'The next thing, shots rang out'

The only things that made Staff Sgt. Clifford Neighbors stand out from the other 84 National Police Training Team members who returned to Hohenfels, Germany, in February were the medals plastered across the front of his uniform.

The medals gave an indication of the horrific injuries he suffered last August when a sniper’s bullet pierced his arm, heart and both lungs in an attack in Baghdad. His Iraqi interpreter died during the attack.

The 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment soldier received his wounds while checking on Iraqi National Police checkpoints, according to Capt. Todd Jones, deputy team chief of 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade, National Police Transition Team, which Neighbors was assigned to as operations noncommissioned officer in Iraq.

“The team was involved in a complex attack from an insurgent cell in northeast Baghdad on one of the highways. We secured the area and waited on EOD (explosive ordnance disposal),” Jones recalled.

While Neighbors was providing security, he and one of the team’s interpreters were shot by a sniper, he said.

The interpreter suffered a fatal wound to the chest. Neighbors, also shot in the chest, made it back into the vehicle and managed to get his vest off so the vehicle gunner could apply first aid, he said.

Once the interpreter was moved into the vehicle, Neighbors helped apply pressure to the interpreter’s chest wound while the team rushed them to a combat surgical hospital, he said.

“On the way back … Neighbors continued to assist with first aid despite the pain of his … injuries. Later, we found that … Neighbors was shot in the lung and a small portion of his heart,” Jones said.

Neighbors remembers three IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, going off shortly before he was hit.

“I was in the rear vehicle, and me and the interpreter got out. The next thing, shots rang out,” he recalled.

A bullet pierced his triceps and then went through his lung, heart and the other lung before exiting through his chest, he said.

Neighbors is back with his unit and gradually recovering from his wounds.

Jones describes him as: “a huge guy always with a smile on his face and a coffee in his hand.”

The Odessa, Texas, native lives and breathes football and makes friends wherever he goes, Jones added.

“He learned German quickly and has many German local-national friends. He is well known in many circles in Germany, and you pretty much can’t go anywhere out in town without finding someone that knows him,” he said.