Memorial Day, not National BBQ Day

Illustration from Marines Magazine
Illustration from Marines Magazine

I have become very tired of hearing “Happy Memorial Day” as people go off to their parties and BBQ’s. It leads me to believe that many in our country have forgotten what Memorial Day is for. It is not a second Veteran’s Day. It is a day to remember our dead. It is a day to give thanks to God that we have men and women who were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their brothers and sisters. I hope we can also remember that we have a serious problem where 22 Veterans a day take their own lives as a result of what they have experienced and lost in war. This Memorial Day, I would like to introduce you to two Marines, who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Ramadi, Iraq in 2008. They were not elite Snipers, Delta or SEALs. They were just Marines. They stood their post to the end and did all that can ever be asked of a Marine. I hope they live forever in legend. I hope you take a few minutes to read it and to tell someone else about these two men on this Memorial Day.

From a speech given my Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly:

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.

The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.

Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.

The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”

What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”

“No sane man.”

“They saved us all.”

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “ … let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe … because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

Thank God that we have a Country still able to produce men like this. Remember them well.

7 thoughts on “Memorial Day, not National BBQ Day”

  1. Thank you for sharing this.

    It’s stories like this, that need to be told to everyone on Memorial Day. Especially those who are drinking beer, eating BBQ ribs, and laughing by the pool. All the while thinking they are observing a day of pain and loss. When in reality it’s just an excuse, for them, to have a party.

    Memorial Day is not a time of celebration. It’s a time of remembrance and respect for those who can’t come home.

  2. I am new to your site and as an Australian I think that you have hit the nail on the head. I am an ex serving member of the Australian Army of 15 years and feel the same way. People today have no real concept as to why we served our countries as did our predecessors. Today most people just look at the holiday to celebrate the time off and not for what it is actually worth, at least that is how I feel anyway. Unlike us who take the time to reflect. We served our countries for their and our freedom. Just a little respect goes a long way, no respect stops the heart from its beating place. There is still too much happening in the world today for people to be complacent. It is a new world, a new era, a new life style to adapt too. Let’s all open our eyes to where we have come from and where we have been. Start to look to the future and not the past. Times are tough all around the world, yet we still go on.
    I enjoy reading your posts and watching your videos. Thanks, keep it up
    Dave

  3. Your spot on Dave.
    Ever since I was a baby my father and grandfather ( ex RAAF ) have taken me to the ANZAC march in my country town. Now I’m 42 I’ve been taking my boys to the march since they were baby’s. A little respect for the men & women who have been there and for those that didn’t come back goes a long way.
    The legacy that these men and women have left must never be lost.

  4. Speaking as a former Marine. Aug.27-1965 thru Aug 26 1969. It’s very gradifing to see a report of heroism by a marine. Sure we’re a grateful nation despite the bias of a ungrateful media. I’m convinced they’re shameful. Totally negelent to the responsibilities of reporting the actual facts that acurately describe a newsworthy happening. I know this is true during the Vietnam war. They (new media) report more to themselves, i e CBS wants their version to meet the approval of NBC & ABC rather than give an accurate description of what really happened. It’s no wonder so many Americans think of Memorial Day as a time to grill hamburgers in the back yard. Because the media deliberlately has chosen to distort the truth or just fail to report on it. Were it not for this web site 4500 Taticial or whatever it is? I would not heard of these gallent brave Marines.

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