Army U S Personnel

Wounds produced by automatic and semiautomatic weapons are much more difficult to treat than conventional bullet wounds because the high-velocity slugs produce disproportionately high amounts of tissue damage, trauma experts say. With conventional weapons, the size of the injury is directly related to the size of the slug, and little damage is done to surrounding tissues.

A military judge ruled Friday that drill sergeants have so much power over trainees that they don't need to use a weapon or threaten force to be found guilty of rape. In a major setback for the defense in the court-martial of Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, the judge further stated that the women need not resist or object. The judge, Col.

Tense and tired, with weapons in hand, 12 U.S. Army Green Berets raced from a luxury hotel tower Wednesday, 28 hours after leftist guerrillas trapped them inside. They said the rebels who had occupied the Sheraton Hotel escaped Tuesday evening while church and relief workers evacuated 17 civilians from other floors of the hotel's VIP tower. "They slipped out the back," one soldier said. "They slipped down the stairwell, went out back and jumped over the wall."

The Army said Friday that press accounts of a female commander's battle exploits in Panama, later repeated by White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, were grossly exaggerated. According to widely published accounts from Panama, Army Capt. Linda Bray, 29, led a force of 30 military police in a fierce three-hour fire-fight at a Panama Defense Forces guard dog kennel that left three Panamanian soldiers dead.

The United States sent about 160 women soldiers into Panama with the invasion forces--the most extensive use of armed women in any U.S. conflict, the Army said Tuesday. Army policy does not permit women to seek out and engage the enemy in combat, but women soldiers who come under fire are allowed to defend themselves and return gunfire. And they did in Panama. "Women have always been involved in our conflicts," Army spokeswoman Paige Eversole said.

A former Army captain who was discharged from the service after revealing she is a lesbian says she plans to ask for an appointment as a chaplain if she wins her lawsuit against the Army. The Rev. Dusty Pruitt, who served as a chemical weapons expert in the Army and Army Reserve for 13 years, took a step toward her goal when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled in mid-August that the Army must reconsider her dismissal.

A U.S. soldier was shot to death while on a routine jeep patrol at Palmerola air base, the center of U.S. operations in Honduras, U.S. military officials said. They said they had no clues to the killers of Staff Sgt. Randall Harris, 34, but said his death is being treated as a criminal homicide and not as a terrorist attack. No one else was wounded in the shooting, and it was not known if another American soldier or a Honduran was responsible, a base spokesman said.

A drill sergeant who had sex with three female recruits got five months in prison and a bad-conduct discharge Wednesday in the first sentencing stemming from the burgeoning Army sex scandal. Sgt. Loren B. Taylor, 29, pleaded guilty a day earlier to breaking the ban on sex between commanders and subordinates, having consensual sex with three female recruits and trying to have sex with another. Two other instructors at Ft. Leonard Wood face similar charges.

Here is a partial list of U.S. servicemen killed in action in Panama, released Saturday by the Pentagon: From California Army Pfc. Roy Dennis Brown Jr., 19, Buena Park. Army Spec. William D. Gibbs, 22, Marina. Navy Chief Petty Officer Donald Lewis McFaul, 32, San Diego. Others Army Lt. John W. Hunter, 30, Victor, Mont. Army Chief Warrant Officer Wilson B. Owens, 29, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Army Staff Sgt. Larry R. Barnard, 29, Hallstead, Pa. Army Sgt. Michael A. Deblois, 24, Dubach, La.

The mailman in this tiny northern Pennsylvania hamlet took an hour off Thursday and the manager of the auto parts store locked up at 11 a.m. as hundreds of townspeople paused in their daily toil to say goodby to a fallen son. Staff Sgt. Larry R. Barnard, 29, father of three and husband to his high school sweetheart, Tammy, was killed Dec. 21, the second day of the invasion of Panama. But Panama seemed light years away Thursday from the rolling dairy land along the Susquehanna River.