Helmet saves life of Durant, Iowa, Marine serving in Afghanistan

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By Kurt Allemeier | Tuesday, May 13, 2008 |

U.S. Marine Cpl. Sam Hansen of Durant, Iowa, poses with his parents, Ron and Kristy Hansen. The young Hansen was wounded over the weekend in Afghanistan. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

It had been weeks since U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Sam Hansen had talked to his parents in Durant, Iowa. Then they received two calls in two days.

The first was Saturday, to wish his mom an early happy Mothers Day. The second began “I’ll be OK, but ...”

Ron and Kristy Hansen recalled the Mothers Day call their 21-year-old son made from Afghanistan to say he had been shot in the right temple.

“He didn’t sound very good,” Kristy Hansen said of the second of their three sons.

The bullet penetrated his helmet, which also slowed and redirected the projectile, causing what the Marines officially described to the Hansens as “fragmentation within the soft tissue of the right scalp, bruising of the brain on the right side and diffused swelling.”

“He said, ‘I’m going to be fine,’ ” she said. “It was good that we talked to him first.”

Knowing their son was OK made it easier to take the official phone call from the Marines, notifying them that he was in serious but stable condition.

They had seen their son on television earlier in the month during an “NBC Nightly News” report about the Marine Corps participation in a NATO surge against the Taliban.

On May 1, a family friend called to say a feature on Marines in Afghanistan was coming up on the news. An NBC reporter was embedded with Hansen’s unit. The parents were excited to catch a glimpse of their son.

“We turned it on, and 30 seconds in, there was Sam walking through a mud hut,” Ron Hansen said. “It must have been a secure area because he had his helmet off.”

“It was just amazing to see him. He looked great,” Kristy Hansen recalled.

Hansen’s unit in the 1st Marines, 6th Battalion, has been in Afghanistan for several months, and he had been able to speak with his family with some regularity until his unit was deployed to the southern part of the country three weeks ago as part of a surge against the Taliban.

Over the weekend, Hansen’s unit was operating in Helmand province in Afghanistan when it came under fire. He climbed into the turret of a Humvee to find the source of the attack and return fire. His commanding officer warned him to keep his head down because of the accuracy of the fire. Then, “his body vibrated like a tuning fork,” Ron Hansen said.

Their son is in a military hospital in Kandahar and is expected to be evacuated to Germany later this week, then to a stateside military hospital. The Hansens will get travel vouchers to visit their son.

Because the military lists the injury as serious, the Hansens receive daily updates on their son’s medical progress. They’ve spoken to him a few times, and he is already talking about a return to duty in Afghanistan as soon as he is eligible.

Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.