Toy Truck Saves the Lives of Six Soldiers in Afghanistan [VIDEO]
Christopher Fessenden is a staff sergeant with the U.S. Army. He's currently stationed in Afghanistan.
Back in 2007, he was talking to his brother Ernie in Rochester, Minnesota, and told him they didn't have a way to scout ahead on roads for bombs and IEDs. So Ernie sent him a remote-controlled toy truck.
Yes, somehow with our trillion-dollar military, we still need to supplement military technology with a truck off the shelf at Toys 'R' Us.
So Christopher would send the remote-controlled truck ahead of his soldiers when they were on patrol. Eventually, other soldiers started asking him to borrow it when they were headed out without him.
Last week, Christopher lent it to a group of six soldiers. They sent the toy truck ahead of their Humvee and out of NOWHERE, it hit a trip wire and set off a bomb.
Without the truck, the six soldiers probably would've driven over the bomb and been killed in the explosion. Thanks to the toy truck, all six were completely unharmed.
The truck is a toy called the Traxxas Stampede. Ernie also hooked up a video camera to it, to help with the scouting. He says the total cost was around $500.
And Ernie says he's planning to send his brother another toy truck. He runs a nonprofit now called Fuel My Brain, which collects donations for toy trucks and other things for our troops overseas.