Posted on 06/14/2006 6:28:31 PM PDT by SandRat
HABBANIYAH, Iraq (June 12, 2006) -- The enemy snipers hit their targets- but it yielded them no results.
In less than a week’s time, Sgt. Joshua S. Adams and Pfc. Jason Hanson, of D Company, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion were hit by sniper shots. But the enemy had little effect because both were left with only minor injuries thanks to their small-arms protective inserts, or SAPI, plates.
While working in support of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, to complete counterinsurgency and humanitarian operations in the town of Habbaniyah, Hanson was the lead man on a patrol looking for roadside bombes on the main highway when a sniper shot him in the chest.
“I was checking my side and when I looked forward, I got shot -- it knocked me down,” said Hanson, 21, a scout from Forks, Wash.
“I saw him on the ground, ran up to him and rolled him over,” said the on-scene corpsman Seaman Chad T. Kenyon, 20, from Tucson, Ariz. “I saw that the round had gone through the front of his flak, so I opened up his flak and saw no bleeding. Then he looked up at me and said ‘I’m fine, Doc.’”
The 7.62 mm bullet went through Hanson’s rifle but was stopped by the Marine’s SAPI plate, leaving him with some bruising on his chest. But it could have been a lot worse.
“The round definitely would have hit him in the diaphragm, which is a muscle that assists in breathing,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Jose Mata Jr., 26, the company’s senior corpsman from Hialeah, Fla. “It’s not a good day when that happens because he probably wouldn’t have lived.”
A few days later, Adams, a vehicle commander from Bowling Green, Mo., was shot while cordoning off an area after discovering an improvised explosive device.
“We were blocking off a road and one car pulled up from a side street, and the guy in the back of vehicle started moving around to face us,” said Lance Cpl. Kyle V. Lyons, a 25-year-old LAV gunner from Houston. “I was telling Sgt. Adams, he got hit. He dropped down and then said he was fine.”
“My gunner took over while I assessed my wounds and pulled some shrapnel out of my arm-then we chased down the car,” said Adams, 21. “The round went into my SAPI but when it hit, the round shattered and some of it went into my wrist.”
The vehicle was chased down and two men were detained.
“The round would have hit him in the liver, causing massive internal damage,” Mata said. “It could have been bad. The SAPI plates did their job.”
Bulky, heavy and hot in the already soaring temperatures, Hanson said he’s got a different perspective on the ceramic plates he’s toting around his body.
“I’m happy to carry the extra weight,” Hanson said.
Pfc. Joshua Hanson, from Forks, Wash., a scout with D Company, 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, was shot in the chest by a sniper while on patrol in Habbaniya, but the small-arms protective insert prevented the round from seriously injuring him.Good ol' American know-how ... and a little good troop discipline.
I certainly hope they were detained in four different cities.
It's great that the plates work, but I am not terribly thrilled it's being advertised. The bad guys read the news, as well.
The former "Wicked Witch of the West Wing" may actually be correct about this one.
This Article is pretty revealing. Aside from that, soldiers who did use armour from "that other company" are being threatened with loss of SGLI benefits.
There's no nefarious partisan political maneuvers going on, it's just the Defense procurement system doing what it historically does best: Screw over the soldiers.
Incidentally, LOVE your FR homepage. Don't know about WWIV, (just what was WWIII?), but i was still serving during the start in 79'. It was pretty "intense" for a while.
WWIII was the Cold War 1947 - the Collapse of the Soviet Union; that Wasn't all that Cold for some folks, in someplaces, doing some jobs, on some missions, that could not and may never be talked about.
i could put names to a couple of those places, not gonna do it though. The "powers that be" were gearing up for the big showdown in Europe, you know, the one that never happened. The terminology escaped me. Nobody i knew considered "low intensity conflict" < /sarcasm> to be on the level of a World War. More like the warm up to a world war. You probably remember the bad ol' days under Ford and Jimmuh Carter as well as i. It was a bad, scary time.
Cartuh and Dumdale credited with sinking more US Naval tonnage than the Japanese Imperial Navy in WWII.
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