American soldiers found themselves in the middle of a battlefield at Ft. Hood Thursday, and as they are trained to do, when the bullets started flying, many ran to help.
Private Marquest Smith was talking with a civilian in the soldier readiness center when shots rang out Thursday afternoon.
“I could hear them going past my head and hitting the door,” Smith said. “We heard yelling and moaning and someone said ‘gun!’ And that's when I stood up to see where the gun was, and I grabbed her by her collar and threw her to the ground and pushed her up under the desk.”
As he tried to take cover, a bullet came through the cubicle wall and chair and hit his boot.
“Heard someone say he's out of rounds and that's when he opened the sliding door to the cubicle, and he started shooting again, so I closed the sliding door back,” he said.
When the shooting stopped again, Smith tried to run out of the building and found himself in the line of fire.
“When I turned to run, that's when I started hearing rounds going past me hitting the wall,” he said.
Outside, he helped several of the wounded into the pickup of a friend who was waiting for him. That friend, Private Jeffrey Pearsall, turned his truck into a makeshift ambulance.
“I saw a window break. I started hearing gunshots, and at that time I saw another soldier running out with chest wounds.”
He raced to nearby Darnall Medical Center with his truck full of wounded soldiers and civilians and was the first to deliver wounded there.
“I'm still in shock, just knowing people in the army would actually do something like that,” he said.
The shootings drew personal visits from Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff George W. Casey, Jr. They and others visited many of the wounded Friday morning.
“Unfortunately, over the past eight years, our Army has been no stranger to tragedy, but we are an army that draws strength from adversity,” Casey said.
“We wanted them to know and we want Americans to know the United States Army and the United States government stands ready to offer them any possible assistance, not just today and not just through the weekend, but through what undoubtedly will be very troubled, very challenging times ahead,” McHugh said.
There was an army-wide moment of silence today just after 1:30 p.m. to honor those wounded and killed in the shootings Thursday.
