My prayers are with the wounded soldiers and I hope they have a speedy recovery.
This incident reminded me of an account written by Michael Yon describing an IED blast in Mosul last year.
"Later that evening, the Recon platoon and the snipers, Walt among them, headed downtown on a mission of their own. Mark Bush was driving one of the Strykers when he parked to allow observation of some key terrain. Directly atop a bomb. Within seconds, Mark got the willies about the parking spot, and just as he was about to come over the radio BLAM!
The heavy Stryker flew into the air, blasting tires asunder, one tire flying more than a hundred yards. The explosion was so hard that it traumatized the tailbones of the men. The blast ripped through the bottom of the Strkyer and straight into an AT-4 missile, cutting the missile in half, but neither the missile nor the propellant exploded.
The fire extinguishing system blasted away, the place was completely dark–the back hatch was jammed, but the tiny emergency hatch was blasted open, yet was behind ripped metal that would cut any survivors or rescuers to ribbons. There was no light whatsoever in the smoke, dust and fire extinquishers.
Nine men were in the Stryker. The force of the bomb blew off everyone’s protective glasses, and the exploded fire extinguishers covered everything inside the smoking Stryker with powder. Some of the soldiers were unconscious; others thought their legs or feet were gone.
The device had been planted beside a large water main. The big water pipe burst, flooding the road and the Stryker in a small fast moving river. A large part of Mosul lost water. Emergency calls went out, helicopters spun up, and men prepared for battle.
One soldier on the ground ran to the wreckage, but there was so much dust and smoke that he was at the wrong Stryker. Another Stryker driver saw the water in his thermals and thought it was fuel flooding on the ground, and knew that any second everyone would die in flames.
Mark Bush was still in his driver’s seat. The blast hit behind him, throwing him against his seatbelt, and wrenched his shoulder. He was so dazed it took a moment to realize something had happened. Skewers of white-hot metal from the explosion had ripped into the Stryker. Walt was closest to the blast.
The helicopters launched to provide security over the site, wounded were evacuated to the combat support hospital, all while combat power and recovery assets raced through the streets from other parts of Mosul.
All the men returned to duty within a day or so, except for Walt. They are all limping around, peppered with cuts, shrapnel and bruises, showing me the marks on their faces and bodies, and Mark’s stiff shoulder seems mostly lame. He can’t use it for now. Scotty, another sniper, is upset because his platoon sergeant won’t let him go on missions until he can prove fit for combat by running on a treadmill. “I’m okay,” Scotty said yesterday while sunning himself. “I can’t just sit on base all the time while my friends are out there. . . . This sucks.”
But for Walt, his war is over. Doctors say he will recover, but he needs eye surgery, and he is out of action. Perhaps he can pursue photojournalism in peace, but Walt will miss the citizenship ceremony in Baghdad.
After seeing the damaged Stryker, and being unable to visualize how human bodies would have to be arrayed in order to fit in what was left of it, I had to ask. I found Mark Bush and asked him how they all escaped being killed.
Without hesitation, Mark looked straight at me and said: “We had angels watching us.”
My face must have given away skepticism, so he said to me, “Mike, did you see what it did to the Stryker?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Well, there is no other way to explain how we survived, except that Plum and Rat were there, and they stopped the blast. I know they were there. Plum and Rat held up their hands to save us. They stopped the blast. They were there.”
Perhaps the five soldiers had 17 angels looking out for them yesterday.
