Protective underwear girds against IEDS
Garments — ‘like a Kevlar diaper’ — have prevented some injuries
WASHINGTON — Staff Sgt. Ross Cox’s wounds from the buried bomb were horrific enough: left foot blown off, right leg shattered, three tourniquets strapped to his bleeding limbs.
As he lay in the Afghan dirt Nov. 15, he thought about getting home to his wife and four children. Something else occurred to him. What about his genitals? He’d been wearing just-issued ballistic underwear. Still.
“I asked once. I said, ‘Hey, are those OK?’ ” Cox says. “He’s like, “‘Yeah, you’re fine. You’re fine there.’ That’s all I needed to know.”
Cox, 36, credits the “protective undergarments,” or PUGS — “like a Kevlar diaper” — with saving his genitals and preventing bomb fragments from tearing into his crotch and abdomen.
New research backs him up. Without the armored shorts, nearly three in four servicemembers who lost legs to bomb blasts also suffered genital injuries from February 2010 to February 2011, according to the Joint IED Defeat Organization. That dropped to less than half for servicemembers wearing PUGS from February 2011 to last month.
Two types of PUGS have been fielded to troops by the Army. The shorts keep dirt and fine debris from bomb blasts from piercing the skin. A protective cup shields troops from larger fragments.
The Defense Department has spent more than $40 billion to buy Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to protect troops from roadside bombs. Troops on foot patrol, a common practice in the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, have had little more than their boots and pants between them and a blast. More than 1,440 servicemembers have lost limbs in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Army.
Beyond protecting servicemembers from wounds, PUGS can affect morale, says Jim Martin, a sociologist at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and a retired Army colonel.
“It conveys a very strong message on the part of the Army and government to give you the best equipment possible,” Martin says, “that they’re not just concerned about executing the mission but your safety and well-being, too.”
The Army is fielding new gloves with better protection after reports showed soldiers losing their fingers when bomb debris pierced the fabric, says Lt. Gen. William Phillips, a top Army procurement official.
Cox and his soldiers from a Stryker brigade from Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska, had been skeptical of PUGS when they were issued.
Their attitude changed when an improvised explosive device wounded a soldier from another platoon “that pretty much took the lower half of his body,” Cox says. “Had he been wearing that piece of equipment, would it have helped? I don’t know.”
Cox hopes his wounds and the ones he was spared help persuade other soldiers to wear PUGS.
“I’m glad that maybe me getting hurt maybe protected some other people, too,” he says. “A lot of gear that we have we feel is burdensome. It is ridiculous — but this literally saved my butt.”