A DJ (I-pod) saved my life last night.....

I have mentioned before the weirdly indestructible resilience of i-pods and their equally annoying habit of breaking down and self-repairing and in all honesty my i-pod has 'saved my life' on many a long distance travel but this story is another example of them being tough (though not indestructible) blighters.

Soldier saved by an iPod

Tuesday we wrote about the Army's new body armor. The same day, we've just learned, a different kind of armor saved a soldier in Iraq:
An iPod.

The music player stopped a 7.62 mm round from an insurgent's AK-47.
Flickr has photos of the 20GB pod.
Here's the accompanying text:

My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.
The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

Yesterday, the poster said that an Apple engineer had passed the photos around and that Apple folks want to help Garrad get a new iPod.

Update at 5:35 p.m. ET, April 9: In an update to the original Flickr post, Garrard makes it clear that his updated body armor actually stopped the bullet and that the damaged iPod was how he learned he'd been hit. There's more about "the real story" from HavanaLion, with reefers and discussion at Cult of Mac, The Raw Feed and others.
Meanwhile, the folks over at DefenseTech picked up the story and have started "a little Good Friday contest": How many more tactical uses are out there for the ever-popular iPod?