Morris found an opening between two trailers, and the squad drove through it, emerging in the middle of the kill zone -- where gunfire is most heavily concentrated during an attack.
A blizzard of small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades followed.
"Flank 'em down the road!" Nein yelled.
Just ahead was a paved side road. Morris accelerated to make the turn. But before he could, Cooper, exposed in the turret, saw a rocket-propelled grenade coming toward him. "I saw smoke and a black dot," he recalled. "All I had time to say was, 'Oh crap.' "
The projectile exploded on the armored lip above the rear passenger's side window. The Humvee fishtailed and Cooper dropped with a thud into the cab. His limp body lay across the steel platform where he had stood moments before. His head bobbed facedown in the footwell. Nein said he reached back and shook him.
"Coop, are you okay?" he screamed. Cooper didn't move.
"Believing he was dead, I began to climb up on top of him to get up on the weapon," Nein said. Cooper suddenly bolted upright.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," Cooper said he told Nein. He climbed back into the turret.
Incredibly, the Humvee was still running. Morris turned onto the side road. Bullets poured into the grill. Oil spurted up onto the windshield. Morris flipped on the wipers, smearing oil over the thick glass.
He stopped about 200 yards down the road. The second Humvee, with Pullen driving and Hester in the passenger seat, stopped about 50 yards behind. The third Humvee made the turn and stopped just beyond the corner.
Mike, the hulking medic, looked out from the third Humvee. What he saw stunned him, he recalled. About 16 to 20 insurgents lined a trench parallel to the main road. Dozens more were firing from an orchard. Still more lined a trench that ran parallel to the side road.
The ambush was far larger than anything the squad had seen. The third Humvee was parked directly in front of the main trench where many of the insurgents were concentrated.
Woman Wins Silver Star 
