Some background info on the two Marines recently awarded the Navy Cross

Source: A friend

ALL,

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EMAIL FROM THE COMMANDER OF MARINE FORCES, IN IRAQ, MAJ GEN JOHN F. KELLY. THIS IS HIS THIRD TOUR OF DUTY IN THAT COUNTRY.

I thought you might want to hear the rest of the story of the
two Marines who earned the Navy Cross out here last April. I believe it
will be awarded in a joint ceremony early in 09. This went to a
reporter friend who is writing their story. I really do think it's a
Rockwell image. Not the killing part, Rockwell was better than that.
It's the picture of the two of them in the early morning heat getting
settled into their watch with the 21 year old "veteran" Corporal Yale
showing the "new kid" the ropes and encouraging him that he'd be OK when
his first action came and how to stay alive in Iraq - seven seconds
before they died.

When I dug into the deaths of these young men, as I always do,
it became obvious to me that there was something more here than just the
"normal" bravery of a couple of young Grunts out on the streets of
Ramadi doing what they are trained to do, what they are paid a measly
amount of money to do, but infinitely more importantly what they join
the Marines to do. Their unit commander knew their deaths were
something different, but was in a quandary as there were no eye
witnesses. Everything pointed to great bravery and an irrational
disregard for their own lives. Then we thought of our allies the
Iraqis. Surely Iraqi policemen must have seen something as it was a
Joint Security Station (JSS). We had to try. As you well know
incredible bravery is routine among these guys and much of it goes
unrecognized because it is so routine. It's everywhere. They do it
naturally and without thought, but this just sounded different.

I drove down to the JSS from Fallujah two days after the blast
and spoke to a number of police officers and we were right, there were
some eye witnesses. They were actually survivors who were only alive to
tell their stories because of these two Grunt Marines who would not save
themselves. I interviewed six or seven cops, but three were most
important and among those who barely survived. A summary of their
statements is below written and signed by me. At the time of submission
for Navy Crosses it was the only "justification" for decorating these
men. Subsequently my computer techs were able to download the entire
event from a security camera that was all but destroyed in the blast.
It documents the event clearly.

This is in many ways a Norman Rockwell story, and I think
can only happen today in our Armed Forces. These men were from
different battalions (1/9 and 2/8) doing their "right seat - left seat"
turnovers, and from different worlds. Yale was a very poor country kid
from western Virginia, Haerter from Long Island. They didn't know each
other, they'd probably only met a few minutes before they were
put on post but they were closer than brothers because they were
Marines. Yale was a few days from going home, Haerter just a few days
in country. As civilians they had very-very little in common. As
Marines they were DNA close and viewed the world through exactly the
same lens. Parris Island and the School of Infantry were their common
experiences. What made them different from everyone in their families
and from everyone they'd grown up with was their desire to serve as
Marines even to their death. As my three condolence letters below the
statement point out (father of one, mother of the other, sister of one)
they were different than all the rest, because they stepped
forward when they didn't have to.

If they were still with us they would not think of
themselves as heroes. They would tell you they were doing their job,
that their lieutenant told them to stand the post they were assigned and
let nothing pass. They wouldn't elaborate much about the event but
would only say that "someone tried to pass...he wasn't authorized to
pass by their lieutenant's order...so we killed him." They had no time
to think about heroics. The truck turned down the alley way (~60 meters
in length) from the main street and accelerated through the jersey wall
serpentine. They knew exactly what was going on. They had it drilled
into them that my greatest fear out here, the biggest threat against us,
the only thing that keeps me awake at night, was a Beirut
suicide-truck bomb. I lost my best friend in that blast back in 1983,
and it was seared into my soul that this was the only means they
(terrorists) had left to really hurt us here in Iraq in a way that would
change everything. The entire event as it appears on the tape was
perhaps six seconds. Six seconds to see the truck, make their
calculation as to what was going on, then decide what was going on, then
make their individual decisions at exactly the same time while flipping
their M-16s off safe and opening up. Six seconds. No time to talk it
over. No time to call the lieutenant. No time to think about their own
lives or even the lives of the American and Iraqi lives they were
protecting. More than enough time, however, to do their duty. They
never hesitated or tried to escape. They never stopped firing until the
tape goes black. We know they are heroes, Tony, but they would not see
it that way.

You ask if you can teach this kind of bravery. The answer to
that is a resounding no. To those of us in uniform who do these kinds
of things, or are expected to do these kinds of things, it's not
bravery, but duty. What you can teach, or better instill, is a sense of
esprit, a sense of commitment to Corps and country, a sense of belonging
to something bigger and more important than any one of us are
individually. It's what the Greek citizens had. What the Roman
legionnaires had. What General Washington's boys had. What the
Greatest Generation had, and what a few of this generation still have.
If you can successfully instill these traits, and the Marine Corps does
it better than anyone else, then what you have is men and women of
character that think in terms of courage, honor and commitment...about
selfless devotion to duty. They don't say it that way, or express it
that way, but they live it in their hearts.

As you know the arithmetic commanders deal with in war,
from the second lieutenant to the commanding general, is not zero deaths
and zero wounded, but how many is too many. Every time you see a convoy
move, or the Marines and our precious Docs at an entry control point, or
clearing a house in Fallujah, it's the same. Commanders do the mental
math and make the deadly calculation. Is five "acceptable"? Perhaps.
Depending on the stakes. Is six too many? Same calculation. In this
case two was what the mission required, and thank God they knew what
they were about. Little consolation for their families I know, and it's
the terrible burden commanders who make these calls carry in their
hearts forever. In the tape an Iraqi policeman can be seen standing
about 20 feet from where the two Marines were firing from inside a
little enclosure. He scrambled like hell and got out of the way before
the huge metal gate, jersey walls, mosque and several houses were all
but consumed--but he survived. "No sane man would have stood there,"
they said. Afterwards my interpreter (30ish, an Iraqi born Kurd but has
lived in the States since he was 13) asked me if I thought they were
crazy. They were not crazy was my response, because not even a crazy
man would have stood his ground like they did. They were nothing more
than a couple of ordinary Marines doing an extraordinary act of
selflessness. They were doing what their lieutenant told them to do and
they were doing their duty, and 50 American families are tonight
spending Christmas Eve with their sons who didn't die that day in
Ramadi.

Semper Fidelis, and Merry Christmas.

Kelly