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“W
E’RE
J
UST
G
ONNA
S
HOOT
”
A
little after Runaway’s Exciting Adventure, I came down from my
position on one of the roofs when I heard a shit-ton of rounds go off
nearby. I ran outside but couldn’t see the firefight. Then I heard a
radio call that there were men down.
A fellow I’ll call Eagle and I ran up the block until we came
across a group of Marines who’d retreated after taking fire about a
block away. They told us that a group of insurgents had pinned
down some other Marines not too far away, and we decided we’d
try and help them.
We tried getting an angle from a nearby house, but it wasn’t tall
enough. Eagle and I moved closer, trying another house. Here we
found four Marines on the roof, two of whom had been wounded.
Their stories were confusing, and we couldn’t get shots from there,
either. We decided to take them out so the wounded could be
helped; the kid I carried down had been gut-shot.
Down on the street, we got better directions from the two
Marines who hadn’t been shot, finally realizing that we had been
targeting the wrong house. We started down an alley in the direction
of the insurgents, but after a short distance we came to obstructions
we couldn’t get around, and we reversed course. Just as I came
around the corner back out onto the main street, there was an
explosion behind me—an insurgent had seen us coming and tossed
a grenade.
One of the Marines following me went down. Eagle was a
corpsman as well as a sniper, and after we pulled the injured kid
away from the alley he went to work on him. Meanwhile, I took the
rest of the Marines and continued down the road in the direction of
the insurgents’ stronghold.
We found a second group of Marines huddled at a nearby
corner, pinned down by fire from the house. They’d set out to
rescue the first group but stalled. I got everyone together and I told
them that a small group of us would rush up the street while the
others laid down fire. The trapped Marines were about fifty yards
away, about one full block.
“It doesn’t matter if you can see them or not,” I told them.
“We’re all just gonna shoot.”
I got up to start. A terrorist jumped out into the middle of the
road and began unleashing hell on us, spitting bullets from a belt-fed
weapon. Returning fire as best we could, we ducked back for
cover. Everybody checked themselves for holes; miraculously, no
one had been shot.
By now, somewhere between fifteen and twenty Marines were
there with me.
“All right,” I told them. “We’re going to try this again. Let’s do it
this time.”
I jumped out from around the corner, firing my weapon as I ran.
The Iraqi machine gunner had been hit and killed by our earlier
barrage, but there were still plenty of bad guys farther up the street.
I’d taken only a few steps when I realized that none of the
Marines had followed me.
Shit.
I kept running.
The insurgents began focusing their fire on me. I tucked my Mk-
11 under my arm and fired back as I ran. The semiautomatic is a
great, versatile weapon, but in this particular situation its twenty-
round magazine seemed awful small. I blew through one mag,
popped the release, slammed in a second, and kept firing.
I found four men huddled near a wall not far from the house. It
turned out that two of them were reporters who’d been embedded
with the Marines; they were getting a hell of a better view of the
battle than they had bargained for.
“I’ll cover you,” I shouted. “Get the hell out of here.”
I jumped up and laid down fire as they ran. The final Marine
tapped me on the shoulder as he passed, signaling that he was the
last man out. Ready to follow, I glanced to my right, checking my
flank.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a body sprawled on the
ground. He had Marine camis.
Where he came from, whether he’d been there when I arrived or
crawled there from somewhere else, I have no idea. I ran over to
him, saw that he’d been shot in both legs. I slapped a new mag into
my gun, then grabbed the back of his body armor and pulled him
with me as I retreated.
At some point as I ran, one of the insurgents threw a frag. The
grenade exploded somewhere nearby. Pieces of wall peppered my
side, from my butt cheek down to my knee. By some lucky chance,
my pistol took the biggest fragment. It was pure luck—it might have
put a nice hole in my leg.
My butt was sore for a while, but it still seems to work well
enough.
W
e made it back to the rest of the Marines without either of us
getting hit again.
I never found out who that wounded guy was. I’ve been told he
was a second lieutenant, but I never had a chance to track him
down.
The other Marines said I saved his life. But it wasn’t just me.
Getting all those guys to safety was a joint effort; we all worked
together.
The Corps was grateful that I had helped rescue their people,
and one of the officers put me in for a Silver Star.
According to the story I heard, the generals sitting at their desks
decided that, since no Marines had gotten Silver Stars during the
assault, they weren’t going to award one to a SEAL. I got a Bronze
Star with a V (for valor in combat) instead.
Makes me smirk just to think about it.
Medals are all right, but they have a lot to do with politics, and I
am not a fan of politics.
All told, I would end my career as a SEAL with two Silver Stars
and five Bronze Medals, all for valor. I’m proud of my service, but I
sure as hell didn’t do it for any medal. They don’t make me any
better or less than any other guy who served. Medals never tell the
whole story. And like I said, in the end they’ve become more
political than accurate. I’ve seen men who deserved a lot more and
men who deserved a lot less rewarded by higher-ups negotiating for
whatever public cause they were working on at the time. For all
these reasons, they are not on display at my house or in my office.
My wife is always encouraging me to organize or frame the
paperwork on them and display the medals. Political or not, she still
thinks they are part of the story of my service.
Maybe I’ll get around to it someday.
More likely, I won’t.
M
y uniform was covered with so much blood from the assault that
the Marines got one of their own for me. From that point on, I
looked like a Marine in digi cami.
It was a little weird to be wearing someone else’s uniform. But it
was also an honor to be considered a member of the team to the
point where they’d outfit me. Even better, they gave me a fleece
jacket and a fleece beanie—it was cold out there.
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