Damien Hields - Hero
From the
UK Times Online comes this amazing story:
British soldier awarded the Military Cross for fighting off 150 Taliban
A British soldier who almost single-handedly took on 150 Taliban after he and his 50-man convoy were ambushed in Afghanistan has been awarded the Military Cross.
Fusilier Damien Hields used his grenade machinegun to destroy seven Taliban positions before his ambushers realised he was their main threat. After peppering his vehicle with bullets, they hit the 24-year-old soldier. He had to be dragged off for treatment by his driver after he tried to continue fighting.
�Fusilier Hields showed extraordinary courage under intense fire,� said Lieutenant-Colonel Huw James, his commanding officer. �I was astonished at the state of his vehicle. There were so many holes in it, it was like a teabag. The Taliban did everything in their power to neutralise [him] and Fusilier Hields was having none of it. His actions allowed his patrol to come out of the ambush in which they were outnumbered by three or four to one and probably saved a lot of lives.�
And the engagement:
They were on their way back to Kandahar on June 3, driving south in a valley, when the Taliban attacked. One of the Land Rovers hit a landmine and was flipped upside down by the blast. �There were Taliban dug in all around and they started hitting us with AK47s and mortars. We could not see where they were at first.�
Hields followed the trail of RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him and started firing grenades one at a time, trying to home in. �Then I switched to automatic fire,� he said. A grenade machine gun has a box with 32 grenade rounds. �I emptied a box onto that position and you could see all the dust and smoke flying about where they hit.
�After that no fire came back from that position and I moved on to the next one. One or two rounds until I got onto the target, and switch to automatic and empty the box.�
His comment:
"I got through six boxes in about 15 minutes and we were winning the fight,� he said. �They started it. We were going to finish it.�
He was wounded but not seriously and was back in action about a month later.
Like I said -- Hero.
Posted by DaveH at March 10, 2008 7:58 PM