Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden is on duty in Afghanistan now after tours with the Army in Iraq. He has traveled with standard-issue equipment -- weapons, helmet, uniform, boots and so forth -- plus a radio-controlled model truck his brother sent.
The truck is not a toy to him. He says it just saved six soldiers' lives. It had been used by the troops to run ahead of them on patrols and look for roadside bombs. Last week it was being used on a patrol, got tangled in a trip wire connected to what Fessenden guesses could have been 500 lbs. of explosives. The bomb went off. The six soldiers controlling the truck from their Humvee were unhurt. |