Marine Corps News, news from Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Marine recovering after being shot in head

Lance Cpl. Sam Hansen was on a Mother’s Day vehicle patrol in Taliban-heavy Garmser, Afghanistan, when insurgents opened fire.

An assaultman with Weapons Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, Hansen made a move for the vehicle’s gun turret, said his father, Ron Hansen. The Marine wanted to “rack the [Squad Automatic Weapon],” his father said, readying the gun to return fire if he and the Marines he was with could identify who was shooting.

Huddling in the turret, the younger Hansen received directions from his commanding officer to keep his head down — insurgents in the area had shown recent accuracy. But it was too late.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

The lance corporal’s body began ringing “like a tuning fork,” he later told his father.

Hansen, 21, had been shot in the head. But despite a round penetrating his Kevlar helmet and striking him in the right temple, Sam was alive and conscious.

“I think of that and I say, ‘We’re so, so lucky,’” Ron Hansen said. “It wasn’t Sam’s time, I guess.”

The lance corporal called his parents’ home in Durant, Iowa, on Mother’s Day morning their time, to tell them he was OK and recuperating in a military hospital in Kandahar province, which 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit has used as a staging area.

A few hours later, Marine officials also called, saying Hansen was in serious but stable condition and had “fragmentation within the soft tissue of the right scalp, bruising of the brain on the right side and diffused swelling,” Ron Hansen said. He also needed stitches to close a wound on his temple.

Capt. Kelly Frushour, a 24th MEU spokeswoman, confirmed the story by e-mail from Afghanistan. Assistant Commandant Gen. Robert Magnus awarded Hansen a Purple Heart on May 15 while visiting his unit, she said.

Hansen was taken from Multinational Medical Command in Kandahar province May 16 to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, then on to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., on Friday for additional observation and testing.

Ron Hansen said his son, who gave up playing football at Wartburg College in Iowa to enlist, was looking forward to another deployment.

“He knows he’s very fortunate,” Ron Hansen said. “One of the other guys in his vehicle took control of the situation [after Sam was shot], and he couldn’t say enough about him.”