Prior to the theater prohibition on use of non-issue body armor, USMC Sergeant Will Silcox wore
the C.P.E. TAC SF vest in Iraq. He spray painted it sand color and took it with him into Iraq in
September 2004. The vest went everywhere with him. In his own words,
important to me, because it was so hot there. I did wear Government Issue for a little portion of
the time before we got into Fallujah.”
Silcox took two grenades and at least three 7.62 rounds of AK-47 fire to the chest and lived to tell
the story.
The vest he was wearing had the C.P.E. Exote plates front and back, but no side plates. His only
protection there was the Dyneema side panels built into the C.P.E. vest. Sergeant Silcox’s
experience was a harrowing one. The night of the 8 November while he was on watch, his unit
came under mortar attack. In his words:
buddy took a chunk of brick from the building. My buddy’s body armor showed the effect, mine
had no marks, and no bruising on me. On the 10 November we went into a courtyard. We had
been clearing buildings, encountering small arms mostly. We found three insurgents. One threw
a grenade, which landed about five feet from us. My buddy had time to yell, “Grenade!” I didn’t
have time to do anything. The blast hit my legs and the vest took hits from the grenade in the
back and the side of the vest. None of that shrapnel made it through the vest. You could see
where the shrapnel hit and went through the elastic part, didn’t make it through the Dyneema.
I got up, got my bearings, my buddy tossed me my weapon, and we were attacked again with a
second grenade thrown through a window by an insurgent above us. The guy cooked it off,
because it was an air-burst and again I took some of it in my leg. I don’t know if I was hit in the
side, if I was the vest took care of it. The vest was peppered up pretty good on the right side from
the grenade shrapnel. Nothing went through. There’s no plate on that side. A fellow Marine who’d
been shot through the ankle and a SEAL picked me up and we moved out of the courtyard and
found ourselves in am ambush situation, about 25 meters away. An L-shaped ambush. I took a
burst to the chest. My guys took out the insurgents, they pulled me over to shelter and the
corpsman, after which my Marines carried me over to a safe area and I was medevac’d.”
“Nothing went through the vest. I didn’t take any shrapnel anywhere that I was wearing the vest. I
still have shrapnel in my left arm and in both legs. The C.P.E. Tac vest did not have side plates,
but it did have plates front and back. The Exote plates worked, I’ve seen Government Issue
plates crack after two rounds, sometimes three, but I know the plates in my vest didn’t crack and
one round that hit was stuck in the Dyneema, just mushroomed in there. You could see where
another two rounds hit, there was this little lead flaking. Other than that you wouldn’t ever have
known I got hit. There was no bruising in the chest; I didn’t feel it, it was right in the area of my
sternum. I didn’t even know I got hit, I just got knocked backwards.”
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