Adam Lee Bagby

U.S. Army Specialist Adam Bagby was serving as MP with the 27th Military Police Company during Operation Iraqi Freedom, when he was wounded in action on September 12, 2003. Below is the narrative he provided about the events associated with his being wounded and subsequently awarded the Purple Heart.

September 23rd, 2003, my team and I were running night operations. My position was the Gunner for Charlie Team. Our job was to go from MP station to MP station and double check and make sure the support had everything they needed.  That night we went from Al Mamoon IP station to BIOP for some dinner at the DEFAC.  We left the DEFAC and continued our patrols.  It was close to or around midnight when we were traveling on MSR Carinal in Abu Ghraib Village, heading towards Abu Ghraib IP station.

As we were traveling all of a sudden I lost my vision and my hearing in just a flash the second I just lost all my senses and as time as a few seconds went by my vision slowly started coming back to me and as I looked down I was sitting in the gun and as I looked down I could see how my team leader was struggling to get his seat belt off and my driver was struggling to get her seat belt off eventually they were able to get their seat belts off and then they jumped out of the vehicle from the opposite side of the vehicle where it was struck so they got out the driver's side we were struck on the passenger side. Once I saw them exit the vehicle I tried to exit the vehicle myself and I tripped over my front shield and I tumbled onto the hood of our Humvee and once again I was on fire and in fire I rolled off the hood and landed on the ground and my driver PVC Bosveld started brushing the fire off of me.

Once we were all looked at and we were at the side of the Humvee we started to receive small arms fire from the building that was adjacent to our position and the VIP vehicle from Abu Ghraib IP station pulled up in front of us on the road and started returning fire into the building and So what we did was we came from around the side of the Humvee and made a beeline straight for the IP van and the sparks were hitting the ground from where they were shooting at us the Iraqis or the insurgents and we all jumped in the van and then the van took off and headed straight towards the IP station. Once we got to the IP station, I noticed that there was blood on my leg and on my hand and on my arm and I realized I was injured and so we left the IP station and went to the mash unit at the buy up airfield. There we were treated for our injuries and we went back to Camp Victory. The next day we were issued a new Humvee, and we were back out on our next mission.