LCpl. Rober Mininger

(reprinted from Philly.com, June 10, 2005)

A Bucks County Marine, killed Monday by an explosion in Iraq, had told his mother in his last phone call to her two weeks earlier that his humvee only recently had been given upgraded armor protection.

The mother said yesterday that her son had escaped several previous roadside attacks on his unit, which has been conducting night patrols in the restive city of Fallujah.

"He did, in fact, reassure me that his hummer was just upgraded; they put armor under the seats, and they had just upgraded the sides," said Paula Zwillinger, mother of Lance Cpl. Robert T. Mininger.

Mininger, 21, of Sellersville, was one of two Marines killed in what the Pentagon described as "a result of an explosion while conducting combat operations against enemy forces."

Mininger's father, Thomas, said Marine officials who visited his Bucks County home Wednesday had reported that the blast was from an "improvised explosive device" that had gone off "either right beside or under the humvee he was in."

Thomas Mininger said the Marines had volunteered, without his asking, that the vehicle was "the most up-armored hummer they had."

The Marines and the Army have struggled to supply adequate armor protection on humvees and trucks used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Marines were quicker than the Army in getting some level of armor protection - if only bolted-on plates - onto all of its vehicles last year.

But both services have said they will need until later this year to apply better-grade armor - principally in the form of factory-made kits - onto all vehicles.

Scott Allen, a Marine Corps official, said that of the 3,000 humvees the Marines are using in Iraq, about one-third are equipped with the highest level of protection. The goal is to have all humvees at that level by December, he said.

Members of Congress and family members of service personnel have criticized the pace of the up-armoring program. Military leaders have said that had they started early on to armor all vehicles, they could have completed the job well before now.

Thomas Mininger said of his son yesterday: "My consolation is that he was as well-protected as he could be."

Robert Mininger, like all Marines in Iraq, had up-to-date body armor. Yet it didn't protect him from shrapnel that his father was told had hit his chest.

Mininger was a member of the weapons company of the Third Battalion of the Eighth Marine Regiment, a part of the Second Marine Division.

Lt. Col. Stephen Neary, the battalion commander, did not respond yesterday to an e-mail request for information on how Mininger's vehicle was equipped. The request was forwarded to him by the public affairs office at the Second Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Neary, on Wednesday, recorded a weekly message for family members of troops who call an 800 number. He mentioned that his weapons company had been "fighting and chasing insurgents on the highways of Iraq."

The message made no mention of Monday's operation, in which Mininger and Lance Cpl. Jonathan L. Smith, 22, of Eva, Ala., had died.

But Neary asked for prayers for wounded Marines, "as well as those Marines who have gone before us."

Mininger's parents said they received word yesterday that their son would be buried at 11 a.m. June 20 in Arlington National Cemetery. Arrangements for a service at a funeral home in Lansdale were incomplete last night.