My Men are My Heroes (29 page)

The initial burst of fire that wounded Pruitt and Eldridge was drawing Marines to the yellow house like moths to a flame. Within a few minutes more 3d Platoon Marines showed up, including Chandler, Corporals Tyler Farmer and Jose Sanchez, and Lance Corporal Morgan McCowan. Still more Marines were pounding down the street toward them.

Two blocks away Lopez and his team were still idling on the street, relaxed but alert to any changes in the electrified air. The Weapons Co. Marines spent long hours waiting to be needed. It was especially true for the TOW gunners because their weapons were so powerful and expensive, Lopez said. He didn't just shoot it because somebody started firing. The same was true for the Mk-19 grenade launchers and Ma Deuce. The big .50 cal Browning machine gun can eat concrete walls and light up enemy vehicles with its incendiary bullets. But it wasn't something a gunner just let fly. Sitting and waiting in a firefight takes a tremendous amount of discipline.

In the meantime the CAAT sections had to stay alert and ready to turn a weapon in the right direction and start laying down fire instantly.

“My Weapons Co. Marines were essential to the mission,” Kasal recalls. “Even though I was with Kilo the sections were spread out all over the city fighting. I had to depend on my NCOs to do the right job. I wasn't there but I knew their training would kick in. They were perfectly capable of doing their jobs. Gunny Wade was always around trouble, and I knew I could count absolutely on my other sergeants and young Marines because we had trained together. Weapons Co. was as well trained a unit as I had ever served in.”

The riflemen were almost completely dependent of the CAAT sections for heavy firepower inside Fallujah, Buhl says. The steel wall the 2/7 Cav provided the first days of Fallujah had dissipated by the fifth straight day of combat and the Marines' tanks were spread all over the city. The Army was still around in their Bradleys and tanks, Kasal says, but they stayed buttoned up. The CAAT Marines always kept one eye peeled for the Army cavalrymen because of their fighting methods, Kasal says.

At one point, the Marines placed a sniper team on the top floor of a building to provide security for a group of men resting downstairs. When Army Bradleys saw movement at the top of the building, they presumed it was an insurgent stronghold and cut loose with a TOW missile and cannon fire. “Luckily,” Kasal recalls, “the TOW was a dud and the cannon fire missed.

“The Army idea of clearing buildings was driving along in their buttoned-up tanks and Bradleys, shooting at the buildings and then driving on.” In contrast, he says, “the Marines cleared each building on foot, house by house and street by street, by the individual riflemen and supported by firepower from Weapons Company CAAT and mortar teams.

“Weapons Co. was always with the riflemen. They had to know where the other Marines were. A TOW can go through two or three buildings and do a lot of damage. A lot of times my Marines would get off [their vehicles] and help clear buildings, or put out
security on the buildings being cleared. It wasn't like they were just waiting for some insurgent to start shooting at them. Marines are always engaged. We train to take the fight to the enemy.”

Inside the house of Hell, Marines were doing exactly that:

“We stacked up again,” Weemer says. “Severtsgard pulls out a grenade. The stack was Carlisle, me, and Chandler. Severtsgard is to the side of me. Behind us are Tyler, Farmer, and Sanchez. We go back through the door and Severtsgard steps up and throws the grenade. I couldn't hear shit after that grenade went off.

“Chandler, Farmer, Sanchez, and Prentice were in the first room. I thought Prentice was with us. I didn't know until later that Chandler had told him to stop. I go left this time and Carlisle goes right. I had to push Carlisle over the body. I had my hand on his back pushing him forward.

“My mindset was ‘just go.' We had no one shooting at us from up. I told Severtsgard to throw the grenade. It was pitch black; the air is full of dust smoke and lead from the grenade. I literally ran into the set of stairs that go to the second story. I could hardly see it.

“As the smoke clears I am moving my weapons with my eyes. In my mind things were going very slowly. Once I could see up on top, I could see a guy up there and he shot down at me. I shot four or five rounds when I felt something hit me in the leg and then I felt something hit me in the forehead.

“I remember seeing a guy with his head almost gone. The day before my squad leader had shot a guy twice in the forehead and the whole back of his head was gone. I thought that had happened to me, that the bullet had severed the nerves in my head and I couldn't feel it.”

Carlisle had been shot as well although Weemer didn't know it at the time. The insurgent who wounded Weemer probably hit Carlisle in the same exchange of fire. For a long time Carlisle
lay on the floor screaming. The jihadists left him alive for bait. Carlisle couldn't move out of the line of fire because his leg was fractured from his hip to his knee. Weemer staggered out without realizing how badly he was hit.

“I turned around to go back into that first room,” Weemer says. “Then I went back outside and sat down. Prentice is sitting next to me. He was supposed to be going with Chandler. I remembered putting him in the stack. I didn't find out until way after the fact that Chandler had stopped Prentice at the door.

“I had been shot three times in my right leg. Two rounds lodged below my knee in the bone. One had gone around the major tendon in my knee. I was more worried about my head. When I went outside I asked Prentice what was wrong with my face. He said it was just a scratch.”

With Weemer out of the picture Chandler took the lead. He told his team they would have to flood the room to rescue Carlisle. He ordered them to shoot into the ceiling around the top of the stairs while he grabbed Carlisle. After a few more seconds of discussion he kneed Sanchez in the back and yelled, “Go!”

Chandler and Severtsgard went to their right. Farmer had just cleared the door behind them when a grenade dropped on the floor and exploded in a huge cloud of dust and debris. The noise was deafening. Farmer went flying into the foyer he had just come from and Severtsgard and Chandler were sprayed with shrapnel. The insurgent who threw the grenade followed up with a long burst of automatic weapons fire that struck Chandler three times in the leg. Although wounded, Severtsgard used one hand to drag Chandler into the back of the house where the kitchen was located. They would remain there until the end of the fight. Farmer, his hand shredded by shrapnel, could do nothing but scream curses at the insurgents.

As Chandler's group was fighting for their lives inside the house more Marines arrived on the scene. Private Rene Rodriguez and
Lance Corporal Michael Vanhove had seen Weemer come out yelling for reinforcements. The two men rushed in looking for Sanchez, their fire team leader.

They found Sanchez in the back of the building putting a pressure bandage on Carlisle's grotesquely twisted leg. With nothing else to do, they hunkered down to provide security. Meanwhile, insurgents sprayed the doorway to their front with fire. There was no way out except back through the gauntlet they had just survived. For the moment they were trapped and useless.

Weemer didn't know what was happening inside. He was agonizing over what to do when more help arrived.

“Grapes and Wolf showed up,” he says. “I saw Grapes and I told him Carlisle was still in there and so was Chandler. I wasn't sure who else was until later. I told him, ‘I am ready to go back in there.' Grapes told me to stay there and let Jensen work on me. He tells me, ‘Jensen is giving you first aid; you need to let him give you first aid.' He probably told me five times not to go back in there. It was all I could think about. I wanted to go back because my team was in there. From what I saw in that house I thought they were dead. Jensen kept holding me back. I think that was when Kasal and Nicoll showed up.”

Kasal first saw Pruitt staggering up the street toward him covered with blood. He still didn't know anything about the fate of Pruitt's team. Behind Pruitt the noise of automatic weapons fire and exploding grenades was still coming from the house.

“I noticed Pruitt walking toward me,” Kasal says. “He appeared to be in a state of shock and I quickly noticed he had wounds to his hand and lower leg.”

Kasal ran to Pruitt and pulled him in between two buildings for cover. There Pruitt explained how he had gotten out but that the other three were trapped in the house wounded or possibly dead.

“The first thing that came across my mind was getting to those three wounded Marines as quickly as possible because I knew the enemy would give no quarter to a wounded Marine,” Kasal says. “I was particularly concerned they would be captured and later tortured or beheaded. So I grabbed a nearby Marine and directed him to treat Pruitt's wounds and provide security for him while I headed directly for the house.”

Mitchell remembers how clearly and concisely Pruitt gave his report to Kasal despite being shot in the leg and wrist. “He kept his composure,” Mitchell says. Mitchell was trying to administer first aid but Pruitt was still in the fight. “Even though he was wounded Pruitt still had his head on a brass swivel. He knew exactly what was going on. Outside of First Sergeant Kasal, Pruitt is the epitome of the Marine Corps.”

Mitchell radioed Grapes the information he obtained from Pruitt informing him they were in contact and had wounded Marines trapped in the house. 2d Platoon, the designated Quick Reaction Force (QRF), also headed to the scene. The report immediately burned its way through the ether to battalion. Hell House was suddenly the center of attention.

Lopez heard the gunfire break out but didn't pay too much attention to it until he heard Mitchell's call to Grapes on the radio in his CAAT vehicle. His attention was focused on watching over 1st Squad while they prepared the unexploded ordnance for demolition.

“We were hearing gunfire. We were always hearing gunfire,” Lopez says. “Then we got the call. We had some casualties inside the building. Each vehicle has a VRC-99 radio so we always had comm with each vehicle. Grapes left a few men from 1st Squad with the cache and we headed for the contact.

“We had to make a left turn down the next block. The rest of 1st Squad came with us. I was driving alongside them, going about as fast as they could go. They were jogging, still providing bounding and overwatch. It took us just a couple of minutes.”

When Lopez arrived with Grapes to help out he discovered he didn't have a way to help. There was no way to use the TOW because of the Marines inside the building, and he didn't have a target for anything else. In the next 90 minutes Grapes and Lopez would try several avenues of approach to the house without being able to bring a weapon to bear. Although the TOW on his CAAT was too big to use without endangering the Marines inside, the M240G was just right, Lopez says, but he had to have something to shoot at. Lopez left the rest of his section facing outboard, securing the building's perimeter while he and Grapes tried to find a place to bring fire.

Lopez thought the jihadists were smart to have picked that house. Nothing about its innocuous appearance suggested it was part of the great deception they had waiting for the Marines. Pruitt agrees. He thought the jihadists who picked that particular house were trained soldiers who knew exactly what they were doing. “They were all trained soldiers in that house, good soldiers except for the first one,” he says.

The fighting inside the house was still going on. Somebody was screaming. Then a grenade exploded. The whole street was suddenly alive as Marines up and down the road took up firing positions while trying to get a grip on what was suddenly happening. Word that Marines were trapped in the house was traveling fast.

Mitchell and his fire team rushed to the same gate Pruitt had stumbled through to get away Mitchell says they almost instinctively
pulled together to formulate an attack. Surprisingly there was no fire coming at them. For a moment it was very quiet.

“We guided in between the walls,” Mitchell says. “We had a four-man stack. The first two guys were Nicoll and Kasal. Nicoll had Kasal's back. I was with McCowan. We went in and sort of staged for a second in this little room. There was a dead insurgent lying there. We knew there was a casualty and we had to go in there and get him. I could see two doors and a stairwell. Beyond the second doorway I could see a Marine's boots. Then we just headed inside.”

Before Kasal went into the house he grabbed two passing Marines he didn't know and told them to cover the doorway. Then Kasal, with Nicoll covering his back, moved into the house.

Kasal quickly sized up the situation after storming the door and entering the first room—one dead insurgent, the floor covered in blood, and a pair of doors straight in front of him leading to two other rooms. “In the room on the right I saw one of the wounded Marines lying on the floor,” Kasal says. “In the door on the left there was a second dead insurgent.” He noticed a ladder well to the left, which would be to their rear as Kasal's team entered the room. Immediately the Marines with Kasal started fanning out through the house.

“I quickly noticed in the far right corner a room by itself that was bypassed by all the Marines,” Kasal says. “I recognized that as being uncleared and thus a danger area, so I grabbed Nicoll, the Marine nearest to me, and told him to help me clear that room. I also realized the stairwell was now to our rear and also uncleared, making it a danger area to myself and all the Marines inside the building. To protect our rear I grabbed two unidentified young Marines and directed them to lay security on
the stairwell and keep it secure. I then moved across the room to the far doorway with Nicoll on my heels.”