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Offline Flyin6

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Two Brave Marines
« on: February 05, 2017, 08:19:11 PM »
This speech given by Marine General Kelly about tow other Marines
I never knew them, but I love these men!
God rest their souls...



Five years ago, two Marines from two different walks of life who had literally just met were told to stand guard in front of their outpost's entry control point.

Minutes later, they were staring down a big blue truck packed with explosives. With this particular shred of hell bearing down on them, they stood their ground.

Heck, they even leaned in.

I had heard the story many times, personally. But until today I had never heard Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly's telling of it to a packed house in 2010. Just four days following the death of his own son in combat, Kelly eulogized two other sons in an unforgettable manner.

From Kelly's speech:

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.

The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.

Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.

The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”

What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”

“No sane man.”

“They saved us all.”

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “ … let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe … because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you
Site owner    Isaiah 6:8, Psalm 91 
NSDQ      Author of the books: Distant Thunder and Thoren

Offline Flyin6

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Re: Two Brave Marines
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2017, 08:25:56 PM »
I once wrote a story about two brave Marines
It became a chapter in my book
I attached an edited copy from when they were assembling that book. "They" were british, which accounts for some of the different spellings of some words.
Here it is:


Farewell to Two Brave Marines

I was waiting at the terminal today for my flight. I was inside the old TLS building down near base operations. The TLS building is a veritable fortress made of stone, brick and concrete with walls possibly six feet thick and, seemingly impervious, one might think, to harm from above or below. Apparently, many members of the Taliban must have believed the building offered safety and shelter from US attacks in the last stages of the war in 2001. Unfortunately for them, the name subsequently coined for the building—to which the acronym TLS refers—is the “Taliban’s Last Stand”. Rather than providing the shelter the Taliban expected, the walls of the TLS served merely to magnify the over-pressure of the exploding bomb that hit the building killing all of its occupants. When the US Army occupied the TLS soon afterwards, they repaired most of its structure except the ceiling, which still bears black sooty stains from the fires that burned there. The blackened ceiling serves as a reminder that this country was taken by force and claimed the lives of many of our young men as well as the lives of our enemies. Soldiers often do things like that. We will leave some small reminder behind of the battle and of sacrifice, and of lives lost.

The massive roof of the TLS building is supported by a series of interconnected archways, each of which forms a hallway of sorts, and I was sitting in one of those hallways. The walls which had been painted sometime after US forces had occupied it were now adorned with a thousand little messages left behind by departing warriors. I was amusing myself with reading them one by one. There was one from someone going back to Waco Texas. There was another reference to the Royal Marines. For some reason that one made me think of the Scottish soldiers who proudly wore that feather thing in their berets. Some of the scribblings were funny, and some hateful, some hopeful and others a farewell to a friend who would not be coming home. All seemed to telegraph a warning of the danger which lied beyond these walls.

The design of the building provides a natural cooling effect, which I found far preferable to the oven-like roasting heat just outside. The view from that tunnel like hallway looks out towards the flight line where my “freedom jet” would soon be parking. I had been on that ramp literally hundreds of times, either embarking or disembarking from an aeroplane or taxiing in there myself to pick someone up.

When I first glanced outside, everything seemed normal—but things were not normal. I first noticed the C-17 parked at a 45-degree angle with its nose facing outward and its rear cargo ramp lowered and facing towards me. That, in itself, was not particular noteworthy, but it should have been a clue as to what was about to happen. Not too much later, I was again staring outside as I anxiously awaited the arrival of the DC-9 that would carry me and a number of my colleagues away from Kandahar to begin the journeys to our respective homes and safety in the outside world.

For no other reason than that I wanted to stretch my legs, I got up and walked outside. As I glanced towards the C-17, I noticed a set of speakers set up on the tarmac on either side of the rear of the aircraft; now that was definitely not normal. It was then that I realised what was about to happen and a glance to my left confirmed it. A long line comprising two columns of US Marines was walking slowly and methodically towards the ramp of that plane. They moved in perfect unison, as if they were one, each marine’s leg lifting at exactly the same moment as a hundred others. With one column on each side of the ramp as they approached the plane, the marines formed a corridor that extended perhaps 150 feet from the rear of the plane. The marines halted and, as if driven by a common set of gears, both columns turned to face inwards towards each other before moving to the position of “parade rest”. Done in complete silence, it was a spectacle to behold.

Another column of troops—this time, US Army soldiers, perhaps several hundred strong—moved into a position outside the column of marines…then another and another.

I brought myself to parade rest, while many of the civilians stood just behind the fence and began to remove their hats. Columns of soldiers from a dozen different nations moved into a grid pattern, all facing inwards toward the vacant corridor. British and Australian soldiers swung their arms back and forth in an exaggerated fashion as they joined smaller formations of Bulgarians, Romanians, Danish, Germans and Dutch troops and marched into place. Next, moving forwards slowly in line abreast with absolute precision, came a color guard of four Marines. Two of the marines carried flags; one carried an American flag, while another carried the red flag of the Marine Corps. The two other marines flanking their colleagues carried M4 carbines at their shoulders. Slowly, deliberately, the men marched directly to a point adjacent to the open corridor. I drew myself to attention. The sun was burning the top of my head, and sweat ran off my head and legs, but I didn’t move.

A sergeant major called the assemblage to attention: “Pre-sent Arms!” I watched several thousand right hands being raised slowly in salutes. The salute to honor a fallen soldier is not presented in the normal fashion; it is performed very slowly, as if painful to deliver—which, I suppose, it is.

As we all stood there in the hot air desert air, a French Mirage fighter, fresh from a sortie, landed and popped its landing chute. As the aircraft turned off the runway onto the parallel taxiway adjacent to the ceremony, the pilot must have realised what was happening, as he immediately throttled back and came to a respectful stop while the ceremony proceeded.

At the sergeant major’s call of “Or-der-Arms!” those thousands of saluting right arms descended slowly in unison back into position: alongside the body, hands cupped, touching the trouser seam. As a panel truck pulled slowly into view, two squads of six marines each moved into position. The truck stopped and its aft ramp lowered hydraulically. The marine chaplain began to speak. His words echoed amongst the buildings as he spoke of the young men who had been taken and how they were much too young to have paid such a high price. Several thousand people scarcely breathed as they watched and listened and no one uttered a sound. As the chaplain spoke, the only other sound I could hear was the flapping of the worn US flag on a nearby flagpole on the TLS building.

As the first of two flag-draped coffins appeared out of the back of the truck, the first squad of six marines moved into position—three on each side—facing the box. The colors of the US flag completely covered the container, in stark contrast to the windblown dusty brown color of the concrete ramp. It was as if the thirteen red and white stripes and the 50 bright white stars against the flag’s field of blue had been added to a dreary black and white photograph.

The marines lifted the coffin onto their shoulders and turned simultaneously to face the ramp of the C-17. They carried the coffin above their heads and began to march slowly in unison toward the ramp. The second coffin was quickly hoisted and it, too, passed slowly up that long, sombre corridor of men and women. The marine pallbearers stood resolutely motionless for a couple of minutes as the coffins were laid together in the back of the plane. With the coffins secured, the bearers turned in silence and marched back down the line to join their fellow marines.

I don’t know how long I stood at attention as the soldier inside me mourned the terrible loss of those two young men. I considered the stark contrast of our two very different realities: these two young men were going home to their final resting place and would never roam the earth again. At the same time, here I was, a much older man, waiting for a flight to carry me home safely to my family. I had seen much war; this had been their first. My family waited anxiously for me to get home so we could enjoy some fun family adventures together. The families of those two boys would have tragically different expectations and they would be stricken with grief as they awaited the return of their loved ones in very different circumstances, knowing only that their families’ lives would never be the same.

As I stood there at attention, through the corner of my eye I saw a couple of civilians looking at me; KBR contractors, I think, who were probably going home for some R&R. No doubt they were wondering why I was standing at attention. Clearly, they had no military backgrounds or they would have stood as I did, honouring our dead as any soldier would. However, they did nothing wrong—what they did was fine, and it was all they knew to do.

The ramp of the C-17 began rising and then stopped about one-third shut, as if to give the two warriors inside one last brief glimpse of the land that had taken their earthly lives; it was hugely symbolic to me. This foreign land, to which those two brave warriors had come to fight the enemies of the entire free world, was the last they would ever set foot upon. The dusty, tortured desert paths they trod here were their last contact with the world they knew. In a moment of horrible violence, their lives were taken from them here. I wondered if they even knew when the fateful moment came.

The procession started to move away from the grey winged monster as, one by one, its engines started. As the C-17 taxied slowly out of view, I finally relaxed and then turned, to walk back inside. I noticed I was almost alone and most of the other people had already walked silently away. How long I stood there, I don’t know. But I could not simply walk away. I remained standing there until that USAF monster raced past me on the runway and climbed skyward. As it did, I remembered the words of the poem by John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Two fallen heroes of my country were on their final journey home. A journey I know neither of them anticipated, nor would have chosen deliberately. Nevertheless, in the fashion of true warriors, they had chosen. In choosing to wear the uniforms of US Marines, they knew it would someday put them in harm’s way. Oblivious to the dangers, they came thousands of miles to fight an evil scourge and, in doing so, paid the price for my freedom, and that of my family and friends—and the civilised world—with their courageous young lives.

God, grant us the courage to face our enemies head-on. Bless our young warriors—and please bring as many of them home as possible.

Site owner    Isaiah 6:8, Psalm 91 
NSDQ      Author of the books: Distant Thunder and Thoren

Offline TexasRedNeck

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Re: Two Brave Marines
« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2017, 11:11:17 PM »
As if men of faith needed examples of how God raises up men and gives them courage to face evil.  Warrior heroes.


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Kids today don't know how easy they have it. When I was young, I had to walk 9 feet through shag carpet to change the TV channel.

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Offline cj7ox

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Re: Two Brave Marines
« Reply #3 on: February 06, 2017, 12:24:24 PM »
A great man once said, "All it takes for evil to succeed, is for good men to do nothing." These troops, and many more like them, were good men, and more importantly, men of action. Thank God for all our Servicemen/women, my Brothers and Sisters, serving around the world.
~Sean M. Davis

“The citizens of a free state ought to consist of those only who bear arms.” ~Aristotle

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