Here’s an inspiring story you’re not liable to hear from mainstream media outlets like CBS’s 60 Minutes II, which spend too much time maligning the Bush administration and broadcasting the complaints of a handful of soldiers to bother focusing on the widespread heroism of America’s bravest patriots.
Meet Marine 1st Sergeant Brad Kasal (in the middle). This photo was taken of 1stSgt. Kasal, whose older brother is a former 82nd Airborne paratrooper serving in Iraq, after the most recent major offensive in Fallujah. 1stSgt. Kasal sacrificed his own safety to save a room full of fellow Marines. Though one cannot see from the photograph, 1stSgt. Kasal lost some of the bone in his lower right leg after taking several AK rounds.
During the encounter, 1stSgt. Kasal took rounds in the back, which were rendered virtually harmless due to his vest armor. However, he took one round through his buttocks, which passed through both cheeks, leaving four holes in him. And amazingly, he also took the brunt of a grenade blast after jumping on top of one of his younger Marine brothers to shield him from the fire.
1stSgt. Kasal battled the terrorist who did most of the damage to him and his men, and despite a massive loss of blood he never stopped fighting. Notice he is still holding his pistol.
1stSgt. Kasal, who has been recommended for a Medal of Honor for his heroism that day, is already the recipient of several Purple Hearts for previous battles throughout his career, and has turned down more so he could remain with his unit. While in the hospital, 1stSgt. Kasal has met President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and several other celebrities. He said that Bush came in by himself and had a very long, sincere, and friendly visit with him.
Sayzak said this in post #2 : That's definately the kind of guy you want on YOUR team. There are no terrorists as valiant as him.
Absolutely!
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“We were moving down the street, clearing buildings,” Kasal recounted. “A Marine came out wounded from a building and said there were three more wounded Marines trapped in there with a bunch of bad guys (insurgents). As we entered, we noticed several dead Iraqis on the floor and one of our wounded.”
Kasal said there was no question of what to do. “If I was a general I would still think my job was to get the wounded Marines out of there,” he said. “So we went in to get them.”
As soon as he entered the two-story stucco and brick building, Kasal found himself in mortal combat. It was fighting to the death, and there was no quarter expected or given, Kasal said.
“An Iraqi pointed an AK-47 at me and I moved back. He fired and missed. I shot and killed him. I put my barrel up against his chest and pulled the trigger over and over until he went down. Then I looked around the wall and put two into his forehead to make sure he was dead.”
While Kasal and a young Pfc. Alexander Nicoll were taking out the insurgent behind the wall, another one with an AK hiding on the stairs to the second floor began firing at the Marines on full automatic. “That’s when I went down, along with one of my Marines (Nicoll). Then I noticed the hand grenade.”
It was a green pineapple grenade, Kasal said. It flew into the room out of nowhere and landed near the two downed men. Kasal now believes that other Marines who were watching their back left the room for reasons he still doesn’t know and an insurgent was able to somehow get behind him.
Kasal said his first instinct was to protect the young Marine lying bloody beside him. He covered the young man with his body and took the full brunt of shrapnel to his back when the grenade exploded. Kasal’s body armor and helmet protected his vital organs but the shrapnel penetrated the exposed portions of his shoulders, back, and legs, causing him to bleed profusely.
“I took my pressure bandage and put it on his leg,” Kasal remembered. “Then I tried to put Nicoll’s pressure bandage on a wound on his chest but it is very hard to get a flak jacket off a wounded man and I was bleeding and fading in and out.”
Nicoll survived the grenade blast and his previous bullet wounds but lost his right leg. “An artery was cut and they had to amputate his leg,” Kasal said. “I have seen him and talked to him several times since we got back to the States. He is doing OK.”
The grenade blast stunned Kasal. He floated in and out of consciousness. But in the back of his mind a voice kept telling him he had to stay alert or the Iraqis were going to come back and finish him and Nicoll off. “They weren’t going to let us live if they knew we were alive. It was kill or be killed,” he said.
Kasal wrestled his 9mm automatic out of its holster and lay on the floor waiting for help. It was thirty or forty minutes before other Marines arrived.
“That’s when I got shot in the butt,” Kasal recalled. “It was the shootout at the OK Corral – point-blank range. I was lying there shooting and somebody shot me through both cheeks. It smarted a bit.”
Kasal did not know the exact extent of his wounds until much later; all he knew was that he was badly hurt. He was floating in and out of consciousness, ultimately losing 60 percent of his blood before he was rescued. After first aid, Kasal and Nicoll were transported to a field hospital in Iraq, then flown to Landstuhl, Germany, where Kasal was hospitalized for a week before arriving at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.
“I took seven rounds; five in my right leg, one in my foot and one to the buttocks area. When the grenade went off I got 30 to 40 pieces of shrapnel in my back,” Kasal said he later discovered.
Doctors are still fighting to save his leg, Kasal said. By the time this story appears, he will be back at Bethesda for more treatment, but the doctors won’t know for six months whether the Marine will every be 100 percent again. “I know I will walk again, but I don’t know if I will fully recover.”
Meanwhile Kasal experiences almost constant pain.
“I'm missing four and a half inches of the fibula and tibia bones,” he said. “They put that halo brace on my leg to try and make the bone grow together. But there’s no guarantee that will work.”
Despite everything that has happened to him, Kasal still believes America’s mission is Iraq is both important and terribly misconstrued. He harbors special venom for the so-called “mainstream” media reporters who portray the war as a failure and American policy as a gross mistake. He says he has heard reporters say their job is to make President George W. Bush and his policies seem a failure.
“The insurgents are oppressing normal people,” Kasal said. “The press never reports the good things. When we open a school or fix a sewer, the things that make normal Iraqis happy, they never report it. There are plenty of Iraqis, thousands of them, who want to live normal lives. If we can help them it will be all right. The people just want peace and freedom.”
Spc. Micheaux Sanders with Silver Star Spc. Micheaux Sanders with Silver Star
HEIDELBERG, Germany (Army News Service, Dec. 14, 2004) -- Spc. Micheaux Sanders deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 fresh from Army basic training.
Sanders tank crew and two others from his unit – C Company, 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor -- were called to the aid of a 1st Cavalry patrol trapped in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents.
“There were blown up Humvees all over,” said Sanders.
“They were throwing everything at us,” said Sanders. “They were shooting AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, pistols, shotguns and throwing grenades.”
The tankers fired back, but were low on ammunition. Because the unit had been scheduled to move, the tanks had been prepared for transport, and were carrying only a minimum load of ammo.
Sanders said he did his best, standing exposed to the enemy in one of the tank’s hatches and firing whatever he or his fellow crewmembers could find.
A round struck Sanders in the arm, slicing straight through his shoulder and out the other side, but he says he barely noticed, waving off the medics who tried to come to his aid.
When the bullets ran out, Sanders still wouldn’t give up.
“I threw whatever I had at them,” he said. “When we ran out of bullets, I threw rocks.”
Sanders was awarded the Silver Star when the 1st Armored Division was welcomed home to Germany in October.
1st Lt. Christopher Dean from V Corps' 2nd Battalion 37th Armored Regiment speaks with a reporter Oct. 7 during a welcome home ceremony for the 1st Armored DIvision where he received the Silver Star for leading the rescue of 19 Soldiers from an ambush in Baghdad's Sadr City. 1st Lt. Christopher Dean from V Corps' 2nd Battalion 37th Armored Regiment speaks with a reporter Oct. 7 during a welcome home ceremony for the 1st Armored Division where he received the Silver Star for leading the rescue of 19 Soldiers from an ambush in Baghdad's Sadr City.
Like many Soldiers honored as heroes, 1st Lt. Christopher Dean of V Corps’ 1st Armored Division says he was just doing his job the day he earned a Silver Star for leading the rescue of a patrol ambushed in Baghdad.
“People don’t say, ‘I’m going to try to win a Silver Star today.’ We go out and we’re put in an extraordinary position, and the right people recognize what we are doing,” said Dean. “I wouldn’t say I was in the right place at the right time, but I guess I was fortunate to be in the wrong place at the right time.”
Dean, a platoon leader in the division’s Company C, 2nd Battalion 37th Armor, based in Friedberg, Germany, was helping to hand authority for the division mission over to the incoming 1st Cavalry Division at that “right time” -- April 4. More importantly, the lieutenant’s assignment that day was to serve as Quick Reaction Force tank platoon leader, with oversight for the “wrong place” -- Sadr City, arguably the most violent section of Baghdad.
A patrol from 1st Cavalry was ambushed in the city. Dean rolled out immediately with four tanks under his charge. Traveling at top speed, they headed to the grid coordinates given by the besieged patrol. As soon as they arrived, the QRF was hit by a barrage of gunfire.
“We had rounds coming in from everywhere, said Dean. “It sounded like Rice Krispies popping.” One of his Soldiers was killed.
Dean the led a seven-tank attack back into the engagement area to find the ambushed patrol. The.50-caliber machine gun was taken out by enemy fire, leaving him atop the vehicle with only his M4 rifle. He was hit by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade blast.
Reaching the ambushed patrol, the QRF dismounted to help get the patrol out. Under heavy enemy fire they pulled out the dead and wounded and put them inside the tanks, then used one of Dean’s tanks to push two damaged vehicles out of the area.
