapnel out of the gunner’s arm), and start their Purple Heart paperwork.
These Marines were extremely lucky. They only got small pieces of shrapnel. We learned some things from this incident, mostly a lesson about complacency.If anyone ever doubts the value of the armor placed on the vehicles, please take a look at these:
The armor was dinged, but not even close to penetrated.
The following photos are not gory in the slightest. Both these guys have had worse cuts from shaving:
I posted these to satisfy the ghouls among you. Actually, I wanted to demonstrate that these Marines were barely hurt, and really are all right.In case you want to drop a line to the wounded Marines, their emails are:
SSGT: joe***@savagewood.net
LCPL: anglico_****@yahoo.com
The lance corporal asked me not to use his name because he doesn’t want his mom to find out because she is going to be mad.
Mail came today, and I got three packages: one full of great stuff from my folks, a box of cookies from my neighbor, and a box of magazines and cigars from my good friend, Steve. On the outside of Steve’s box, some anonymous postal worker somewhere penned the following:
“Viet Nam Postal Vets Salute Iraq Soldiers. We are with you all the way. “Which I thought was the heat.