I witness a miricle

 Nov 14

We are parked outside the Wolfpack CP, after bringing LCPL Aricidino here for Medevac. We were on the rooftop just finishing up eating breakfast when we were engaged from across the river. Dino was hit in the top right side of his back SAPI plate by a .50 CAL, knocking him off his feet. But there was no blood and he will be okay.

As I read what I had written I remember it being a lot more dramatic.  I try to understand why I would have watered it down so much.  I think that exhaustion had a lot to do with it, we had been fighting for days.  although it seemed as though things had begun to calm down, they hadn't. When we came under fire it was not a couple pot shots, we were being engaged.  I remember seeing Dino spin around as his feet came out from under him, I thought he was dead.  As the Doc made his way to us we searched for the location of our attackers and I don't even remember what the outcome of that was.  I made my way over to Dino only to find him sitting up with his shirt cut off.   This is a miracle.

The Sapi plate was a new technology that was designed to stop small arms fire, not .50 caliber rounds.  you can see how close it came to both missing the plate and even penetrating it. 

Just a few days ago we were tasked with clearing Route Boston from Vehicle Check Point 2 South to Route Iron. We had just stepped off. We had two tanks in front , then Cajun1/23 with dismounts clearing the shoulders of the road, them first then us with EOD in trace. We went not even 50 meters and were ambushed. The tanks took 3 RPG hits and one flew right in front of us hitting an oil tank elevated. The Capt. saw where the 4^th one had come from and took control of the turret traversing left and throwing a three round burst into the house.

I think that this was the first time that I had traveled outside of our CP since we began Phantom Fury.  The Cajun unit was an Army reserve company that we had attached to to help get us off the peninsula.  What had happened was as we came in hard and fast, the Iraqis had came in behind us.  We were trapped, pinned down, boxed in.  How could we have been so dumb.  We were going to have to fight our way out.