Frantically, the Army tries to armor Humvees... Soft-skinned workhorses turning into death traps

By Michael Moran
Senior correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 4:51 p.m. ET April 15, 2004

The week before he died, Army Pfc. John D. Hart called his parents in Bedford, Mass., from his base in northern Iraq. Amid the joy of hearing familiar voices, the 20-year-old paratrooper told his dad that he felt exposed in the soft-skinned Humvee he and his comrades rode into battle each day.

“The full consequences of what he was telling us was not obvious at the time,” Hart’s father, Brian, said a few weeks after his son’s death. “The concern was genuine and very real.”

When Hart died in a small-arms ambush in mid-October, the Army had no official plan to “retrofit” most of the 12,000-odd Humvees in Iraq. This in spite of continuing attacks on convoys and complaints from combat units that they were taking unnecessary casualties in the thin-skinned Humvees.

There is no official figure on how many of the 728 U.S. combat deaths might have been prevented by better armor. Yet as attacks on convoys escalate, an increasing number of the deaths and injuries are being sustained in vehicles. That, combined with public pressure from bereaved parents like the Harts and their representatives in Congress, pushed the Army into action. In late March, the Army told its commanders to make “hardening” of their Humvees a priority.

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