Word: armored
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...them was alive, though barely. Handcuffed, he had been shot in the back of the head, but he was breathing. The other soldiers were already dead. One had taken bullets in both legs and his right hand, and at some point the kidnappers had torn open his body armor and fired bullets into his chest and torso. Two others were handcuffed together, with one's right hand joined to the other's left. Two shots in the face and neck had killed one. Four bullets in the chest had killed the other...
...late 2006, Freeman's work in Karbala seemed to be going well. The U.S. planned to leave the center entirely in the hands of the Iraqis by the spring of 2007. But Freeman was uneasy about the job . He was an armor officer, more used to dealing with tanks and cannons than Iraqi politicians. Yet in Karbala he was a civil-affairs official, doing work he felt was more for a diplomat than a soldier. Shortly before Christmas 2006, Freeman took a short leave to visit his family in California, making his way to Baghdad for a helicopter flight...
...where troops were scattered across two floors. At about 6 p.m., just as the sun was setting, a series of shots rang out, sounding much closer than the occasional gunfire heard in the area. Then two huge booms shook the ground from the inside. The soldiers scrambled into their armor and reached for their weapons. On the first floor of the main building, Wallace saw the door to the room he shared with Millican and three other soldiers open from the outside. Sergeant First Class Sean Bennett instinctively slammed it shut with his right shoulder. But the attacker...
...long ago, I was in Diyala province, sitting in the back seat of a Humvee as it rolled down a dirt road on the outskirts of Baqubah. The roadside bomb we triggered went off directly under me. Luckily, it was relatively small, and the armor protected everyone inside from serious injury. But everyone was left in pain. The moment of the blast felt like ice picks plunging in both ears at once. A second later, thick whitish smoke filled the cab, and inhaling it instantly formed a throbbing headache comparable to my most vicious hangovers...
...They were lucky, and it never made the news. I wondered how bad the rest of Afghanistan is, and, as I usually do when I get to a new city, I casually asked around where I could go and couldn't go. Forget Kandahar, I was told. Even heavy armor is vulnerable to the new improvised explosive devices showing up in Afghanistan. Which means that you can't drive to Herat. Nor can you set foot in another dozen Afghan provinces...