Ex-SEAL vies to fortify U.S. combat trucks

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WINSTON SALEM, N.C. -- Former Navy SEAL Chris Berman is building two versions of an armored combat vehicle competing for a piece of the MRAP pie.

MRAP is a U.S. Defense Department acronym for the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle design that soldiers want and contractors are bidding on to build in great numbers. Mr. Berman, who operates Granite Tactical and Granite Global Vehicles, is one such contractor. But he'll argue, it's not about money. It's about saving lives on Iraq's deadly highways.

On the morning of March 31, 2004, Mr. Berman -- then a SEAL Reservist and Blackwater security officer -- was driving in the south of Iraq near Umm Qasr when he received a satellite phone call that literally changed his life.

His friend, former SEAL Scott Helvenston, and three other Blackwater contractors -- Wesley Batalona, Jerko "Jerry" Zovko and Michael R. Teague -- were northwest of Mr. Berman's position escorting a convoy through the city of Fallujah. Driving in two unarmored thin-skinned Mitsubishi Pajeros (the same type of vehicle Mr. Berman was in), they were ambushed by insurgents.

The four men didn't have a chance. Their sport utility vehicles were riddled with small-arms fire then doused with gasoline and torched. The bodies were then dragged from the vehicles and mutilated. Two were hanged on a bridge over the Euphrates River.

The shocking attack led to a subsequent U.S. Marine-led assault on Fallujah.

Mr. Berman had originally been scheduled to be with the ill-fated team in Fallujah but was reslated at the last minute to another detail escorting civilians to Camp Bucca.

"That would have been me," he says. "Instead, it was Scotty and my other friends."

Mr. Berman escorted the remains home, flying all four bodies to Dover Air Force Base, Del. Before Mr. Helvenston's funeral in Florida, Mr. Berman stopped by a Ford dealership and asked to look at a Ford F-550. He then crawled beneath the truck for a peek at the heavy duty frame and chassis he thought might be used in the development of a fully armored vehicle. It would be a truck for service by defense contractors and perhaps U.S. troops in Iraq.

"I knew I had to try and save lives," he says.