American Gun

10 THE M16 RIFLE

The world shook as they rode to battle. The sky around them was filled with helicopters. Vietnam was green and light brown, peaceful from a few hundred feet above. But the drum of rotors were the call to war.

The American Hueys squatted into the elephant grass. Dust and dirt flew everywhere. They were in.

“Let’s go!” yelled Lt. Colonel Hal Moore, grabbing his rifle as he leaned to jump out of the bird. “Let’s go.”

It was November 14, 1965. The forty-two-year-old lieutenant colonel was leading the soldiers of 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment into a battle like none the world had ever seen. But as he and his men ran toward the edge of the jungle bordering Landing Zone X-Ray, I’d wager not one of them was contemplating history, or even the new tactics they were employing. They were thinking about their guns, maybe, and staying alive, mostly.

First Battalion had just put down in a remote jungle clearing in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. It was the start of the Battle of Ia Drang Valley, an epic chapter in the Vietnam War.

Ia Drang—pronounced “ja drang”—is famous today as the first combined-arms air assault ever. Never before had a large group of soldiers been airlifted by helicopter and dropped down into battle miles from any support elements, or what you might call a traditional battlefront. Air support—not only from ground-pounders like the A-1 Skyraider but from strategic bombers like the B-52—played a critical role in the battle. The fight was also the first large-scale engagement between the U.S. Army and the People’s Army of Vietnam—the North Vietnamese. It was as close to a “set piece” battle as the conflict ever got.

But Ia Drang was important because of another “first,” one that’s often forgotten today: It was the first time U.S. military personnel waged war with a fully automatic assault rifle as their standard weapon.

The rifle Moore held as he leapt from the helo was a new select-fire gun officially called the XM16E1. Soon to be known as the M16, the weapon had an immediate impact on the way Americans fought. It looked nothing like anything anyone had used in war before. The NVA regulars and Viet Cong took to calling it the “Black Rifle.”

“What we fear most is the B-52 and the new little black weapon,” said one of the Cong captured during the battle.

The Battle of Ia Drang was a baptism of hellfire for the men of the 7th Cavalry and the new M16. When it was over four days later, the U.S. had won. A large number of North Vietnamese had been killed, and they had been chased from the battlefield. But the fight also taught the enemy what tactics might be most useful against American firepower. Americans saw the enemy was tough, and wouldn’t give up easily, even when they were being slaughtered. And maybe most frustrating for regular U.S. GIs, they soon learned that while the new rifle they had was pretty good, it was not yet the weapon it could be.

Assault rifles, which we’ll define as rifles that can be selected to fire single shots, bursts, or full automatic, had been around for more than twenty years. The Germans used a number of early versions, including the FG42 and the StG44 or MO-44. “StG” stood for “Sturmgewehr” or “storm gun,” which is how we got the term “assault rifle.” The weapon could fire five hundred rounds a minute but weighed only eleven and a quarter pounds empty. It used 7.92 × 33mm Kurz ammo fed from a 30-round magazine.

The StG44 appeared way too late to make any difference in the war. But it did influence the development of a weapon that today remains a classic: the AK47. Designed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the Soviet Union in the early postwar years, the AK was—and is—a rugged, dependable gun that’s cheap, easy to use, and no problem to maintain.

By the time World War II ended, the U.S. Army was working on its own automatic weapon. The most promising models were offspring of the M1. As we’ve said, these led to the M14, which despite its other qualities turned out to be less than the best choice for an assault rifle.

Among the roads not traveled by the brain trust at the Ordnance Department and the Springfield Armory was an odd little gun that some called “the aluminum rifle.” That’s because the weapon had an aluminum barrel with a steel liner. Instead of wood, the stock was made of fiberglass and foam. From the outside, the rifle looked about like any other .308 hunting gun. Pick it up, though, and you were in for a shock—it weighed six pounds, and that was with the scope.

The gun was an AR-1, made by a tiny division of Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation called ArmaLite located in of all places Hollywood, California. Only a handful of the prototypes were made, but you’ve got to start somewhere. That design helped convince Fairchild to give ArmaLite enough funding to get down to serious weapons design.

The company’s first big weapon was a little one—the AR-5 survival rifle, bought by the Air Force and designated the MA-1 Survival rifle. This was a .22-caliber peashooter meant to be carried by aircrews and used in desperation—great desperation—if shot down. It wasn’t designed to kill enemy soldiers, though it could have been used for that if necessary. The MA-1 was more your basic varmint gun, good for rabbits, beer cans, and not much more.

The theme running through ArmaLite’s early work was their willingness to work outside the box—far outside. Lightweight guns? Guns made with aluminum or fiberglass? A .22 in a warrior’s hands? All novel ideas.

But being different doesn’t get you anywhere on its own. You also have to be good. And ArmaLite really didn’t arrive at that point until it hired, almost by chance, Eugene Stoner. The self-taught gun maker was an amateur in the best sense of the word—he loved the art of making weapons, and he devoted himself to it. It became a very productive relationship.

One of its earliest results was the AR-10, a seven-pound automatic rifle that fired NATO 7.62 × 51mm rounds. The AR-10 had a pistol grip and a carrying handle. Its receiver was made of aluminum and its stock from phenol formaldehyde resins—another of those fancy words for something most of us call plastic.

If it sounds like I’m describing the M16, I am, pretty much, except for the rifle rounds.

The AR-10 was a unique gun. It was good, but it wasn’t a perfect design. The barrel overheated, and there were a number of other nits and nags that would’ve had to be corrected before the gun went into production. But even if it had been perfect, the powers-that-were in the Army had pretty much already settled on what they wanted: the M14. In 1955, the Stoner ArmaLite contribution was shoved aside.

But not forgotten.

Pushed by Colonel Henry Nielsen, the head of the Army’s Infantry Board, and General Willard Wyman, ArmaLite went to work on a version of the gun that used a smaller cartridge. The thinking was that a lot of smaller rounds would be more lethal in combat than fewer larger rounds.

One of the main points in the argument, which raged through the military and civilian think tanks, was how much ammo a rifleman could carry into battle. Would 650 smaller bullets trump 220 larger cartridges? If most battles are fought at 100 yards, does every rifleman need a gun that can fire twenty times that far? If a small bullet can be made to do more damage than a larger one at combat range, which is better? And if most soldiers are crappy shots when the you-know-what hits the fan, isn’t it better to increase their odds by giving them more chances to hit something every time they press the trigger?

The gun Stoner and ArmaLite produced was the AR-15. Its rounds were 5.56 × 45mm—which frankly sounds a heck of a lot more deadly than .22, which is what they were—Stoner used a .223 variant of Remington .222, the same round a lot of farmers favored to get rid of prairie dogs.

The AR-15 was ready for Army testing in 1957. You already know that it lost out to the M14. By then, Fairchild gave up arguing with the Army about the AR-15 and sold the weapon in 1959 to Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company for $75,000, and 4.5 percent royalties on any future units sold. The price was a bargain.

ArmaLite was spun off from its parent company. It’s still in business making guns today. Colt, meanwhile, started showing the AR-15 around to potential buyers. Most people think the U.S. Air Force doesn’t have much call for rifles. And it’s true pilots aren’t going to pop their canopy at Mach 2 and take shots with a rifle. But the service does have a need for security at its bases, and after trying the AR-15 in 1960, Air Force vice chief of staff Curtis LeMay wanted it for his troops. LeMay didn’t get them until he was promoted to chief of staff, and even then had to deal with a lot of politics to receive his order of 8,500 placed. But he got them.

Army Special Forces also wanted the rifles; regular Army generals sought to keep M14s. Arguments went back and forth debating the pluses and minuses, until finally in 1963, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara put the M14 on hold and placed an order for more than 100,000 AR-15s, soon to be known as the M16.

The M16 had several advantages over the M14. It was much easier to control in full-auto. In fact, it was easy to operate overall. It was light as a feather by automatic weapons’ standards—barely nine pounds with a full mag. It wasn’t as long and heavy as the M14, and it had a lighter recoil, kind of like a gentle push when compared to the hard kick of the original M14. It was pretty accurate up to 460 meters. It was ideal for soldiers with small body builds, like our South Vietnamese allies. Its smaller rounds meant you could carry more. It even had the unique potential to make Pentagon bean counters happy, because it was relatively cheap and easy to produce.

The XM16E1 and the variations that followed all operate basically the same way. Loading is easy enough—slip the mag up into the receiver until you hear and feel a click. Pull back the charging handle and let go to chamber a round. You’re good to fire.

Fire rate—single and auto, or single and three-round burst, depending on the model—is set by a switch on the left side above the trigger.

The gun was designed to lessen the effect of recoil. There are stories about trainers showing off the smooth-firing weapon for green recruits by putting the M16’s butt in their crotch while firing.

Colonel Moore jumped from the helicopter and ran across a deep, dry creek bed at Ia Drang. The rest of his command group trotted behind. Though the Americans occasionally fired into the nearby brush, so far they had not drawn enemy fire. Moore found a spot between some giant anthills, and set up his command post.

Chu Pong, a large crust of a mountain, sat across the way. In geological terms, the 1,500 foot high-point was a “massif”—a large crust of the earth that remains fixed despite other changes around it. In military terms, it was high ground. Moore knew the Vietnamese were sitting up there, watching him and his hundred and seventy-five Americans. He was ready to rumble.

The enemy had the same idea. There were 1,600 of them.

By 12:30, several American platoons had contacted the enemy. Gunfire sprayed in fits around the hills between the landing zone and the mountain. The fight built slow, like charcoal just gradually warming in a grill. Squads engaged groups of NVA; the Vietnamese ducked and weaved. The Americans pursued. The Vietnamese countered; the Americans rolled with the punch.

Gradually, some of Moore’s platoons stretched to the point where they lost contact with each other. Waves of enemy soldiers began to appear, intensifying the attack. Forty or fifty Vietnamese ran out of a tree line into a pair of American squads. The Americans fired their M16s. The NVA kept coming. Grenades, rifles—it was sheer hell for three or four minutes. Then quiet. Then it stoked up again.

Minutes turned to hours. The Vietnamese brought machine guns up; rockets and mortars began striking the Americans. One of Moore’s platoons was cut off. The battle went into high gear.

American reinforcements flew in and were quickly committed. Suddenly, Moore himself was under attack. The colonel fought against his instincts to run into the woods and shoot the NVA himself. His job was to direct the battle, not get pinned down in the middle of it. He let his soldiers do their job, and stuck to his.

The men fired their M16s as quickly as they could load them. Skyraider attack planes rode in, striking small clusters of enemy soldiers. A medic kept his rifle in hand as he went from patient to patient, pausing to douse the enemy with automatic rifle fire while tending the wounded.

The dry creek Moore had crossed earlier became the center of fighting in the afternoon. Captain Louis Lefebvre blew through two mags of M16 rounds in a matter of seconds as sixteen or seventeen NAV regulars tried rushing from the trees. Between the rifle fire, grenades, and a nearby machine gun, the enemy vaporized.

But the Americans were taking big casualties as well. Lefebvre was hit, and the machine gunner near him killed.

Moore could see the enemy easily now. The men at the trees were excellent shots; Americans were being taken in the head. The soldiers poured bullets into the Vietnamese, firing a dozen shots for every one the enemy sent. Their superior firepower cut down the enemy charges, but it was anything but pretty. The battle had deteriorated, said Moore, into a “vulgar brawl.”

There were bizarre moments; thinking they were safely behind the lines, three NVA soldiers walked into the middle of an American group. M16s cut them down before the Vietnamese got their AKs off their shoulders.

Lieutenant Joe Marm found himself near an enemy machine gun nest in the middle of a massive anthill. He tried blowing it up with a LAW rocket. No dice. Grenade. Nothing. He reared back, lobbed another grenade over the back of the hill, then charged forward, M16 roaring. He ran some thirty yards right at the gun. When he was finished, the machine gun was out of action. Eleven NV enlisted and a North Vietnamese officer were all dead. Wounded, he continued to fight. Marm was later presented with a Medal of Honor in recognition of his bravery.

The battle continued with small-scale attacks through the night, then got hot again the next day. Severely outnumbered, the Americans poured lead into their enemies, got resupplied, fired more ammo. Planes strafed and bombed the surrounding jungle, staving off attack after attack.

For the Americans, the worst part of the fight came at a nearby landing zone, when companies that had moved away from the mountain to avoid being hit by a B-52 attack stumbled into a much larger Vietnamese force. One hundred and fifty-five American heroes would die or be listed as missing, and another 124 were wounded in that part of the battle. Overall, some 236 Americans lost their lives in the action at Ia Drang. According to Vietnamese figures, 555 NVA soldiers died, and 669 were wounded; the American estimates were slightly higher.

The engagement was a success for the Americans, even with the casualties. It proved air assault works. It also showed how chaotic war in the Vietnamese jungle could be.

And it demonstrated that the theories behind the new black gun made sense in real life. The M16 had made a critical difference in the battle. The large number of bullets it could fire helped turn back the Vietnamese several times.

“Brave American soldiers and the M16 rifle won a victory here,” Colonel Moore concluded after the battle at LZ X-Ray.

But even inside Moore’s unit, the rifle had not been flawless. There were scattered reports of problems.

Captain John Herren, the commander of Bravo Company, was surprised by a North Vietnamese soldier just after he had radioed in a report to another officer. He grabbed his M16 and fired at him; the gun fell apart with the burst, the trigger assembly coming out in his hand. Herren grabbed a grenade and tossed it over the embankment where the NVA soldier had run. Unfortunately, the grenade bounced off some brush and fell away. Herren and the two radio operators he was with didn’t stick around to find out what would happen next. Other soldiers found weapons on the battlefield that were useless, whether because they’d been hit or had jammed was hard to say.

Flaws in the M16 started to become public soon after they reached the troops in large numbers in 1965 and ’66. To that point, the only problem was getting enough of them out the door. But gradually, trial and error revealed that the gun had a fatal weakness as a combat rifle: It was not very forgiving if you fouled it or got it full of dirt. And a change in the powder used by the initial cartridges greatly increased the gun’s failure rate.

In other words, the damn thing had this bad tendency to jam at the worst possible time.

Not always, certainly, but it only has to happen to you once to get you killed. In 1965, soldiers were said to be selling their M14s on the black market so they could buy the new M16 out of their own pocket. By 1967, a lot of them must have been thinking about getting their money back.

The M16 wasn’t junk. It was a promising gun that needed improvements—which should have been fixed before being adopted.

In the years that followed, major revisions were made to the weapon. The M16 was tweaked as the M16A1 very shortly after it was introduced. A forward assist was added, which helped the shooter make sure the bolt was closed—useful when trying to clear a jam. The powder was changed. Instructions emphasized that the weapon needed to be maintained and cleaned often. There had been a lot of hype that it didn’t, which added to the jamming problems.

In the 1980s, a much improved version, the M16A2, became the new standard. Among the improvements from the M16A1 to the M16A2 were a heavier and stiffer barrel, a new hand guard, a new butt stock, a better pistol grip, an improved sight, a redesign of the upper receiver that improved cartridge ejection—you get the idea.

Most critical for the troops using it was a change replacing full-auto with a three-round burst. The M16A3 switched back to semi-auto and full auto. Newer M16A4s and the M4 carbine have a flat-top receiver, which allows devices to be attached via Picatinny rails. As a general rule, the M16A4 is used by the Marines and the M4 Carbine by the Army. They have their limitations, as all guns do, but they are now world-class battle rifles.

If you want to know about a rifle, ask a rifleman. It happens that I have one handy—my brother, Jeff.

Jeff served in the Marines around the time I did, and besides deploying to Iraq, served in Marine Recon and put in time as a weapons instructor. He used several versions of the M16 platform during his military career, including a few old M16A1s that had been kicked around quite a bit.

For Jeff, “Learning the history of that weapon was pretty cool.” We’d been shooting since we were kids so he was right at home when the drill instructor finally let them use the gun they’d been marching around with forever. “It was a piece of junk in Vietnam, but it was built up to what it is now. It’s impressive, and they keep making them better. Even in my first four years, they transitioned to A3. Then in Recon, we had the M4.”

His preferences depended on the job that had to be done. The shorter-barreled M4 was a better weapon for clearing a building; the smaller length meant it was easier to maneuver in tight quarters. It was also a little less trouble carrying. But both versions shot more or less the same. “I didn’t see a whole lot of difference in the effect of the rounds when it came to distances,” says Jeff. “And most of our action was pretty close up.”

Getting used to full auto took some practice, but after a few eight to ten-hour days of training, most of the men got to the point where they could squeeze off two or three rounds if they wanted to from the full auto version of the M4. That fire control gave them the advantage of both worlds—they could save ammo with a quick burst, and have full auto instantly if they needed it. But it was only something you could get with a lot of practice.

Where the first generation of M16s had twenty-round mags, thirty go in the boxes under today’s guns. But the improvement my brother felt was the most important over those earlier models were on the rails. They let him hang all manner of gear on them.

Back in World War I, battle rifles were naked, except for the bayonet and strap. The first M16s were pretty naked themselves, though a bayonet was designed to be attached to the tip. Soon, though, someone figured out you could slap a grenade launcher to the bottom of that sucker, and give the average infantry squad a lot more firepower. The 203 grenade launcher became very popular with squads needing a little more oomph in battle—and what rifle squad doesn’t?

With the latest versions of the gun, you can put gear on the top as well as the bottom, thanks to the rails. Scopes and laser sights are the most common; bipods, vertical grips—it’s getting to the point where anything you can think up, someone has found a way to get it onto the gun. All that gear makes the gun heavier, taking away one of its advantages. On the other hand, its light weight to begin with makes the package lighter than it might have been.

Optics and laser sights are now pretty much necessities. Being able to fight well at night gives you an advantage over most if not all enemies. And while the M4 and M16 are not sniper weapons, scopes can help soldiers reach out and touch their enemy at a decent range.

Incidentally, I used a Marine M16 rifle in Fallujah, Iraq. It was a standard infantry rifle, but I got it in an unusual way—I traded a Marine for it.

How do you get a Marine to give up his rifle? Give him a bigger one.

In 2004, I was part of a SEAL sniper unit attached to the Marines as they worked to clear the city of insurgents. After our first few days in the city, the enemy started getting smart and avoiding areas where the snipers were working. Meanwhile, the Marines on the ground going into houses were taking all the risks. It was hard to stand up on a roof feeling useless while they were getting shot inside the buildings. So I offered one of the Marines who was providing security for my sniper post a deal he couldn’t refuse: Take my sniper rifle, I told him, and I’ll use your M16.

I don’t know that he got any kills with my gun, but I used his to shoot some Chechens who’d come to Iraq to help wipe out us infidels. The whole thing was a bit of a shock, for them and for me. We’d just breached the house and I stepped into the front room where they were gathered. I don’t know what I expected to see, but whatever it was, it wasn’t them. I looked at these white faces and blinked—they were the first white guys I saw on the enemy’s side of the fence since I’d been in the country.

They were still dazed from our entry. But that only lasted a second. They started to react, grabbing for guns. So did I. Full auto never felt so good.

The gun that I had traded the Marine was a Mk11, an automatic decked out in a style not unlike an M16. My brother Jeff used the same weapon when he was working as a spotter and secondary shooter on a two-man sniper team as a Marine. Carrying the gun meant he only had to hump one rifle into battle. Because it was a semi-automatic, the Mk11 gave him the ability to provide cover at close range. But it also had long-range accuracy. And the gun’s scope doubled as a spotting scope.

I liked the SEAL version of the gun myself for pretty much the same reasons. Mine didn’t have a collapsible stock, but that was a small tradeoff. The 7.62 × .51mm rounds meant more stopping power, less sweat on my side of the weapon.

The AR-15 family has its own sniper version in use by SEALs, the U.S. Navy Mk 12 Special Purpose Rifle. The rifle has a sixteen-inch barrel but other than that is very similar to an M4. It fires a 5.56 × 45mm round from a thirty-bullet magazine. While the gun could be selected for full auto, I never fired it that way. I suppose it would have been handy to have if the situation came up where I needed it, whether to get the enemy’s head down in a hurry, or to deal with a mass attack.

After the first wave of developers, other manufacturers like HK, Sig, you name it, began working on their own variations of the AR-15 design, knowing that the U.S. military wouldn’t adopt anything else. The process has resulted in a much better gun family. HK’s 416 is a phenomenal weapon, accurate and durable. Sig’s 516 is another excellent development of the original concept, burnished with touches from the Sig brain trust.

Because the weapon has been adapted and adopted by so many countries and large manufacturers, it’s opened the way for small companies to offer add-ons and improvements. That’s become especially big as civilian versions have been adapted by recreational shooters. To some, the civilian version of the AR15 is now a “Barbie Doll for guys”—the platform can be customized any way you want it. Vertical grips, sight systems, rail systems, trigger systems are now a big part of the market.

But customization has been important for one segment of weapons community that probably no one thought would need a high-powered rifle back in the late 1950s or early 1960s—law enforcement.

A series of shootouts in the late 1980s and 1990s convinced police departments they had to change the way they did things, and bring more firepower to the streets. One of the worst incidents occurred February 28, 1997, in North Hollywood, California. Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu picked that day to rob the Bank of America in North Hollywood. It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision—the pair had been scouting the place for months. They had a number of violent crimes on their resume. They came prepared for their forced withdrawal with five rifles, a pistol, and over three thousand rounds of ammo. They were also wearing body armor.

Confronted by the police as they tried to escape, the pair easily outgunned the first officers on the scene, who had only 9mm handguns and a shotgun between them. While the criminals were cut off and trapped outside the bank, it took the police roughly forty-five minutes before they were finally able to kill them. In the meantime, eighteen officers were wounded out of the nearly three hundred involved.

The two men’s rifles included an HK-91 with a drum magazine and AKMs. Their armor-piercing bullets were capable of slicing through the vests the police wore.

“It was a watershed,” says Mark Hanten, my SWAT commander friend. The shoot-out was studied by his and other police forces all across the country. Among the more obvious conclusions: the police needed to be better armed.

Automatic rifles were part of the solution. While SWAT teams were common by the 1990s, North Hollywood and incidents like it showed that the specialty units were not the only ones who need high-powered rifles. As Rich Emberlin, who’s worked both SWAT and high-level protection roles in the Dallas police department points out, the first guys on the scene are often the ones who have the best chance to contain a situation before it gets ugly.

I can attest to the fact that criminals are seriously armed these days. A while back, the Dallas police department allowed me to tag along when they served a warrant on some suspected bad guys. The weapons stash they had would have made a SEAL’s eyes water. In fact, it did—I couldn’t believe the range of handguns and rifles the criminals had massed. The confiscated weapons filled a large van.

Dallas has started a program to equip patrolmen with AR15 variants. Besides finding the money, one of their biggest problems is making sure that the officers have enough time to train—which means they have to worry about having enough officers to fill their patrol spots while they’re on the range. Out in San Diego, Mark’s department spent five thousand dollars on ammo alone when half the SWAT team trained with new AR15-style rifles.

About those new guns: I worked with Mark as he went about putting the new kits together. They’re Sig Sauer 516s with ten-inch barrels and some very nice optics. It is a great package for perimeter and containment work, as well as being compact enough for interior work. There were smiles all around the range when the team was done.

On the other hand, I don’t think anyone in the department will be sorry if they’re never used anywhere but the target range.

Whether they’re used in war or for keeping the peace, guns are just tools. And like any tool, the way they’re used reflects the society they’re part of. As times change, guns have evolved. If you don’t like guns, blame it on the society they’re part of.

One of the interesting things about the AR15 is its size. Next to the rifle we started this book with, the American long rifle, the modern AR15 combat rifle is small. There’s an advantage in that: it can also be handled by a wide range of people.

Back when our friend Sergeant Murphy was shooting officers out of their saddles, the Continental Army and the American militias were almost exclusively male. Now women are an important part of the military and law enforcement forces.

And so maybe it’s appropriate we end this little tour of the modern combat rifle with the story of Leigh Ann Hester

In civilian life, Leigh Ann Hester was a petite, twenty-three-year-old woman who helped manage a shoe store in Nashville, Tennessee. At 9 a.m. on Sunday, March 20, 2005, she was a U.S. Army sergeant with the 617th Military Police Company, Kentucky National Guard stationed in a combat zone in Iraq. She and her squad of eight men and another woman were patrolling a road south of Baghdad and just north of Salman Pak. As usual, she had her short-barreled M4 within easy reach inside her up-armored Humvee.

Suddenly, Hester heard gunshots and explosions ahead. The patrol sped up, reaching a convoy of thirty civilian supply trucks and tractor-trailers. The vehicles were being ambushed with intense small-arms fire from the side of the road. An unusually large force of insurgents had filled trenches along the highway and were firing at the trucks. Bullets were flying everywhere.

Staff Sergeant Timothy Nein, in the lead Humvee, saw the civilian trucks trying to scatter. “Flank ’em down the road!” hollered Nein to the rest of the squad. A moment later, a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the top of his vehicle. Waves of rifle fire punched into the grill and side door as the Hummer ground to a halt.

The others stopped and began engaging the insurgents. The Humvees took multiple hits. In the third truck, all the soldiers except Specialist Jason Mike were wounded. Mike grabbed an M4 assault rifle and an M249 light machine gun and began firing in two different directions to push back the attackers.

Hester spotted a convoy of seven parked cars not far away. The enemy was planning a fast getaway—and more than likely a kidnapping as well. Nein, who was still fighting despite the hits his vehicle had taken, decided their best bet was to go on the offense. He took his rifle and started walking directly toward the enemy positions in the trenches and behind trees and piles of dirt.

Hester jumped from her Humvee to back him up. Carrying her M4 and attached grenade launcher, she ran up alongside Nein as he took cover behind a berm. Nein plugged an insurgent as he popped his head out from behind a tree. Hester zeroed in on a man with a machine gun. She put him in her sights and squeezed the trigger.

“It’s not like you see in the movies,” she said later on. “They don’t get shot and get blown back five feet. They just take a round and they collapse.”

Hester gunned down another insurgent, then she and Sergeant Nein jumped into a nearby drainage ditch to get a better angle on the enemy. They started working their way down, pushing the insurgents back, step by step, using rifle fire and a grenade from Hester’s launcher. When they started running low on ammo, Hester ran on back to her Humvee to get more. The firefight went on for more than thirty minutes until other U.S. forces arrived. The wounded were evacuated by helicopter, and the area was eventually secured. The Americans killed twenty-seven insurgents, wounded six, and took one prisoner. Hester personally killed at least three Iraqis with rifle and grenade fire from her M4. She received the first Silver Star given to a woman since World War II. Six other soldiers in her unit were decorated, including Specialist Jason Mike, Sergeant Timothy Nein, and Specialist Ashley Pullen.

Sergeant Hester “maneuvered her team through the kill zone into a flanking position where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 rounds,” according to the Army citation that accompanied her Silver Star. “She then cleared two trenches with her squad leader where she engaged and eliminated three AIF [anti-Iraqi forces] with her M4 rifle. Her actions saved the lives of numerous convoy members.”

“It was either me or them, and I wasn’t going to choose the latter,” she said. “Adrenaline was pumping, bullets were flying, and I didn’t have a choice but fight back.

“I think about March 20 at least a couple times a day, every day, and I probably will for the rest of my life,” admitted Hester. “It’s taken its toll. Every night I’m lucky if I don’t see the picture of it in my mind before I go to sleep, and then even if I don’t, I’m dreaming about what we did.”

Leigh Ann Hester says she doesn’t feel like a hero. “I did my job.”

Amen to that.