SOMETHING ELSE FOR MOVE ON DOT ORG TO RIDICULE

Eventually both men were shot from behind in a burst of automatic weapons fire that completely severed Nicoll's right leg below the knee and cut Kasal's right leg almost in half in about the same place. Nicoll was shot a second time in the stomach and Kasal was shot in the buttocks while he was pulling the wounded Marines to safety.

Kasal was an Iowa farm boy and standout athlete in his tiny hometown of Afton before he joined the Marine Corps and became a modern legend for his remarkable fighting ability. Known as Robo-Grunt by his Marines, Kasal was shot seven times and struck by more than 40 pieces of grenade shrapnel during the battle for Fallujah in November, 2004.

The 39-year-old Marine – who has been selected for Sergeant-Major - earned worldwide recognition when a picture of him being carried from the scene of a hand-to hand
confrontation with a band of insurgents was flashed around the world. The jihadists ambushed a team Kasal was leading to rescue three fallen Marines trapped in a building when the firefight erupted on November 13, 2004. One Marine died and six others from Weapons Company and Kilo Company, Third Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division, were wounded during the 90-minute fight that raged at ranges of less than 15 feet. None of the insurgents – estimated at 10 to 12 foreign fighters - survived the encounter.

The fight was already underway when Kasal encountered a bearded, heavily armed insurgent at point-blank range inside the small concrete and stucco Fallujah residence. Kasal was searching a small room in the building when he detected the jihadist preparing to shoot him in the chest with his assault rifle. Kasal managed to avoid the enemy's burst of fire and forced his weapon over the insurgent's arms until it touched his chest. The 18-year infantry veteran then pumped at least eight 5.56 rounds into the insurgent's chest and two more into his forehead while they grappled face to face.

"He was so full of drugs he was still twitching and his eyeballs were still rolling around in his head for the entire time we were in the building," Kasal remembered.

"The insurgents are not freedom fighters, they are not soldiers (now our pals); they are terrorists who depend on drugs so they can take at least one American with them before they die. They don't deserve to be called soldiers."

During the close-quarters encounter Kasal and 23-year-old Lance Corporal Alex Nicoll were repeatedly shot by an unknown number of drugged up insurgents armed with grenades and AK-47 assault rifles who held the upper floor of the house they had occupied and another next door. Eventually both men were shot from behind in a burst of automatic weapons fire that completely severed Nicoll's right leg below the knee and cut Kasal's right leg almost in half in about the same place. Nicoll was shot a second time in the stomach and Kasal was shot in the buttocks while he was pulling the wounded Marines to safety. Despite his wounds Kasal managed to drag Nicoll to the relative safety of the small room where he had killed the insurgent moments before. There he continued to duel with the remaining insurgents and try to help Nicoll until an enemy fragmentation grenade landed a few feet away and blasted Kasal full of holes when he used his body to shield the younger Marine.

While Kasal was dragging Nicoll to safety Corporal R. J. Mitchell returned from another part of the building to help when he was taken under automatic weapons fire.

While he was dodging the spattering AK rounds the grenade that injured Kasal and Nicoll also wounded Mitchell in the arm and damaged his rifle. Eventually all three men found themselves pinned down in the five-foot wide room while Kasal and Mitchell tried to bandage Nicoll and apply a tourniquet to his severed leg to prevent him from bleeding to death. That's Kasel on left being carried by his mates. The area where they were making their stand was so small Kasal was forced to lie on his back with his feet on the still-twitching insurgent so he could guard the doorway. Eventually Mitchell – who is also from Iowa - managed to summon help using his radio.

Concerned that relieving Marines would hear the noise they were making and assume the wounded Marines were insurgents, Kasal propped his rifle in the doorway of the tiny room to mark their position and drew his 9mm to make a final stand.

"I was worried about a friendly fire incident," Kasal said. "I was afraid they would hear the noise and come in firing."

The three wounded Marines remained pinned down by insurgents who raked their tenuous position from above and behind them until help arrived. Before the fight was finished about 90 minutes after it began Kasal lost sixty percent of his blood, Nicoll lost his right leg, and Mitchell lay bleeding from a wound to his arm. Despite their tenuous position, wounds, and shortage of bandages none of the men ever thought they would be left behind. "Marines don't leave Marines behind," Kasal said.

Kasal is still recovering from seven gunshot wounds and more than 40 grenade preforations he received during a close-quarters fight with insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq on Nov. 13, 2006.

Hat tip Michael Yon...from a very old post and links

Reynolds links to THIS ONE

What do you say when a soldier tells you, without missing a beat, let alone breaking down sobbing as one might expect, that in addition to losing her two best friends and being in the middle of an ugly divorce, she has also been wounded by an Iranian bomb, found out she was pregnant with twins, found out they were dead, and then learned that, by the way, she also had cancer and had better leave her unit and start treatment right away?

There are very few must reads, but this one is astounding. Get ready to drop some stereotypes....before some feminist asshole turns it into a propaganda piece.

God back then.....and Now

Althouse is hosting a pretty interesting discussion about Mother Teresa and her suddenly revealed doubts about the existence of God; doubts that were raised because of the total and endless misery she encountered all over the world for fifty years. I had a great uncle who was in the 82nd Airborne that crossed France into Germany in 1945 and was one of the very first to actually see a concentration camp and the starving Jewish prisoners. He never spoke about it (nor did he speak about his heroism, a part of him that earned two bronze stars), until I met him at a First Communion for a relative. We were shooting the shit when he blurted out the opinion that if there really was a God he didn't want to ever meet him. I was startled and after a few more minutes of bull shitting with him I asked him why he felt that way about God. His eyes sort of rolled into his head, remembering something he'd forgotten long long ago and was just then recovering from the whiskey soaked hard drive in his soul. He told me of the shock all the guys felt when they went into the camp, the screams of the GIs as they saw what had been perpetrated, and the fact that he vomited for almost two hours after first seeing the human skeletons staring dumbly at them, apparently unable to comprehend anything. He moaned for several days and too came to the "Teresa Conclusion," meaning that there could not possibly be a God who would allow such a thing to happen. When he recovered slightly he went out on a mission with the sole purpose of killing any German he found.

"I'm lucky that the only Germans I found were soldiers."

He said it without elaboration but with a trace of anger, and the look in his eye told a volume and a half of what he did with who he found. Any of us who sees the day to day misery of real people will have, at the very least, doubts about God, and many of us share with my late uncle the opinion "that I never want to meet Him."

As a member of our "Greatest Generation," the one that endured the worst depression in the history of the country and the horror of WWII, he never spoke of battles, war, or anything much of the days between 1940 and 1946. I can only imagine what one of today's "me me me" generation would do, by that I mean the gutless shitheads pissing and moaning from the safety of college campuses around the country and DNC headquarters in every city in the land. Endless TV appearances on Opera, Meet the Press, and Jay Leno come first to mind, followed by his mommy bitching that he hadn't won enough medals because he was (black, Hispanic, Catholic, etc.) and that he was "owed" enough money to go to Harvard. Those kinds of people would make sure that we all forgot him as fast as we could.

The really brave guys, the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, say nothing, which I think is what really brave guys around the world say.

BTW, after my great uncle died his kids found his Army memorabilia in an attic. Included were the six citations for bravery and descriptions of what they were for. He had never told them about what he'd "done in the war, Daddy," but all of us were in awe of what a brave mother fucker he was.

And finally we knew what had made him an alcoholic for nearly ten years after the war.

It goes without saying that none of the medals or citations were for the agony he felt when first seeing the concentration camp prisoners. The only thing you get for something like that is a contempt for God.

If there really is one.