Word: shrapnel
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...director of the local hospital in Haditha, who asked that his family name be withheld because, he says, he fears reprisals by U.S. troops, says the Marines brought 24 bodies to his hospital around midnight on Nov. 19. Wahid says the Marines claimed the victims had been killed by shrapnel from the roadside bomb. "But it was obvious to us that there were no organs slashed by shrapnel," Wahid says. "The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of the victims were shot in the chest and the head--from close range...
...open for triggermen hiding along the road." She nods. In the gunner's hatch, she is armed with a 240 Bravo machine gun that fires 950 rounds a minute, but she is more vulnerable than the men inside the humvee's armored shell to sniper bullets and shrapnel from roadside bombs. As the convoy rolls down the back roads, Swenson and the guys in her humvee keep up an easy, comradely banter, joking about the Iraqi kids they see along their patrol: one boy moves like a hip-hop dancer, another like a ninja fighter. Swenson says, "What...
...five from the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, deviated ever so slightly from the tracks of the one in front, he says, setting off an antitank mine. The blast blew through the engine block with such force that the armor plating jury-rigged to the floor shattered his ankles instantly. Shrapnel sliced into his left arm, cutting an artery. He would have bled to death right there if three fellow soldiers hadn't rushed him to the field operating room in a record 13 minutes. Military doctors--astonished Braddock had survived--pulled a blood vessel out of his right thigh...
Only later, when he woke up, did he learn that the armor plating he had been wearing on his chest had saved him from a large piece of shrapnel. "If I hadn't had body armor, I'd be dead," he says. Braddock got a Purple Heart, and he and his buddies--Specialist Josiah Jurich, Sergeant Charles Jordan and Staff Sergeant Marvin Albert II--were all awarded Bronze Stars. He was alive, with just one small regret. "They burned my helmet and Kevlar vest." O.K., two regrets. "I wanted a cool scar, like this," says Braddock, slashing his hand across...
...ankle surgeon at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, worked for 11 hours to repair his right ankle. Although he lost the foot and nine inches of his left leg, his right side was intact thanks to three pins holding the ankle together. Subsequent operations removed most of the shrapnel in his body, to Braddock's dismay. "I was hoping to put a magnet on it," he jokes...