My Men are My Heroes (34 page)

U.S. Marine Corps photo by LCpl Joel A. Chaverri

Weapons and ammunition found in crypts and in a graveyard at Al Fallujah by U.S. Marines from 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division and Iraqi Special Security Forces during Operation Al Fajr.

U.S. Marine Corps photo by LCpl Ryan L. Jones

1st Marine Division grunts take up an overwatch position atop a building during a house-clearing patrol in Fallujah during Operation Al Fajr.

U.S. Marine Corps photo by LCpl James J. Vooris

Even at that point Kasal was more worried about Nicoll and Mitchell than he was about himself. He was afraid they were going to bleed out and he wasn't going to be able to help them. He figured the only thing he could do was maintain his composure.

“I wasn't scared and I was never unconscious or losing consciousness,” he says. He never yelled out in pain or panic, which some might credit to that classic Kasal toughness. But Kasal offers a second reason for his steely calm. “That is what leadership is,” he explains simply. “If I had been screaming or hopeless, how reassuring would that have been to Nicoll?”

Besides, he adds, “I never felt hopeless as long as I had a weapon, as long as I had a bullet left, as long as I had some fight in me. Sometimes, for a second or two I thought I might not make it out because of blood loss, but I wasn't going to let that thought seep in. Nicoll's life depended on me and I wasn't going to fail.”

Once Mitchell arrived Kasal was encouraged. “Mitchell, in my eyes, is not an ordinary Marine. He was an above-and-beyond NCO, so having him there gave me more reassurance because of the brotherhood of Marines, that camaraderie of Marines.

“Mitchell's first reaction upon arriving was to ask us about our wounds while ignoring his own,” Kasal continues. “I told him bluntly, ‘Don't worry about mine; just treat Nicoll'—as I couldn't do a very good job—‘and I'll watch the door to keep the little bastards back.' Mitchell then put his full efforts into treating Nicoll as I faced the doorway.

“I knew how much punishment I could take. That is why I refused medical attention. I was determined to fight until I was dead or until all three of us were medevac'd.”

Mitchell was equally unaffected by their predicament. He was more worried about a satchel charge or fragmentation grenade arriving airmail from somewhere outside the door than of dying
from his shrapnel wounds. He figured that Kasal had the door, and as long as Kasal could hold a weapon nobody was going to get past him. The only way Mitchell figured anyone was going to get them while they were in the room was to either throw in a frag or rush the room and shoot them. All he could do in the meantime was sit tight and try to help.

Random gunfire continued even though the insurgents couldn't see the wounded Marines. But in the midst of their predicament, wounded and trapped, Mitchell actually laughed when he found out his rifle had been wrecked by an enemy bullet.

“Even though it worried me I had to laugh because the way I found out was pure Alex Nicoll,” Mitchell says. “He was always making fun of a bad situation. I had been there with Kasal and Nicoll for a half hour or 45 minutes when he looks at me. He was lying on his back up against the wall. He had been floating in and out, kind of lying there with his eyes opening and then closing again. Every once in a while he would moan or sigh, something like that. He never screamed.

“Out of the blue he says, ‘You know, Mitchell, your rifle ain't worth a shit.' I looked at it and there was a hole in the bolt! It was shot to shit, useless. I had to laugh. It wasn't what he said; it was the way he said it.”

Finally Mitchell remembered he had a radio, a small civilian-style Motorola unit that all the squad leaders were issued to stay in communication with the platoon sergeants and platoon leaders. Up until then he had forgotten about it.

“I got on my radio, a PRC-148 about the size of a cell phone. I was on the same freq as Grapes. I let Grapes know that Kasal, Nicoll, and me were wounded and pinned down in the little room off to the left of the main entrance. I told him Nicoll was really serious and so was Kasal. I think I told Grapes there were other
wounded Marines in the house but that I was unaware of their situation. Since I got in the room with Kasal and Nicoll there had been constant shooting inside the house.”

Mitchell's call for help galvanized Grapes and Lopez into renewed action. Along with Navy Corpsman Douglas “Doc” Williams they tried to reach the trapped men.

Lopez was ready to try anything. He says: “Me and Doc Williams dismounted. Grapes was already standing there. Doc Williams went over to treat Pruitt, who was wounded in the arm and leg. I went with Grapes to the gate outside the building and looked up on the roof and through the door. We knew there was an insurgent up there from Pruitt, but we couldn't see him because there was a foot-high wall around the edge of the roof. He could move around on the roof and we couldn't see him.”

Grapes told them to get on top of a little one-story shack across the street. “We ran out in plain sight to get to the building,” Lopez says. “Our adrenaline was pumping. There was shooting going on all over the place. We jumped up on the shack to see if we could get a shot at the guy on the roof. The shack had a slanted roof that didn't offer much protection and wasn't high enough for us to see anything.”

The insurgents' building was taller and had a catwalk inside. “They used that catwalk to go outside and peek out around the roof,” Lopez says. “We could see the roof but it was not good enough for a shot.”

The rescuers knew that time was running out for the pinned-down men inside. “I wanted to find out about my missing Marines,” Lopez says. “I didn't know what had happened to First Sergeant Kasal except that he was hit. He was one of the best Marines I had. He had a lot of heart and always tried harder than anybody in my section.

“About that time the QRF [quick reaction force] from 2d Platoon showed up [commanded by Lieutenant John Jacobs]. Then I heard we had a KIA [killed in action]. That is when I found out that there were also more injured inside. We knew we had to get into the building to get them out.

“Lieutenant Grapes told us to go around to the side of the building. First we went to the main entrance but we couldn't go in that way. We already knew it was covered by fire from Mitchell telling us on the radio. We went around the side of the building. Grapes tried to knock a hole in the building with a sledgehammer.”

Kasal heard Grapes pounding on the wall with the sledge. Pretty soon pieces of concrete started busting loose from the inside wall and pummeling the three men trapped in the room.

“I told Lieutenant Grapes to stop,” Kasal says. “Mitchell had a radio and he had a direct line with Grapes. I was relaying stuff to Mitchell who would then relay it to Grapes. At first we said, ‘Yeah, try and bust a hole through the wall.' But that didn't work because debris was hitting us, so we told him to stop and try something else.”

Grapes had another idea. He sent Lopez and another Marine with bolt cutters to a nearby window to cut through the bars that covered it.

“It took a little effort,” Lopez says, “but we got them cut. While I was doing that Grapes and some other guys were shooting up toward the insurgents while the rest of the Marines moved up to get the casualties.”

Some of the Marines were trying to force a passage through the front door. Among them was Sergeant Byron Norwood, one of the missing Marines Lopez was concerned about. Norwood had entered the foyer of the house to help out.

Before the Fallujah fight Norwood had commanded a CAAT vehicle with a .50 cal on it that Colonel Toolan used for transport.
After Toolan went home Norwood was assigned to Iscol's CAP (Combined Action Platoon), so he didn't even have to be there. He could have stayed with Iscol advising the ING, but that didn't offer enough action for the 25-year-old former trumpet player and amateur actor from Pflugerville, Texas. He kept hounding Iscol and Buhl to let him go back into combat until they relented.

Norwood had only been in the house a few moments when he poked his head around the foyer door to see what was happening. In that instant an insurgent shot him in the forehead. Norwood died instantly. The same burst that struck him also hit Wolf in the chest, knocking him out of the doorway but not hurting him badly.

At the back of the house Chandler and Severtsgard decided they had to get out of the kitchen. Chandler was bleeding and in terrible pain from his wounded leg. It was twisted around from his hip to his ankle in a spiral fracture. Despite their injuries the two Marines pried open a door panel just enough to squeeze through the opening. The effort caused Chandler to scream in agony but at last they were outside. Within seconds they got assistance from Lance Corporal Steven Tatum. For them the fight was over.

That still left Marines—including Kasal, Mitchell, and Nicoll—trapped in the house. Grapes and Jacobs held a powwow to come up with a plan. Grapes' first idea was to use flashbang grenades to confuse the insurgents while they crept inside to rescue the trapped Marines. That didn't work. They threw the flashbangs but the insurgents were not confused and let loose with a tremendous volley of fire.

Their next plan involved squeezing through the window Lopez had cut open. Grapes and Private Justin Boswood stripped off their gear and squeezed through. Lopez and another Marine
handed them their weapons. Grapes and Boswood knew approximately where the three wounded Marines were holed up, but until they got inside the house they couldn't be sure exactly where everything was. Kasal couldn't see them either, but he knew something was going on.

“He [Grapes] wasn't able to see me because my back was to the wall. I was turned toward the door with my pistol so if anybody came through the door, I could shoot them. I heard him and Boswood right outside my door,” Kasal recalls.

What Kasal heard was Boswood dragging a dead insurgent out of the doorway. When the opening was clear Grapes slid on his back into the main room with his weapon pointed up at the stairwell. Boswood knelt over him with his weapon pointed skyward. In the back bedroom window Lopez and Jacobs covered the area where the insurgents were hiding. At the same time Lance Corporal Christopher Marquez and Lance Corporal Dan Schaeffer got ready to run through the kill zone and extract the three wounded Marines. Inside the room Kasal was wondering if he was going to remain conscious. He knew he was bleeding at a prodigious rate.

“Mitchell kept up his efforts in relaying to his platoon commander our situation and giving him intel as I guarded the doorway,” Kasal says. “As tough as I knew I was and as determined as I can be, thoughts would slowly creep into my head that I would not make it out due to loss of blood—or to a still-unknown enemy force next to us.

“I remember also looking down at my wounds and especially at my shattered right leg. I thought for sure I would lose it even if I made it home; my foot was pointing a different direction than my leg. But I'm a Kasal and I'm from Iowa, so I never give up.

“And then out of nowhere, again I heard Marines who I later learned to be Grapes and Boswood. They had made it to an adjacent room near our doorway and were laying down
suppressive fire trying to shoot up into what I now realize was the second floor where the enemy was located.”