MDW 2017
It’s Wednesday. By now BBQ parties have been cleaned up, sun headaches and hangovers are gone, and most people are back to work. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things; I’ve partaken in all those activities. In fact, we should really make the most of that weekend, why? Because troops of our armed forces made the ultimate sacrifice, giving up their lives, so that we could live ours in a free and glorious country: the United States of America.
For this reason, we should enjoy this weekend we’re blessed to have. Furthermore, we should honor our fallen heroes. Although our brothers and sisters may be gone, it’s up to us to keep their memory alive and well. Below you’ll find a text written for NPR by my former Company Commander. He is also author of a new book: Do Good and Fear No Man (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1478787244/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Ua5lzbN8N275D)
I highly recommend it and without further ado, here’s his story for NPR.
This story was written for National Public Radio’s Storycorp program in 2007.
This story is about some of the finest men I’ve ever had the distinct honor of knowing and serving with. They are what I consider to be one of the best Infantry units in the Marine Corps, Echo Company, 2d Battalion of the 6th Marine Regiment. I was fortunate enough to be the commander of this unit from 2004 through 2006 and deployed twice in that brief time to Iraq and Afghanistan. This story is about those men while deployed to Fallujah Iraq in the winter of 2005/2006.
While deployed to Fallujah, we lived in the maintainence bay of the Fallujah Train Station located on the north side of the city. Our area of responsibility was the northwestern part of the city which included the slums, the open air markets and the bridege of the Euphrates River made famous by four unfortunate Blackwater employees, and a rural stretch of countryside that bordered the Euphrates known as Azragia. The majority of the city’s population, to include some of its most dangerous streets were in our sector. All of our sector was patrolled almost exclusively on foot. There was no better way to know your area and the people in it than a foot moble security patrol.
We chose the call sign “Bounty Hunter” for our mission in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the company adopted the company call sign “Infidels” as a direct result of the beheadings that Al Queda was doing at the time. If those guys considered themselves holy warriors by cutting the heads off helpless non-combatants begging for their lives, we stood for the exact opposite and wanted to make sure we were counted among their enemies. Once in Iraq however, we worked closely with the Iraqi Army and police and didn’t have time to explain to each new organization why we chose such an inflamitory call sign, even though when we explained it, it made sense to them. In the end, the call sign “Bounty Hunter, was the choice of the company, narrowly beating out the call sign “Rick James” and “Raider.”
The Company First Sergeant is the senior enlisted advisor to the company commander, ours was First Sergeant Zickefoose. He came up through the ranks as a sniper and was a Silver Star recipient from the first gulf war. He was an amazing Marine who led by example in all things and really held the company together. In October, he had the foresight to write to an organization called Operation Santa, which sends Christmas presents to servicemen overseas. All though the months of November and December, boxes filled with wrapped Christmas presents slowly arrived addressed to the First Sergeant. The unopened boxes were kept in a storage container, out of sight from the Marines until Christmas Eve. That night, after our evening meal, the First Sergeant, company radio operators and I unloaded each box and went down the list of names of everyone in the company to ensure each Marine had a couple of presents to open on Christmas morning. By morning, all the presents were scattered around a decorated Christmas tree that someone sent from home. At 0700, everyone in the company was called into our chow hall for a company meeting, unbeknownst to them the presents that awaited.
The First Sergeant and wished everyone a Merry Christmas and served breakfast while the platoon sergeants handed out presents with santa hats on their heads. The presents weren’t much, mostly deck of playing cards, socks, candy, a few board games, etc. But the coolness of opening a wrapped Christmas present in the spartan conditions of a forward operating base in combat cannot be understated. Presents and hot chow were taken to the men on post and to our observation post in the city. That evening, we cancelled our patrols, had a special Christmas meal of roast beef, turkey, masched potatoes , dressing, green beans, corn and even chocolate cake. We let the Marines smoke cigars and cigarettes in the chow hall while we watched the only Christmas movie anyone could get their hands on…Elf with Will Ferrell. It was a good day, and we needed a good day.
About a month earlier, we lost one of the best Marines in the company, Corporal Joshua Snyder was killed 30 November 2005 by an enemy sniper. Up until that point, IEDs, grenades, RPGs and small arms ambushes were just a nuisance to us. They were a concern to our patrols, but largely ineffective. Accurate sniper fire was the only thing the insurgents found that could affect us. The Marines set aside a Christmas present with Corporal Snyder’s name on it. At that point, we were still optimistic that we could finish our deployment with minimal casualties. That attitude would soon change.
On a night patrol in the city, late one night in January 2006, PFC Kyle Brown kept seeing something following him from the rooftops. There was a curfew in the city at night, so there was absolutely no movement that was not friendly forces moving around. He later told his fireteam leader that he thought he saw a winged creature jumping from rooftop to rooftop, 30 feet or more at a time. He said he could see it with his night vision goggles on and with his naked eye, but no one else on the patrol reported seeing such a thing. He said he wanted to shoot at it, but wouldn’t be able to accurately say what he was shooting at. What ever it was scared him enough to talk to the battalion Chaplain and the most religious kid in the company, Corporal Felipe Barbosa. Corporal Barbosa was a devout Christian and could often be found reading his Bibile when others were watching movies or playing with their personal playstations. After several conversations with Corporal Barbosa, PFC Brown, who was previously unreligious, converted to Christianity and was saved. But in the following days, he still seemed distant and distracted like he couldn’t get what he’d seen out of his mind. We never found out what it was.
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I woke up on the morning of January 7th 2006 with the radio watch in our command post yelling, “QRF! QRF!” which meant for the quick reation force to get ready. We always had a platoon of Marines on standby with gear staged and manifested, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. As i was putting my gear on, the radio watch stuck his head in my room and said that one of our patrols was ambushed and had taken two killed and one wounded. I rushed into the command post as the quick reaction force assembled. I tried to make radio contact with the patrol to pin point their location and let our higher headquarters know what was happening but was unable to reach the patrol and could hear the firefight growning in intensity outside. The QRF was ready in minutes and we zoomed out of the gates and through the narrow and winding city streets towards the sound of the guns. It was about 0630 in the morning, it has just rained and there were hardly any civilians on the street yet.
The patrol in the firefight was made of two squads on foot with 10 men in each. They moved along indepedent routes a few blocks from each other using a technique called satelite patrolling. If one squad got in trouble, the other would always be in a nearby position to assist.
In this case, one squad had been ambushed by a group of insurgents using sniper fire and automatic weaons, which put the squad in a very difficult position. The squad not caught in the ambush was quickly able to maneuver behind the insurgents and fire on them, forcing them to withdraw. The whole ambush lasted about 5 minutes.
As the enemy withdrew from the fight, the Marines caught in the ambush had moved into nearby houses to treat the wounded as best they could. When the QRF and I rolled up on the scene, the streets looked like they’d been hosed down with blood. The squad caught in the ambush was clearly distraught by trying in vain to save the lives of their best friends. The squad leader, Corporal Gagliano quickly relayed to me that a sniper shot one of his Marines, Corporal Brett Lundstrom, who immediately collapsed unconscious in the street. Without hesitating, the platoon Corpsman, Doc Engles rushed into the open to get him when he too was hit. The bullet went into the side of Doc’s upper chest,through his side and hit his arm on the way out. He ran for cover on the opposite side of the street from his squad and rested behind a parked car. When Doc saw Marines about to rush across the street to come to his aid, he motioned for them to stop, that he would run back across the street to them to prevent them from needlessly exposing themselves. He made it about halfway before he collapsed from his own wounds. The squad threw smoke grenades and returned fire to cover the attempted to rescue Corporal Lundstrom. The enemy opened up a heavy volume of fire into the smoke which struck and killed PFC Jeriad Jacobs instantly. At this point, the insurgents were forced to withdraw by the platoon’s maneuvering squad. That’s about the time the QRF and I rolled up on the scene. While coughing up blood, Doc Engles had given directions on how to best treat the other wounded Marines before going into shock himself. Looking at his face, I thought he was dead when they carried him from the building. The wounded were quickly loaded onto trucks and driven off to Fallujah Surgical hospital, known as “Charlie Surg” and an immediate search was set out for the insurgents. All available assets were called in, to include helicopter gunships and mounted platoons in Hummvees from adjcent units. The entire area was cordoned off and a house by house search followed.
The helicopter gunships overhead gave the direction and distance of two military aged males running south from our position. As the Marines pursued the fleeing insurgents south, a report came over the radio of a Marine down in the rear of our formation. The command vehicle quickly turned around and rushed to the scene where I could see an M-16 lying in the street and several Marines taking cover behind a small corrugated aluminum kisosk on the south side of a large 4 way intersection. PFC Kyle Brown had been seriously wounded and needed an urgent medevac. We positioned the command vehicle as best we could to provide protection to the Marines coming under increasingly heavy fire. As it turns out, when the Marines crossed the intersection headed south, two RPGs were fired at vehicles on the cordon and sniper and automatic weapons fire began to engage the rear of our formation from buildings on the north side of the road. Just like a scene out of a move, First Sergant Zickefoose exited the command vehicle on the enemy side and under a hail of bullets, calmly signaled to all available Marines in the area what buildings the insurgents were firing from. He then assessed our casualty and let me know we needed an urgent medevac.
Thanks to the First Sergeant’s efforts, the buildings occupied by the insurgents began to disappear in a wall of smoke from the impaces of the Marines’ suppressive fires just as the medevac vehicles arrived. The medevac vehicles that carried the last group of wounded Marines to the hospital were just blocks away when Gunnery Sergeant Stewart heard the call over the radio and headed toward our position. Despite all the firing by the enemy, PFC Brown was the only man hit and he was quickly loaded on a Hummvee and off to the hospital. But as the vehicle departed, it was struck several times by enemy fire and disabled. Aware of the dire circumstances, the vehicle commander, Staff Sergeant Donnie Bridges, commandeered a passing Iraqi Police truck in order to expedite the trip to the hospital. The Marines left the shot up Hummvee at a U.S. checkpoint and quickly loaded everyone into the police vehicle. The Iraqi police truck was nothing more than a Nissan pick up truck with armor bolted on the sides for the bed to better protect those riding in the back. It was both faster and more maneuverable than the Hummvee, but being mistaken for insurgents and being shot by friendlies was now a significant possiblity. To prevent this potential fratricide, one of the Marines in the back, Lance Corporal Delillo, contacted the battalion Watch Officer to advise him of the unorthodox medevac vehicle now being used and hoped like hell that the word would make it down to the guards at the gate by the time the speeding Iraqi police truck came into range. Simultaneously, Lance Corporal Delillo also assisted the Corpsman, Doc Routson, by applying hand pressure to PFC Brown’s wounded neck while a tracheotomy was performed. The Marine’s later recalled that standing in the back of a speeding Iraqi police truck, waving to the guards as they approached the gate was one of the scariest things they did in Fallujah. Thanks to their teamwork and quick thinking, the word did get passed to the gate guards and they arrived at teh hospital without further incident. Sadly, PFC Brown’s wounds were too great to overcome and he died upon arrival.
Back to the firefight… Once the medevac was on its way to the hospital, First Sergeant Zickefoose quickly coordinated with me and led the squad that was pinned down in an assault on the buildings occupied by the insurgents. His quick thinking and decisiveness in the face of sniper and machine gun fire forced the enemy to withdraw and prevented them from inflicting further casualties on teh company from a position of advantage. As the enemy withdrew, we pursued them through the city for the next several hours, clearing all houses in the area of any remaing insurgents. As the fighting moved from house to house, First Sergeant Zickefoose remained with the lead squad and constantly exposed himself to enemy fire in order to protect the Marines around him. As a direct result of his stellar combat leadership, there was not a single Marine or civilian casualty during the remainder of the fighting, despite receiving small arms and rocket propelled grenade fire for the rest of the afternoon. At the end of the day, 23 insurgents were sent to the regimental detention facility for further processing.
We held a memorial service for our falllen brothers a few days later. It’s the best way for the Marines to begin putting closure on the loss of some of their closest friends. After the eulogies have been said for their fallen by the commanders and friends, the roll is called. Names of some of the Marines in the company are called and they all answer present. Then the name of the fallen is called three times, each time with more emphasis to make sure he’s not present. “Corporal Snyder. Corporal Joshua Snyder. Corporal Joshua D. Snyder.” Taps is played after the third calling of the name while the entire formation presents arms to the rifle, boots and helmet memorial. All the talent in hollywood cannot capture the emotion and drama at this moment. I’ve seen tears stream down the faces of some of the toughest men I know. PFC Brown was eulogized by Corporal Barbosa, the Marine who led him to Christ. Sadly, three weeks later, Corporal Barbosa was killed in a tragic vehicle accident. It’s almost as if his work in this world was done when he led PFC Brown to Christ and he was called home to the Lord.
The rest of the story in a nutshell, we didn’t have another combat casualty after the morning of 7 January. Yet everyday, several times a day for the next 3 and 1/2 months, the Marines still had to put their gear on and patrol the same streets and walk among the same people that took the lives of their friends. They didn’t always enjoy it, but the got the job done. By the end of their tour, the Marines of Echo Company had captured or killed more known insurgents than just about the rest of the battaion combined. The incredible resilience and professionalism of the men of Echo never ceased to amaze me.
We later learned that the sniper that stung us so badly that January morning was firing from a modified vehicle much like the DC sniper in 2002 and we adapted our techniques to deny him any additional opportunities. And much to our chagrin, we never caught or killed him. He was killed however, on the outskirts of Fallujah by 3rd Battalion 5th Marines just after we left. It would have been nice for us to get him, but in the end, I’m just glad he’s dead.
The majority of the Marines I had the honor of serving with in Echo Company got out of the Marine Corps in the months after we returned to the states. I still run into a few on active duty here and there and its always good to see them. Doc Engles recovered fully and greeted us on the tarmac when we got home.
Before handing command of the company over to the new guy, I tried to leave everyone with what little wisdom I’ve gained from our experience in Iraq. “In the end,” I said, “your life is not about you. You’re in the middle of it, but believe it or not, your life is about everyone else around you and how you choose to influence them with the short time you have. It’s your responsibility to make the most of each day and each breath that God puts into your lungs. Remember Josh Snyder, Jeriad Jacobs, Kyle Brown, Felipe Barbosa and Brett Lundstrom who left their futures in Fallujah intersections of Henry and Fran, Cathy and George and Cathy and Frank streets. Tell their stories and how they died for their country, and for their brothers in this company. “ They are all my heroes. The best example of selflessness in teh company was Sgt Joshua Frazier, who ran out under fire on the morning of 7 January to drag PFC Brown to safety. He volunteered to return to Iraq for a third tour when he was killed by a sniper, 6 February 2007.
I closed with part of a speech stolen from a past Marine Commandant called the Eagle and the Wolf. “Inside me, inside each of us, there is a battle raging between the eagle and the wolf. The eagle represents everything you ever hope to accomplish in life… love, money, happiness, success, accomplishment, power, etc. The wolf represents your accuser, the little voice inside your head that constant tells you that you’re not good enough. You can’t make it. You’re not smart enough. They’ll never accept you. You don’t belong here. You’re not good looking enough. In the end, who wins this battle? ….the one you feed.
