Medevac door gunner takes bullet to her helmet in rescue

Gunner takes bullet to helmet in rescue

By Jake Lowary - The (Clarksville, Tenn.) Leaf-Chronicle
Posted : Friday Sep 3, 2010 16:22:42 EDT

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Spc. Patricia Fowler says the Taliban got a lucky shot off, but she was glad to take the bullet.

Fowler, a crew chief and door gunner on a Black Hawk medevac helicopter in southern Afghanistan, earned the Purple Heart following that incident in May in which she was fractions of an inch from a much more serious injury, probably death.

“I was just doing my job, and they happened to get a lucky shot off,” she said in a phone interview from Afghanistan with The Leaf-Chronicle.

Fowler is part of Task Force Shadow and B Company, 5th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. In May, she was on a helicopter that was in the role of “medical chase,” providing air support to another helicopter sent to pick up wounded Marines.

“I feel worse for those guys than I do for us,” she said of her fellow aviators, who set down in the midst of Taliban gunfire to rescue the wounded Americans.
read more here
Gunner takes bullet to helmet in rescue