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CAMP AL ASAD, Iraq (July 30, 2006) -- Though a religious man, Cpl. Brian M. Henner doesn’t attribute Divine Intervention, luck, fate or destiny to the fact that he’s still alive after taking an enemy bullet to the head.
Instead, the 22-year-old U.S. Marine says it was his Kevlar helmet that saved his life in the middle of a gunfight between Marines and insurgents in Iraq’s Al Anbar province last week.
“If I didn’t have it on, it probably would have went into the top of my head,” said Henner, a native of Rochester, N.Y. “It didn’t just graze, it dug in to the helmet, but that’s why we wear them, though.”
Henner, a Marine combat photographer with Regimental Combat Team 7, was shot in the helmet when insurgents, hidden in a near-by tree-line, fired upon Marines manning a vehicle inspection checkpoint July 23.
The incident took place in Haqlaniyah – one of three Euphrates River valley cities in the western portion of Al Anbar province which make up the Haditha Triad region.
While snapping photographs of Marines searching locals’ vehicles, Henner says the Marines began receiving gunfire from a tree-line across the street. The Marines immediately took cover behind a car, but Henner was stuck in the road, where he was photographing from when the fire started, with just a small median to provide protection and concealment.
As the insurgents continued to fire against the Marines, Henner laid on his belly behind the road’s median – the only protection he and another Marine in the street had – and returned fire with his rifle before crawling along the median and away from the firing.
He says he was shot when he was crawling away from the firing. The
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