He looks like he doesn’t play right? Here are some statistics on Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson, the U.S. soldier with over 2,746 kills.
With 2,746 confirmed kills, Sgt. 1st Class Dillard Johnson is the deadliest American soldier on record — and maybe the most humble.
As a commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle nicknamed “Carnivore,” Johnson, 48, helped lead the ground assault during Operation Iraqi Freedom, overwhelming the enemy with a relentless show of military might that left a trail of dead in his wake.
Johnson was obliged to report confirmed kills to his superiors, cataloging the dead in a green journal that revealed the astonishing tally — which only began to come light as he and co-writer James Tarr were researching his exploits for his memoir, also titled “Carnivore.”
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Johnson, 48, grew up in Island, Ky., hanging out in strip mines and hunting deer with his daddy’s gun. His first kill came at the tender age of 13, when he nailed a six-point buck with a .22-caliber rifle.
In high school, he joined the ROTC, and in 1986, he joined the Army, fulfilling a childhood dream spawned from the pages of comic books.
“When I was growing up, everyone wanted to be an astronaut, a cowboy, or a firefighter. I wanted to be Sgt. Rock,” he said, referring to DC Comics’ gritty WWII hero.
He has a bullet permanently lodged in his leg, and the battlefield left him with a new enemy to fight — Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He believes he developed the cancer from inhaling particles from armor-piercing depleted uranium (DU) shells — which turn radioactive when superheated upon firing — but he has no regrets.
“I’m not upset that the DU gave me cancer. If I hadn’t had the DU rounds, there were vehicles that I wouldn’t have been able to destroy that would have killed me,” he said.
The cancer was in remission but returned in January. He will undergo chemotherapy at the end of the summer.
These days, Johnson lives in Daytona Beach, Fla., is married with four kids and works as a consultant for an ammunition company. He doesn’t display his accolades or wartime souvenirs — not even the Iraq flag he took off Saddam Hussein’s limousine.
NY Post