In 1942 a small American publisher began producing 'Heart Shield' New Testaments — pocket-sized Scriptures sheathed in a thin steel plate behind the leather cover, sized to fit in the breast pocket of a US Army uniform. Each carried a foreword by President Franklin D. Roosevelt: 'As Commander-in-Chief I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States.'
By war's end millions had been distributed. Multiple soldiers reported that the steel-faced Testaments had deflected or stopped bullets — the best-known case being a soldier surnamed Phillips, ambushed during the Battle of the Bulge (winter 1944–45), shot five times, and saved when one round lodged in the Heart Shield Bible over his heart. The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, holds examples in its permanent collection.
The museum itself does not claim the Heart Shield Bibles were reliably bulletproof — a steel sheet a millimetre thick is no certain defense against high-velocity rounds. What it does record is the deep devotional significance these little books held for the men who carried them, and the documented cases — varying in their physics, identical in their gratitude — of soldiers who came home because of what they kept over their hearts.