Three Fort Hood soldiers received Purple Hearts on Oct. 1 after surviving an Iranian ballistic missile strike at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Days after the ceremony, the Army released a rare firsthand account of the attack and the struggles the soldiers faced after returning to Texas.

Staff Sgt. Kalob Mitchell, Sgt. Xavier Jones and Spc. Nicholas Cabo served as air defense soldiers with the 56th Air Defense Artillery Regiment. Their unit was struck on March 27 as air defense forces faced hundreds of drone and missile attacks across the region during the Iran war.

The attack began with a harsh mechanical warning familiar to many modern service members. Alarm Red sounded across the Saudi base, followed by a voice repeating “incoming” three times.

Mitchell, Jones, Cabo and other soldiers took cover inside a bunker as the missiles arrived. One exploded only yards away, hurling all three soldiers against the opposite interior wall and knocking them unconscious.

“We’re sitting there talking, and then all of a sudden, we didn’t hear anything, no sound at all. Everything went black,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell regained consciousness when another soldier woke him, according to audio recordings released by the Army. He then checked Jones and Cabo, who had also survived the blast.

Cabo found that his leg was bleeding, but the injury initially seemed minor to him. “I think it was just the adrenaline because after we woke up, I checked myself,” Cabo said. “I just saw that my leg was a little bit bleeding, so I didn’t really mind it. It wasn’t anything like crazy bleeding.”

Other soldiers in the bunker were in far worse condition. One had a severe leg injury and was bleeding heavily, while another had suffered an injury to the neck.

Although injured themselves, Mitchell, Jones and Cabo moved to help. They placed a tourniquet on the wounded soldier’s leg, treated other injuries and helped calm another soldier who was disoriented after the strike.

Image Credit: DoW

When additional troops arrived with litters, the three soldiers helped carry the casualties from the bunker. Cabo said their response may have prevented one of the wounded soldiers from dying.

“That guy probably would have died because he was bleeding a lot from his right leg, and good thing Sgt. Mitchell just came up really quick, then called for us and we helped him out,” Cabo said.

During the Fort Hood ceremony, their commander read a note received from one of the injured soldiers. “Sir, your soldiers saved my life. I thank God every day that these gentlemen survived,” the note said.

The three soldiers also recognized how narrowly they had escaped death. The missile warhead that exploded near their bunker contained about 250 kilograms of explosive, compared with about 750 kilograms in some of the larger weapons that struck the base.

“It was about 250 kilograms of explosive versus what some of the bigger ones they had hit us with, which were about 750,” Mitchell said. “And all it would have took was it being one of those, and we wouldn’t have been here.”

Returning home brought a different set of problems. Cabo received treatment at three hospitals, beginning in Germany, continuing in Virginia and ending at Fort Hood, but he said balancing appointments with regular military duties became stressful.

Cabo also experienced moments of paranoia. While visiting a Sam’s Club near a small airfield outside Fort Hood, the sound of a small plane overhead briefly made him believe a drone was approaching.

Jones described feeling disconnected from ordinary routines and activities. “I’m trying to get back to reality, trying to get anxiety back down, trying to just not be as alert, trying to reintegrate,” Jones said in the release.

He also said work felt different after the deployment. “I was at work a couple of weeks before I took leave, and it just was … it felt different. Like it felt non-serious, and it just was throwing me off because seeing everybody have fun. We had fun too, but … it was just different.”

The soldiers reported trouble sleeping and withdrawing from social activities. Jones said he had largely stopped going out, despite previously enjoying it.

They encouraged other troops facing similar struggles after deployment to seek treatment. Mitchell acknowledged that service members can face a stigma around medical care but said the issues were real and needed attention.

The Army told Task & Purpose that it had awarded 184 Purple Hearts to active duty soldiers and reservists wounded or killed while supporting U.S. combat operations in Iran. The Pentagon reported 865 injured troops, including 649 soldiers from the Army or Army Reserve.

Pentagon figures also showed that 21 troops died while deployed to the Iran war, including 11 killed by hostile fire. All 11 deaths directly attributed to Iranian action occurred in missile strikes or resulted from them.

“I guess I’d say that it kind of puts it in perspective that we went, we did our job to the best of our ability and we almost paid the ultimate price,” Mitchell said.

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