Ex-baseball player turned Marine survives nine bombings

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ASKAN, Iraq (AP) The first time Lance Cpl. Tony Stevens was bombed, it was really twice: A car packed with 155mm shells exploded next to his Humvee just as a roadside bomb of five more shells went off under it.

It was about two weeks into the 26-year-old's second tour in Iraq.

By the ninth bomb a rigged explosives hitting his convoy Stevens, a former shortstop with the New Britain (Conn.) Rock Cats, the Minnesota Twins' ''Double A'' farm team had become the good luck-bad luck icon of his hard-hit 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment in the so-called triangle of death south of Baghdad.

With a couple of weeks to go now until he returns home, Stevens has become a man who is maybe counting the days a little bit harder than most, and a seasoned, battle-hardened veteran of the laws of physics.

''When you hear the explosion, that's actually good,'' Stevens says, pointing out the fact that because sound travels relatively slowly, hearing the blast means you've already survived. ''It means you're still in the game.''

Stevens' deployment landed him at the center of what the U.S. military calls ''Improvised Explosive Devices,'' or IEDs.

Some of the bombs are VBEIDs: ''Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices,'' military-speak for car bombs.

It's by no means unusual for Marine patrols on the two-lane roads through the gray-and-brown fields and concrete-built towns to come across three or four bombs a day. Sometimes, it's more. Many more.

The bombs contribute to a Marine injury rate of one-out-of-every-five in the six-month-old deployment here. The bombs also claim the lives of U.S.-allied Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guardsmen, patrolling in their unarmored pickups and cars.

Many Marines here have been bombed two or three times, and a couple seven or eight.

Stevens, at nine, appears to hold the title that no one wants to break.

Stevens' streak started Aug. 8.

His unit was going to check on a mortar attack when it rolled next to the one bomb and on top of the second.

Marines tended the wounded in what they later realized was a field of undetonated bombs. ''We were pretty much walking on top of them,'' Stevens says. Still, no Marines have been killed in any of the bombings with him.

Bomb No. 2 was Aug. 9 the next morning. That bomb was a freezer filled with five 155mm shells and set off by a detonating cord left on the road. It cost a fellow Marine some of his fingers.

Bomb No. 3 exploded on a security patrol. It injured a Marine riding in the turret of Stevens' vehicle.

That was October.

''October to Thanksgiving we were pretty much hitting one every time we went out,'' Stevens says.

Bomb No. 4 hit his vehicle. No wounded.

Bomb No. 5 hit his vehicle, and sheared off a live power line overhead, sending it, sparking, on top of the neck collar of Stevens' flack jacket. He shows the ripped, burned material. ''Two-in-one on that one,'' he says.

Bomb No. 6 through 9 hit his convoys.

In factory-armored Humvees the vehicles of choice for patrols Marines know they can survive all but the biggest bombs and the unluckiest hits. ''It's not that we laugh about it, but we joke a lot, once we know it's all right,'' he says.

What saves his life, Stevens doesn't know. He doesn't do anything special. ''Just pray. That's all you can do in this place.''

What saves his spirits are the Internet and phones, put in not long ago at the Marines' forward operating base. ''That way you can call the wife, say it's been an easy day, even though you've just got hit with an IED.''

Each bomb was worth it, Stevens says, adding that he would sign up again. He speaks against a backdrop of explosions, as his company sets off cratering blasts, destroying a dirt road to keep it from being used by insurgents for election-day attacks.

''We came here and accomplished our mission,'' Stevens says. The triangle of death has seen attacks drop sharply. Local security forces have more confidence. Crowds are friendlier.

''Ow!'' the Marine standing next to Stevens shouts. The man grabs a right wrist slapped numb by a stinging chunk of dirt hurled by the cratering blast a quarter-mile-plus away.

''I told you not to be around me,'' Stevens says, going after the hunched-over Marine. ''How many days we got left?''



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