My Men are My Heroes (2 page)
Read My Men are My Heroes Online
Authors: Nathaniel R. Helms
AN OPTION
The long white bone lying on the road looked like an enormous chicken leg that had been sucked clean and tossed asideâexcept for the gray athletic shoe on the rotting foot. The shoe and the leg had once belonged to a radical Muslim jihadistâa “holy warrior.” The remnants of the rotting corpse had become breakfast for a pack of the starving, half-mad dogs that roamed the embattled city of Fallujah, Iraq, in November 2004. It was a city that thousandsâperhaps tens of thousandsâof warriors on both sides of the battle wouldn't exit in one piece, much less alive.
The last time Marines had fought from house to house and room to room for days on end was during the epic battle for the Vietnamese city of Hue in 1968. As it was then, the combat at Fallujah was ghastly and the casualties high. During the monthlong fight, at least 136 Marines were killed and more than 1,200 were wounded.
In both cities, pools of blood slicked the floors and stained the walls of embattled houses after the Marines surged through them.
Every alley was a death trap and every room a potential morgue. Dead men shared floor space with the living while cracking bullets zipped overhead and pinged around like castor beans in a cheap Juarez rattle. Walls of the rooms where the combatants took shelter suddenly collapsed, and roofs came crashing down without warning. A finely sifted frosting of concrete, dust, and sweat covered the living and dead alike, coloring everyone in the same dull gray. Every room in every house promised a fierce contest with only one outcome for the embattled Marines. To a man, they knew that failure was not an option.
Another gripping image from Fallujahâcaptured by a freelance photographerâdepicts a terribly wounded Marine being assisted from a house by two comrades. He is bloody but still defiantly holds his 9mm pistol at the ready. The man's jaw is set in determination to come out standing up.
The riveting photo couldn't show it, but the Marine had been shot seven times and riddled with at least 43 grenade fragments during a struggle to rescue several wounded comrades from inside the house. His right leg was nearly severed by a burst of bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle, one that also wounded another Marine.
By all rights, he should be deadâhe lost enough blood to kill most men while surviving a give-no-quarter shoot-out, point-blank range. The loser of that gunfight lay sprawled on his back in the shadows behind the Marine, seeping blood and brains from massive holes where the back of his head used to be.
That memorable photoâsnapped by Lucian Read for
World Picture Newsâ
stares at you from the cover of this book. You may well have seen it before, as it has appeared on hundreds of websites, magazines, and newspapers and was even made into a Marine Corps poster. The photo's subject, First Sergeant (now Sergeant Major) Brad Kasal, did make it out alive. Thanks to his death-defying bravery, cunning, intelligence, and raw
grit, Kasal is now known around the world as the iconic United States Marine.
“Kasal is always ready,” says Staff Sergeant Sam Mortimer, currently a drill instructor at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot near San Diego, where young men are forged into steel. “There ain't another Marine like him in the entire Corps.”
This is his story.
POINT OF THE SPEAR
Friends and family call him “Brad.” Marines now call him “Sergeant Major,” the highest noncommissioned rank in the United States Marine Corps. Brad Kasal was promoted to that status after the Battle of Fallujah, but he will always be “First Sergeant” to the men he led into the fight there. They speak the title respectfully, almost reverently, as if it were reserved only for him.
Even before entering Iraq, Kasal was almost mythical among Marines, known for leading his troops at the front to ensure that he would always be the first man into a fight. In his mind, that is what Grunts do, and Brad Kasal is a true Grunt.
Unlike most career Marines, Kasal has always been an infantryman. With the exception of recruiting duty, he has spent more than 18 years in the infantry. That's not typical. The infantry is a young man's game. In addition to guts and brains, infantry service takes tremendous stamina. Most men simply can't maintain the pace of leading 18- and 19-year-oldsâkids in their absolute physical primeâfor nearly two decades. It's the same
reason there aren't many 41-year-old Olympiansâand even that comparison trivializes the physical challenges of the infantry.
Perhaps more important, infantry service takes tremendous courage to stand in harm's way. Death is always just around the corner. Kasal never seemed to notice. He chose the infantry because infantrymen live on the cutting edge of America's military might. The sharp point of the spear is where Kasal lives to be.
“Infantrymen are the troops who close with the enemy and kill them,” Kasal says simply. “That is our only purpose.”
Until an Iraqi gunman shattered Kasal's right leg, blasted his ass with bullet holes, and riddled his head and back with shrapnel, Kasal could outrun, outfight, outshoot, and outthink the much younger men he led. Unlike the medical experts who urged him to accept amputation of his leg and retire quietly, his Marines expect he will one day lead again. If anyone can do it, they say, it will be Kasal.
Kevin Kasal, who served with his older brother at Camp Pendleton, California, recalls how Brad once motivated his men by picking up a lagging Marine and running to the top of a steep mountain trail with the trainee slung over his shoulder. Many of his young Marines still call him “Robo-Grunt” because he was able to run them into the ground long before he got tired.
You won't hear such superlatives from the man himself, however. “Leadership is not about ego,” Kasal insists. “It is about taking men into battle and keeping them alive. The best warriors make the best leaders because they can think and function effectively when surrounded by the chaotic hell of combat.
“Marine Corps combat leaders are expected to lead from the front, so they have to be the best. Green Marines need to see that somebody is there for themâsomebody who will ensure they understand what they have to do.”
Whether they're Marines or Army soldiers, infantrymen have been called “Grunts” since the Vietnam War, ostensibly for the sound they make when they shrug on 100 pounds of combat gear and stand up. In other times and other wars they were called doughboys and dogfaces, sad sacks, and GIs. The terms all mean the same thing.
Privately, infantrymen will tell you they're called Grunts because the name fits their unfortunate station. Grunts are the first into combat and the last out. They live in mud and dust, heat and cold, in wretchedness so complete that all they can do is grunt with despair. But the very misery they endure also makes them proud that they can take itâand cocky to the point of being eager for more. Grunts are weird that way.
Grunts march. And because they usually walk instead of ride, everything they need must be hauled on their backs. Sometimes Grunts have to carry 100 pounds of equipment, food, ammunition, and water for many long miles. They call it “humping.”
Robo-Grunt is a supreme accolade among men who offer very few. Kasal earned it by consistently showing himself to be exceptionally tough and hard in a culture where strength and endurance are important measures of a man.
Just down the road from Kasal's hometown of Afton, Iowa, is the sleepy community of Winterset, birthplace of actor John Wayne. Wayne made Marine infantry legends more than 50 years ago in the role of Sergeant John Stryker in the World War II classic
Sands of Iwo Jima.
The movie is a fictionalized story about the conquest of the most expensive real estate ever paid for with the blood of Marines. Wayne's character was a hard-bitten three-striper who led a squad of 13 riflemen and machine gunners.
Being a Marine Corps squad leader is an exceptional honor and an apprenticeship for higher distinctions: Kasal's longtime job of first sergeant and his current rank of sergeant major.
The Corps is very picky about whom it chooses to lead its young warriors. When squad leaders make mistakes, young men die.
An infantry squad leader is usually the leader closest to the opposition. What he sees and what he knows are essential to the success of the mission, so he has to be smart and capable of keeping a cool head when bullets fly. John Wayne made it look easy, but in real life it's toughâvery tough. In combat, an infantry squad is never far from the center of the fight. They live with the stink of death in their noses and taste it in the grit that comes free with their morning chow.
“We are usually very ordinary guys who have an extraordinary job,” Kasal says. “All Marines wonder if they are capable of killing someone before it happens. Being curious about combat comes with the job.”
Kasal had been curious about combat for a long time. Like most boys, he had watched Wayne's war movies and wondered what it would be like to be a tough-talking, two-fisted Marine. By the time Kasal reached high school, he had already decided to join some branch of military service. All that was left was choosing which one.
“My older brothers joined the Army, so I knew a little about the military,” he says. “I had seen and listened to the Army, Navy, and Air Force recruiters when they came to my high school to talk about joining the service. They all emphasized education, seeing the world, and earning all the benefits of joining their particular service. None of them even mentioned war.
“The Marine recruiter came out in his dress blues and said that most of us weren't good enough to be in his Marine Corps. He didn't promise us anything except we would be the best trained warriors in the world when the Marine Corps finished with us. I decided right then I wanted to serve with the best.”
Service is a Kasal family tradition. In addition to his three older brothers who joined the Army, their father once guarded
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as a member of the Iowa Army National Guard. Kasal's youngest brother, Kevin, was in both the Army and the Marine Corps and still serves in the Iowa Army National Guard. Brad's older brother, Jeff, was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division and fought in Desert Storm.
Marines and the other services “all fight together and we've all got a job to do,” Brad Kasal says. “Each service does it differently. The Army trains for defense, and the Marine Corps trains for offense. Back during the Cold War, the American soldiers defending West Germany against the Soviet Union were taught to immediately go on the defensive and wait for help if the Russians attacked. Marines aren't taught that. We would attack.”
That aggressive approach fits Kasal perfectly. “Nobody wins wars being a speed bump,” he says. “Marines are trained to always attack.”
The differences in military service were important to Kasal even before he joined the Corps. He spent a considerable amount of effort researching the various branches at the expense of his studies. As a high school student looking for a future beyond Afton, he saw that research as a reasonable trade-off.
“I read every book on military subjects I could find at my local libraries,” he says. “Whenever I could, I watched war movies on TV and at the theater in Creston, the closest town with a movie theater. I probably didn't know what the word âobsession' meant at the time, but being a Marine someday was always on my mind.”