--Were they provided with anything to mitigate the damage to their persons in the event they were attacked (mil-spec body armor?)--
This is a town of less than 400 people. The whole county has ONE zipcode. The median FAMILY income is less than 20k. The median home value is about 20K. As of 2000.
And they needed a NEW line bad enough to get people killed over it? No bigger than that they could have re-routed the darned thing.