My Men are My Heroes (28 page)

“It is not unusual for a first sergeant to be in the fight, to be present,” Read says in the NPR interview. “But it is unusual for a first sergeant to put himself on the line like that, to go to a house like that, and to further push on risking injury. It was sort of a mark of the seriousness of that moment that the senior enlisted man—whose job usually would be to coordinate things through the officers for the men—felt it necessary that he was going to have to go in there and do what needed to be done. It speaks to the danger and confusion of that moment.”

What Read couldn't know at the time, of course, was that Kasal had learned Marines were pinned down. “The first thought in my mind was that there were three fellow Marines trapped inside a house with the enemy and time was critical,” Kasal recalls.

“All I could think of was the possibility of Marines being captured later appearing on TV being beheaded,” Kasal explains. “My rank was irrelevant. Three Marines needed help and every second counted. That's the reason I ran to the house.”

Kasal wasn't the only Marine heading to the sound of the guns. Staff Sergeant Jon Chandler, the new 3d Platoon sergeant, Severtsgard, Mitchell, Nicoll, and several more 3d Squad Marines went by with Read and Hurd's CAAT in hot pursuit; Jensen was still on the .50 cal. “Suddenly a hail of gunfire erupted out of nowhere,” Mitchell recalls. “We all went down to where all the shooting was to secure the area around the gunfire. Kasal and the CAAT section were moving with us.”

Pruitt, the 3d Platoon guide, was the mission commander at the firefight Mitchell was racing toward. He had attached himself to Corporal Ryan Weemer's fire team along with Sergeant James Eldridge, a machine gunner off one of the company Humvees looking for some action. Weemer was carrying an M16 with an M203 grenade launcher; the two others on his team were Lance Corporal Cory Carlisle, armed with an M16, and Lance Corporal James Prentice, carrying a SAW.

At first the Marines were merely curious about Pruitt's find. Behind the modest home's gated courtyard wall, the house seemed to be an ordinary Iraqi dwelling with a rooftop patio. The patio was surrounded by a wall. Near the front gate was an outhouse common to many Iraqi homes. Ten or 15 feet in front of the outhouse was the main entrance to the home.

Pruitt's five-man patrol was about 100 meters beyond the rest of 3d Platoon's position when they encountered the house for the first time. The team began their search by unsuccessfully trying to break into the back of the house. Despite their best efforts they couldn't batter their way through the steel back door. And until they got a door open they couldn't throw a grenade or satchel charge inside to clear the room.

Pruitt walked around to the front of the house to see if they could get in there. Immediately he noticed the gate was open. Pruitt ran back to Weemer's fire team and reported his find. He had already seen plenty of signs that insurgents were somewhere in the neighborhood, and the house on the corner looked like it might be the place. Pruitt couldn't put his finger on why he knew, but his instincts were telling him it was so. He told the Marines to saddle up and get prepared.

“I could see holes knocked out in the walls where they can egress,” he says. “Somebody had knocked those holes out to move around. Every few houses we would find fresh water. We found training gas masks, plywood boards with instructions on how to use gas masks, all kinds of weapons. We had found drugs—adrenaline or amphetamines, I am not sure which—and syringes. We also found 55-gallon drums of oil where the insurgents were hiding weapons. When we poured the oil out of the barrels, inside would be all kinds of guns—AKs, old grease guns, you name it. They were around us.”

Weemer, 23, from Hindboro, Illinois, was smoking a cigarette on
the curb outside the back door when Pruitt ordered him to bring his team around to the front. “Pruitt looks around the corner and tells me to grab my guys, get my team,” he says. “He said there was an open gate and a door he thought we could get through. He thought there were insurgents in the building. Pruitt said that from the very beginning.”

The insurgents who chose the nondescript light yellow house on the corner knew exactly what they were doing. Because of the wall around the rooftop patio and a circular skylight built into the roof, a crafty shooter could stay on the roof all day covering the approaches to the house and the interior of the house (through the skylight) at the same time. Later a scout-sniper would apologize to Mitchell for never taking a shot at the insurgents on the roof covering the stairs and central room in the house. He never had a target.

Inside, the house was as much a fortress as a dwelling. In the main room was a stairway leading to a small vestibule. The vestibule had a catwalk that marched around the inside walls. The catwalk gave the defenders an unobstructed field of fire into the room below. Anyone topside had space to fire from cover without exposing himself to immediate danger—an almost perfect field of fire. Anyone entering the main room was at the mercy of the jihadists unless he could bring his weapon to bear before the jihadists got off a burst. Behind the main room was a rear doorway leading to still more rooms, including a kitchen. Off to the left of the main room was a small room—perhaps a crude bathroom.

The smell of fresh feces was the first thing to alert Pruitt. He followed his nose into the outhouse and saw a fresh pile of crap on the floor by the hole that passed for a toilet. “After I seen the shit I told Weemer there were insurgents in the house,” he says.

After formulating a brief plan they moved in to clear them out. Pruitt told Eldridge, armed with an M16, to cover the right flank.
Weemer told Prentice to cover the left flank with his SAW. In the back of Pruitt's mind was the current ROE. He didn't want his men simply shooting up everything and everybody in sight.

“The ROE was given to us as a guideline,” Pruitt would say later. “We used our best judgment. I trained these Marines for a long time. I told them they had to know when to turn on their kill switch, they had to know how to turn it on and turn it off.” They turned the switch on.

It took only a few seconds to reach the front door after they passed the outhouse. When they got there Pruitt, Weemer, and Carlisle took a deep breath and got ready to move inside. Pruitt was bringing up the rear of their three-man stack. To make the stack the three men closed together into a bristling porcupine of pressed bodies with weapons pointing out in every direction.

“I am standing in front of the house. It's Weemer, Carlisle, and me,” Pruitt remembers. “We got into a combat stack and went up to the door. Weemer pushed open the door and we saw the first motherfucker inside the house, squatting down in the front room with his weapon. He was probably high on something because he didn't shoot.”

Weemer said he went to the door with his M16 hanging on its sling as he preferred his pistol in a close fight. He had come to 3/1 from Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team (FAST) company where he had endlessly trained, dropping his rifle to go to his pistol when the circumstances called for it.

“I started off with my pistol pulled,” he says. “The house had saloon-style doors that opened inward. They were like saloon doors except they were full length doors. I pushed in the one on the left and went through the door.

“I was sweeping left with my pistol when I saw the insurgent. The guy froze up; he was down in the far left corner on one knee. He didn't shoot. I started shooting. As I was shooting Carlisle was coming in. He saw the guy and froze. That is when Pruitt pushed
him [Carlisle] and he engaged, shot several rounds, and then stopped and then fired several more rounds,” Weemer says.

“I gave him three rounds in the chest. Carlisle was still shooting. I had to yell at him and tell him the guy was dead,” Weemer adds.

Pruitt says the jihadist who died must have been too high on drugs to react to the sight of three Marines busting through the door—too drugged or too scared. Either way he never got off a shot. He died where he squatted. The stack continued forward into the next room.

“Then we moved through the next doorway that was directly in front of us,” Pruitt says. “I saw a guy directly to my front. An insurgent came out from the left side of the room and started shooting at Weemer and Carlisle. He fired 10 or 15 rounds and missed. The guy in front of me was on my right side. I fired at him and he opened up on me. He had an AK. He was a big guy with a full beard. He wasn't an Iraqi. I don't know what he was, maybe a Chechen, but he wasn't an Iraqi. He shot me through my right leg and right wrist. The fire that hit me all came from the right side. I don't know if I hit the guy shooting at me; I can't say if I did or didn't. I spun around and dropped my weapon. As soon as that happened I knew we were in a shit sandwich.”

Unarmed and incapable of fighting, Pruitt decided to go back out and bring in Eldridge and Prentice. Both Marines were still outside guarding the flanks.

Inside Weemer and Carlisle were still engaged. Weemer couldn't believe the guy he was shooting at wouldn't go down.

“Carlisle was stacked to the left. Prentice was covering the front door facing outboard. That is where he stayed. I didn't know what happened to Pruitt. I never saw him again until we got medevac'd.

“While that is all going on we were still in the second room in contact with the enemy. I unloaded a whole pistol mag into the guy. He was just spraying. The only reason I could see him was his muzzle flash; it lit up his face. I shot him so many times his gear was on fire.

“Somehow neither one of us gets hit by this guy. By then I am real low on ammo for my pistol. I pushed Carlisle back through that door; now we are back in the first room reloading. I haven't seen anyone shooting; as far as we know there is one guy. As we reload I put my pistol away and pull out my M16 again. The pistol wasn't doing the job.

“When we go back I see [another] insurgent. He looks hurt but he is still coming toward us. We're almost positive he was drugged up on adrenaline. He was a Chechen; he had on a colored beanie. I shot him in the legs and when he went down in the doorway—dropped his weapon when he fell—I shot him in the face. His chest rig was still on fire so I could see his face.”

In the time it took Weemer to kill the second insurgent Pruitt made it outside. He was reeling from the wound to his hand. It was hurting now and his hand was turning blue. All Pruitt was thinking about was bringing Eldridge and Prentice into the fight.

“Eldridge got shot while he was still outside,” Pruitt says. “The guy on the roof got him. Eldridge got shot from behind or above. The bullet hit the back of his shoulder. It missed the SAPI [small arms protective insert] plate and went into his shoulder or back. He still tried to come in after being shot. He came in the house and was shot again.

“My sole intent before he got hit was to grab him and Prentice and go back in. I knew somebody was shot. I thought it was Carlisle. I later found out he was shot in the leg and it was
fractured from his hip to his knee. I couldn't hold a weapon but I could still do something to help. Prentice had the SAW so I figured we could use him inside. When I went outside I could see he was covered by an overhang. Then the son of a bitch started shooting at me from the roof. I got to the gate and then I guess I fell again, or that is when I got shot in the back. When I fell I was hit in the back of my SAPI plate. I didn't feel it then. I got two big bruises on my back. That was in addition to the one that hit me in the wrist. That bullet broke the bone, hit the ligaments; my hand was just hanging down. I didn't want to look at it. I didn't look at it until I was in the hospital. I also was hit in the leg.”

“I remember being outside the wall low-crawling; and then I saw Kasal coming,” Pruitt says. “When I saw Kasal I headed straight to him. I got up and started jogging down the street. He was walking security next to the CAAT vehicle. Kasal said I was walking. I didn't want to talk to anyone else.”

Kasal and the other approaching Marines still didn't know what was going on when Pruitt suddenly staggered into the street in front of them. Kasal and Mitchell both saw Pruitt at the same time and headed toward him.

“He was wounded in the arm and leg,” Mitchell says. “I think he got shot in the leg when he came stumbling out of the house.”

Pruitt remembers seeing Nicoll first. “I could see Nicoll 60 or 80 yards away from me—he was point. His eyes were all big. He was trying to figure out what was going on. Mitchell, Chandler, Severtsgard, and the other Marines were behind him. I got to Kasal first. He moved me out of the fire.

“He said, ‘Come here, Sergeant Pruitt. Come over here and sit down.' We moved maybe two or three times before I sat down. I think we were behind a wall. I knew exactly what was going on. I was pissed I couldn't do anything about it.” Mitchell came
up, and both men started giving first aid. Kasal was putting a bandage on Pruitt's wrist as Mitchell was working on his leg.

Inside the house Weemer and Carlisle took a break. They still didn't know there were more insurgents in the house. They didn't know where Pruitt had gone, and Weemer didn't know Eldridge was even part of the plan.

“I told Carlisle to hold the door to the main room and went outside. I saw guys coming up. It was Severtsgard and Chandler. They were the first two in. They were on the street with Mitchell's squad,” Weemer says. “Prentice was still outside providing security. He apparently wasn't sure what had happened. I pulled them to me and got Prentice. Prentice didn't tell me Eldridge was shot and that Pruitt was wounded.