After The IED: “My Initial Assessment Of Him Was That He Was Dead”

World News Tonight awarded the Person of the Week honor to the “Soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division” on Friday night. The frightening piece described the IED attack that injured Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt through the recollections of the soldiers:

First Sgt. John McFarlane: “We were moving into an area that we knew to be a very hot zone where there’s a lot of insurgent activity.”

Maj. Bill Taylor: “I remember looking down, looking at my map … looked up and the next thing I saw was a big black cloud of smoke and I heard the boom. And immediately I knew we had hit an IED [improvised explosive device].”

Unnamed translator: “I saw just Bob’s face hanging from the hatch, and blood was dropping inside, so I pull him inside and tried to reposition him on his back. I was looking for the wounds.”

McFarlane: “First thing I saw was Doug bleeding heavily from the face. [I] made a quick assessment of him and realized that he was going to be an ambulatory case. Then I looked over and I saw Bob, who had collapsed on the floor. And my initial assessment of him was that he was dead.”

Maj. Michael Jason: “Everything happened at one time, and we were dealing with wounded and enemy fire and a multitude of elements converging on the battlefield at once. The confusion, the din, the noise, all those things happening at once.”

Taylor: “I yelled to Sgt. McFarlane, and I asked how bad are the casualties, and he said, ‘They’re bad. We have to get them out of here.'”

Taylor: “[Woodruff’s] eyes were open and I said, ‘Bob, we’re going to get you out of here. There’s a helicopter on the ground.’ He looked at me and said OK. Picked up the stretcher, we got him onto the helicopter.”

Young: “The helicopter took off, and we all just looked at each other and just stood there.”