Soldier Reflects on Personal Toll of Iraq

JOHN YDSTIE, Host:

NPR's Eric Westervelt recently ran into a soldier he first met nearly five years ago on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion. He has this Reporter's Notebook from Baghdad.

ERIC WESTERVELT: There's something strangely comforting about seeing a familiar face when there's gunfire about.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)

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WESTERVELT: It's good to see you again.

JAMES SLAYTON: Yeah, I saw you get out of the Humvee and I was just, like, I know him. And it kind of put a smile on my face.

WESTERVELT: Down the road was pretty peaceful. I come up here with Slayton and you get shot at.

SLAYTON: Yeah. That's (unintelligible) for you. So we still got one battery.

WESTERVELT: When I first met you, you were just 20 years old, I think. You're 25 now.

SLAYTON: I was 20, and now, I'm 25. Yeah.

WESTERVELT: Yeah.

SLAYTON: Three or five years I've spent over here in Iraq.

WESTERVELT: Slayton was a gunner in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during the invasion in which 164 Armor often led the Army's push northward. I saw him again in 2005 in east Baghdad when he was back for his second stint in Iraq. He didn't get a scratch during those first two combat tours, but on patrol here in west Baghdad, a few weeks ago, his luck ran out. A powerful armor-piercing roadside bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator blasted into his Humvee.

SLAYTON: It punctured through where the vent is on the front of the Humvee, and it hit my left leg. And it left a crater, six-foot-by-three-foot- by-three-foot, so it was a big boy.

WESTERVELT: But relatively simple anti-roadside bomb technology saved Slayton's life. A long metal pole with a dangling chain, a device known as a rhino(ph), now sticks off the front of most Humvees in Iraq. The device is designed to trigger laser-activated roadside bombs early so the blast rips into the engine block, instead of soldiers.

SLAYTON: That was, like, the most amazing thing that could have probably ever happen to me is that tripping that laser and causing it - if it went off a second later, I probably won't be sitting here talking to you right now.

WESTERVELT: Staff Sergeant Slayton now has at least two pieces of shrapnel embedded in his lower leg. He's still recovering and walks with a slight limp, but after just a few weeks, he was back fighting with his unit.

YDSTIE: That's NPR's Eric Westervelt in Baghdad. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.