Soldier killed on July 4th in Afghanistan was only 18 years old

DoD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Pvt. Errol D.A. Milliard, 18, of Birmingham, Ala., died July 4 in Farah province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his unit with a rocket propelled grenade while on dismounted patrol. He was assigned to the 2nd Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade, White Sands Missile Range, N.M.

Soldier gets 15 months after accidentally firing RPG into another soldier

Plea deal gets soldier 15 months after he killed comrade in ‘inexcusable’ error
May 1, 2013
ADAM ASHTON
Tacoma News Tribune

Somehow the punishment doesn’t feel like enough for the fellow soldier who took their son’s life.

What’s 15 months in jail compared to a lifetime without Neil Turner?

Leland Turner and Charlotte Cox-Turner of Tacoma are weighing that question now that they’ve returned from a court-martial in Texas where a soldier pleaded guilty to killing their son.

Spc. Francisco Perez accidentally triggered a shoulder-fired rocket launcher at Pfc. Neil Turner inside the walls of their headquarters in Afghanistan last year. The explosive pierced Turner’s chest but did not explode.

“I’ll never understand what was going through (Perez’s) brain,” Cox-Turner said in an interview with The News Tribune on Tuesday.

Turner, 21, was the oldest of four brothers and a Lincoln High School graduate. He was serving on his first combat deployment with the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division out of Fort Bliss, Texas.

Perez’s carelessness appeared so blatant that an Army judge at Fort Bliss wanted to sentence him Friday to 31 months in jail – near the high end of the maximum penalty for negligent homicide under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Perez, however, had a plea agreement that capped his sentence at 15 months.
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"You have an RPG in your leg" Marine talks about that day

Risky RPG in Marine's leg



"You have an RPG in your leg"

Editor's note: Watch Barbara Starr's report on Sanjay Gupta MD (Saturday at 430pET/Sunday at 730aET).

By Ashley Fantz, with reporting from Barbara Starr and Larry Shaughnessy

If it were a movie, the moment would play slowly.

The big, boyish eyes of 23-year-old Marine Cpl. Winder Perez would widen. His lips would part. The sound of chaos around him would be muted as he watched a rocket-propelled grenade zooming toward him.

Then, snapped back to real time, Perez would look down and think: "Oh, crap! I have an RPG in my leg!"

The whole thing, the entire, awful metal Nerf football-looking RPG was lodged inside his mangled leg. It was maybe a foot long. Its tail - fins, kind of - poked out.

In his shock, the Marine instinctively grabbed his radio to call for help, not realizing that it was totaled.
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Risky RPG Removal from Marine's Leg

UPDATE Marine talks about what happened that day.

You have an RPG in your leg

Risky RPG Removal from Marine's Leg
Posted 2 days ago by Member 26835147 Lt. Cmdr. Gennari talks to CNN's Brooke Baldwin about his risky role in the removal of a live rocket-propelled grenade embedded in a Marine's leg.



UPDATE

Pulling A Live Rocket From A Wounded Marine Is All Part Of The Job For This Navy Sailor
Robert Johnson
Jun. 2, 2012

It's part of the job for American medical teams to care for civilians caught up in the bloody mess of Afghanistan fighting, so when a call came over the radio January 12, to help an injured three-year-old girl, an Army medical team rushed to save her.

The child had a bullet lodged in her back and had been doused by shrapnel, but when the medical unit arrived they found an even more pressing problem — a 22-year-old Marine Lance Corporal named Winder Perez had been hit as well — and the rocket propelled grenade (RPG) that had taken him down lay unexploded in his leg.
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Sgt. Jose Navarro recovers from RPG that went through him

Soldier survived ambush while serving in Afghanistan
By Monica Rodriguez, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/26/2008 11:23:26 PM PDT

POMONA - Sgt. Jose Navarro was anxiously awaiting winter's arrival in Afghanistan.

Once the cold set in, the enemy would take refuge and so could Navarro and the other members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.

It was October when Navarro's convoy of 11 Humvees entered a village to establish relations with the elders and prevent future attacks on U.S. troops.

There was only one way to enter and leave, the 23-year-old Pomona native said, and it was a long, narrow road edged by orchards, mountain sides and steep dropoffs.

"Another platoon had been up there and got wasted," Navarro said. "The terrain favors the enemy."

When the convoy left the village, Navarro was in the second Humvee.

"I was right behind the lead truck coming out of the village and everyone was gone. You know something is going on," he said.

"I saw a dude with a white turban on and I could see his eyes," he said. "He detonated an IED," an improvised explosive device.

Rocket-propelled grenades followed and soon the lead truck was destroyed. The fire shifted to the vehicle Navarro was in.

More RPGs came and Navarro, who was operating a machine gun, fired back.

In the course of the attack, a rocket-propelled grenade hit Navarro. It didn't explode, but left him with massive injuries to his hips and thighs. After passing through Navarro, the grenade kept going. It eventually exploded, injuring five other people in the Humvee, he said.

"I wasn't supposed to be in the gunner hole," he said referring to where he was sitting.

Actually, he wasn't supposed to be on the trip at all. He was 11 months into a 15-month deployment, and had gone out in place of a friend simply because he wanted to be busy that day.
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