Subject:  Fallujah |
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BD
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Date Posted: 20:12:59 12/01/04 Wed
FALLUJAH, Iraq (Dec 1, 2004) -- "And when he gets to heaven to St. Peter he will tell, one more Marine reporting sir, I've served my time in hell," read a poem on the grave of a Marine at Guadalcanal in 1942.
As evidence of this poem, death and hardship has been a constant for Marines in combat since their beginning 229 years ago.
The hardest day to date for the Marines of 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, was Nov. 11. The day one of their most respected team leaders and friend was taken from them by enemy fire on the hostile streets of Fallujah.
These Marines with Company L, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, were clearing houses and gaining ground in the Jolan district of Fallujah for three days since the start of Operation Al Fajr Nov. 8, said Lance Cpl. Ralph E. Arzate, fire team leader.
"We've been going through (Fallujah)," said the 22-year-old native of Victorville, Calif. "We've been sweeping down and searching out and destroying the enemy. We cleared houses in our area of operations, and were doing a lot of (military operations in urban terrain).
"We were tasked with the area south of the train station of the city called the Jolan district. We heard that it was the (worst) part. The risk was pretty high and this proved to be true."
On the morning of Nov. 11, the Marines stood in awe as a fighter jet dropped a bomb on a four-story building south of their position. 2nd Lt. Benjamin T. Budde.
By late afternoon, they steadily advanced south toward their objective despite light enemy contact. Sergeant Nathan J. Sauer, a 25-year-old squad leader from Collyer, Kansas, lead his weary but ready Marines into the four-story building they saw nearly destroyed earlier that day.
"Immediately we began to take enemy fire," he said. "It was a really heavy engagement, but the squad was holding strong."
The squad kept taking fire from buildings on the opposite side of the street from just about everywhere, Arzate remembered. While he was loading a 40 mm high explosive grenade into his M-203 grenade launcher, the seemingly impossible happened.
"When I was loading a round into the breach of my weapon, (Cpl. Theodore Bowling) was hit," said Arzate. "I didn't know how bad his wounds were so I was pulling him out and I got hit. At that time, our squad leader and a few others came and picked him up and got him out of harm's way."
All the Marines in the squad barely had time to breath after their revered team leader had been hit, but they kept engaging the enemy like they were trained, said Lance Cpl. Nic J. Gowanlock, a designated marksman.
"Things got pretty real, pretty quick," Gowanlock said. "As a Marine, you face the fact that you might not come back, but you know you're doing the right thing. You know you're doing your job."
"He was a good Marine," he said, "a Marine who taught us a lot about everything. He was someone we looked at as kind of invincible. We never thought he would ever go down."
After Arzate was hit, he low-crawled back to his position, where Gowanlock patched him up as best he could.
Bowling and Arzate were hit, but "we had to keep going," Gowanlock said. "We had to figure out where the fire came from and send rounds back down range."
The platoon's senior corpsman, Petty Officer 3rd Class Kyle L. Coker, and the platoon guide then showed up to take care of Bowling while Arzate was escorted to safety.
That was when the squad was notified by unit radio traffic that Bowling, the trusted 25-year-old team leader from Casselberry, Fla., had died of his wounds.
"When you hear about things like this over the (radio) net, it hits everyone pretty hard," said Arzate.
One Marine who felt the immediate repercussions was Gowanlock, who had to step up to fill the leadership gap.
"It was pretty difficult having to step up after losing two team leaders in one day," he said. "Early on we didn't see any combat like this. It's toward the end of the deployment that we get thrown into a real hot combat zone, and we start losing Marines. That's probably the hardest thing to deal with."
Since that day, the Multi-national Force steamroller has all but flattened the enemy in Fallujah. In hindsight, the Marines have lost one of their best and most revered leaders, but they had to keep going.
"Maybe it was bound to happen ... just not to our platoon and our squad," Gowanlock said. "When it happened, it shook us up and made us realize that this is no joke. We had to keep going and do our mission."
The loss was felt all the way up the chain of command, and Bowling's sacrifice has not gone unnoticed, said Capt. Brian G. Heatherman, 32, a native of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and the commanding officer, Company L. The boys did awesome, but it's weird, we fight all day and just when you think things are winding down, a firefight happens. Third platoon lost a good Marine that day.
First squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Co., 3/1 is currently still in Fallujah wrapping up operations. Lance Cpl. Arzate has returned to full duty and re-joined his Marines as one of the team leaders.
Report
These reports come from a Marine Forum from Marines in Iraq. No Dan Rather. Just how they see it.
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