FORT HOOD, Texas — Pfc. Marquest Smith, on his way to Afghanistan in January, was completing routine paperwork about a bee-sting allergy when the sounds erupted.
A loud, popping noise. Moans. The sudden, urgent shout of “Gun!” Smith poked his head over the cubicle’s partition and saw an Army officer with two guns, firing into the crowded room.
The 21-year-old Fort Worth native grabbed the civilian worker who had been helping with his paperwork and forced her under the desk. He lay low for several minutes, waiting for the shooter to run out of ammunition and wishing he, too, had a gun.
After the shooter stopped to reload, Smith made a run for it.
Pushing two other soldiers in front of him, he made it out of the Soldier Readiness Processing center — only to plunge back into the building twice to help the wounded.
Smith had survived the worst mass shooting on an American military base, a rampage that left 13 dead and 30 wounded, including the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
It could have been much worse, but for the heroics of Smith and others — like the 19-year-old private who ignored her own wounds, and the diminutive civilian police officer who took down Hasan.
“Unfortunately over the past eight years, our Army has been no stranger to tragedy,” said a somber Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff. “But we are an Army that draws strength from adversity. And hearing the stories of courage and heroism that I heard today makes me proud to be the leader of this great Army.”
Coming and going
At the processing center on the southern edge of the 100,000-acre base, soldiers returning from overseas mingled with colleagues filling out forms and undergoing medical tests in preparation for deployment.
About 1:30 p.m., witnesses say a man later identified as Hasan jumped up on a desk and shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” He had two pistols, one a semiautomatic capable of firing up to 20 rounds without reloading.
Packed into cubicles with 5-foot-high dividers, the 300 unarmed soldiers were sitting ducks. Those who weren’t hit by direct fire were struck by rounds ricocheting off the desks and tile floor.
When he decided that Hasan wasn’t close to being out of ammo, Smith made a dash for the door. He had made it outside when he heard cries from within.
Smith rushed back inside and found two wounded. He grabbed them by their collars and dragged them outside.
His second time through the door, he ran into the shooter, whose back was to him. Smith turned and fled, bullets whizzing by his head and hitting the walls as he rushed outside.
Afterward, Smith noticed a hole in the heel of his right combat boot. A bullet had entered the boot, but he had somehow escaped injury — at least the physical kind.
After the adrenaline wore off, Smith was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal because this assailant who spilled so much blood was a soldier.
“We’re supposed to be a family,” he said.
