Women Marines: It’s your history—preserve it. They’re your stories—hear them. They’re your sisters—join them.
The Women Marines Association (WMA) is the only organization that exists for female Marines, and it needs help from her sisters in arms. All over the United States, local chapters have been struggling to recruit new members, with 12 of its 64 chapters at risk of closing due to aging membership and the inability to meet regularly. With each chapter closure, the photographs, stories and, most importantly, opportunities for mentorship are lost.
You might think that the WMA is your grandma’s garden club, a bunch of old ladies drinking and spilling the tea, but it is so much more than a social gathering.
Female Marines, like all Marines, long for a mission-purposed life. Become active in your local WMA chapter and shape it into the mission that calls to you. Do you feel called to mentor new recruits? To provide guidance in the transition from active duty to retired? To volunteer for projects? To curate photos, memorabilia and stories? To spread the word on social media? All these roles need to be filled. Whatever your mission, you will have a club of tough, resilient and like-minded women to work with.
“I joined WMA because I needed a community, one that I could lead again. I think part of the Marine Corps tradition is leaving something better than you found it. So, when I said I wanted to be a part of this, that’s my commitment,” explained 29-year-old Sergeant Nadia Urbina-De La O, who serves as the vice president of WMA CA-2 San Diego County.
Mission Statement of the WMA
Founded in Denver, Colo., 1960, the WMA is committed to preserving and sharing the proud heritage of women who have served in the U.S. Marine Corps—from World War I to the present day. We educate current and future generations about our enduring legacy and provide un-wavering support to all women Marines through every stage of their life and service.
Mentorship Opportunities with Active-Duty Women Marines
“I joined the Marine Corps at 19. I joined, but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Honestly, I don’t think any of us did,” recalls Urbina-De La O. Remember that feeling? The WMA is a resource to support women and get them connected to others who have marched down the same road.
Retired Master Sergeant Jeannine Marie Franz, the WMA National History and Archives Chair, joined the organization when she was a 30-year-old staff sergeant stationed in Camp Fallujah, Iraq, and became that chapter’s president. “Once I joined, I learned that accessibility to senior female leadership was readily available. They would go to our luncheons and events, so there was a good chance you could just sit down and ask questions. They weren’t necessarily in your chain of command, but it’s an environment where you can ask for advice and guidance from an experienced woman.”
Often, women Marines are placed in a unit where there are no other women. These Marines need someone to turn to for advice on uniquely feminine problems such as juggling expectations to be a perfect mom and a perfect Marine or finding strategies that will help them get promoted in the male-dominated Corps.
“It’s important to have a woman’s perspective—that’s why WMA is so important,” explained Marta Sullivan, a retired lieutenant colonel and current vice president of Marine and Spouse Programs for the Marine Corps Association. Sullivan recalled that four months after having her first child, she was back to work in the field but still nursing her baby. She needed other women to explain to her how they had dealt with the same situation.
Older female Marines can provide a vital connection with younger women who share the same cultural references.In turn, those Marines can receive mentorship from older women who have transitioned out of their military careers and into new ones.
Sharing Stories with Future Women Marines
Maybe your WMA mission is to coach young women who dream of standing on the yellow footprints. Aimee Gonzales, a 21-year-old lance corporal, grew up attending WMA events in the OR-1 Portland, Ore., chapter with her mother, who is also a Marine.
Older female Marines can provide a vital connection with younger women who share the same cultural references. In turn, those Marines can receive mentorship from older women who have transitioned out of their military careers and into new ones.
“There were a couple of ladies—Patty and Golda—who were World War II veterans, and there were other Korea and Vietnam era women Marines. It was so enjoyable to talk to them. They really loved their time,” said Gonzales. Having these WMA experiences helped when she decided to enlist in the Corps. “[The WMA members] told me what to expect and prepare for,” she explained. “It was a lot easier for me to notice things that were not quite right because of their experiences. It was a little bit more eye opening. A lot of women don’t have that same advantage of talking to a female Marine.”
Mentorship Opportunities with Women Veterans
The WMA also provides an opportunity to network with women who have established post-military careers.
“I am more of a Marine today than I was when I was in uniform. And I say that because of the principles that we were taught, you know, operating in integrity, excellence, decency, order and honoring leadership—even if you don’t like the people, right? I pull from those principles, and I stand strong,” said Laurie Sayles, Marine veteran and current CEO of Civility Management Solutions. “You’ve got to maintain those principles that you learned from the Marine Corps, and that’s your differentiator.”
Job hunting is challenging for everyone, and for Marines, there is the added stress of transitioning from military to civilian life. WMA provides support and strategies.
“Joining WMA gives you contacts all over the place because you meet so many people within that organization, especially when you go to the conventions every other year. There’s such a wealth of knowledge in the room,” said MSgt Franz.
The WMA Women of the Corps Collection preserves the legacy of women Marines by archiving memorabilia and every uniform used from World War I to the present.
Public Service Projects
One of the purposes of the WMA, as stated in their bylaws, is to provide care and assistance to hospitalized veterans and members of the Armed Forces of the United States. Many chapters volunteer in veterans’ hospitals and veterans’ retirement homes. Likewise, many WMA chapters participate in stand downs, free events that provide veterans with onsite medical and dental attention plus information on navigating benefits and support services.
“WMA OR-1 has been a pillar of the Salem Stand Down, consistently volunteering their time, tirelessly collecting items, and adding a touch of warmth by baking sweets for attendees,” said Sergeant Rosy Macias, the vice president of OR-1.
WMA MI-2 Motor City actively supported troops from 2002 to 2022. Their project Operation Caring Friends sent letters and care packages to service-members who received little or no support from home. Commands and chaplains reached out to the group, and the program grew.
“We are finally on our last month of deployment, and it warms my heart each time my team gets a care package from those of you who support their troops…. It might not be that big of a deal to you, but it means the world to us,” wrote one recipient.
Many WMA chapters also participate in Wreaths Across America and join in local events with other military organizations.In San Diego, De La O participated in the Coronado 4th of July Parade. She walked beside the car that carried 103-year-old Marine Corps veteran Sgt Roberta “Randy” Tidmore. Tidmore has been a long-time member of the WMA CA-2 chapter, as well as other service organizations such as Honor Flight.
One of the purposes of the WMA, as stated in their bylaws, is to provide care and assistance to hospitalized veterans and members of the Armed Forces of the United States
National WMA Activities
To support excellence among female Marines, the WMA provides awards and scholarships. The organization began the Molly Marine Awards in 1969, which go to one recruit in each graduating platoon at boot camp, selected by her peers for demonstrating the qualities of an exemplary Marine. The WMA also provides annual memorial scholarships up to $5,000 and assistance grants to members undergoing financial difficulties.
During WMA conventions, the WMA presents certificates to recognize excellence and dedication among its members. (Photo by Tracy Smith)The WMA’s Women of the Corps collection features a poignant display of items that belonged to Maj Megan McClung, a Marine whose legacy continues to inspire the Marine Corps after she was killed in Ramadi, Iraq, on Dec. 6, 2006. (Photo courtesy of Mary Ann Merritt)The WMA’s Women of the Corps collection features a poignant display of items that belonged to Maj Megan McClung, a Marine whose legacy continues to inspire the Marine Corps after she was killed in Ramadi, Iraq, on Dec. 6, 2006. (Photo courtesy of Mary Ann Merritt)
As part of their mission to preserve and promote the history of female Marines, the WMA maintains a historic collection of uniforms and artifacts. The Women of the Corps Collection began as a history project by the WMA Colorado Columbine chapter (CO-1) in 2004. It grew into a unique and definitive collection of every uniform used by women Marines since WW I. The WMA presented the full collection at the last convention, and a partial collection of the uniforms is available for display at museums. If interested, contact the WMA’s National History and Archives Committee at [email protected].
The History of Women Marines
Women Marines need to hear the stories of those who have gone before, appreciate their fights for equality and learn from them. By hearing their stories, you will know that change is possible.
Most WMA chapters hold an event in February honoring the establishment of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve under the “Free a Man to Fight” campaign. During WW I, the Marine Corps admitted women for clerical services in order to send more men into combat. Opha May Johnson became the first female Marine reservist in 1918. However, in 1919, all women Marines were returned to inactive status.
During WW II, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was established in February 1943. Females were only assigned to 30 occupations, consisting mostly of administrative work. But as the war continued, women were assigned as mechanics, drivers, welders and air traffic controllers. At the end of the war, women’s roles were again demobilized. But, in 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, providing a separate women’s corps within each branch of the military.
Female recruits began training at Parris Island, S.C., in 1949. In the following years, the manpower demand from the Korean War increased recruitment goals for women. Schools such as Naval Amphibious School and Command and Staff College opened to women officers.
The 21st Commandant Randolph M. Pate presents a bouquet to Col Julia E. Hamblet, the director of Women Marines, on the 14th anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve on Feb. 13, 1957.President Harry S. Truman signs the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, June 12, 1948.
In the ’60s and ’70s, the Vietnam War and anti-military attitudes caused manpower shortages across all branches. The 1967 Marshall Commission removed the policy that limited women to only 2% of the military and lifted restrictions on promotions, and in 1976, the first female drill instructors graduated from Drill Instructor School. This allowed women to independently supervise and train female recruits at Parris Island and opened more leadership and promotional opportunities for women Marines.
In 2015, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter ordered all military occupations and positions opened to women. In 2020, the National Defense Authorization Act mandated the Marine Corps to integrate all training for males and females at both Parris Island and Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, Calif. By 2023, all training companies were integrated.
The Closure of the 4th Battalion
In 2023, the Marine Corps deactivated the 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island. From 1986 until just recently, all enlisted women trained in this battalion before earning the title of United States Marine.
“It means closure, but it also means progress because this is something that has been needed for a long time. For women Marines to be validated more, I think the integration was necessary,” said Sgt Kay Ross in a 2023 interview with WTOC.
On June 15, 2023, Marines gathered at MCRD Parris Island, S.C., for the deactivation of the 4th Recruit Training Battalion, an end of an era for the unit that trained generations of enlisted women, transitioning the Corps toward a fully integrated and standardized training structure for all recruits.
But the moment was also bittersweet because it ended a chapter of women’s history.
“The guys had their bragging rights with their battalions—we had ours. To say I went to boot camp with the 4th Battalion makes me proud to this day,” said SSgt Melissa M. Roy.
Some wondered, with the full integration of the Marine Corps, whether there was still a place where women Marines could experience camaraderie. Would the unique history of women in the Corps be buried?
“The Women Marines Association will retain your identity for the rest of your lives…. This is your safe haven,” promised Ann L. Crittenden, WMA National President.
Sign Me Up!
You can head over to www.womenmarines.org to join the WMA as a term or life member. Then search their map for the local chapter nearest you and join them. Most local chapters have active Facebook groups that post their events, so be sure and check those out. If you’re not interested in joining a local chapter, you can be a member at large. You can still be active within the WMA and volunteer your time and services.
Additionally, the WMA holds conventions biennially, on even years. The location varies throughout the United States. The next WMA convention will be hosted by the MI-2 chapter in Frankenmuth, Mich., Sept. 22-25.
SSgt Sayles shared about one convention, “After I started sharing my experience, one lady said, ‘So we’re standing on your shoulders.’ And I tell you—it touched me. It was just a wonderful experience to have at the WMA that you can’t get anywhere else. There’s nowhere else I could have gone and been in a room full of women Marines.”
No club in your area? Consider starting a chapter. Article 10 of the WMA bylaws states that “five or more active members of WMA who reside in a defined geographic area … or share a common USMC special interest/experience (e.g., music, aviation, drill instructor, deployed, etc.) may apply for a chapter charter.”
The Women Marines Association represents the fewer and the prouder. Your enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps was one of the defining moments of your life. Show your colors by joining the WMA today.
Featured Image (Top):Women Marines with “Papa” Company, 4th Recruit Training Battalion, graduate from boot camp MCRD Parris Island, S.C., March 26, 2021. While the historic 4th Battalion that trained all enlisted women was deactivated in 2023 with gender-integrated training initiatives, the Women Marines Association (WMA) continues to ensure that the stories, mentorship and camaraderie of the women who trained here are never lost.
About the Author
Kimberly Ussery grew up as a Navy Brat and has her MFA in Creative Writing from U.C. Riverside. A retired science teacher, she currently writes book reviews for the Journal of San Diego History and blogs on kimberlyus.com.
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Women Marines Celebrate 60 Years of Honor, Courage and Commitment
Each year, 115,000 servicemembers transition from the military into higher education. Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) exists to help the enlisted veterans among them make informed choices about what comes next.
Founded in 2012 by three Yale University students, WSP aims to prepare enlistees for success in college and beyond. The nonprofit’s flagship program is a series of free, one-week academic boot camps hosted at leading universities across the United States. At their core, the boot camps are rigorous college prep courses designed to equip enlisted servicemembers and veterans with the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors for classroom success.
“Yes, you can be here,” said CEO Ryan Pavel. “Here’s what you go through to not only put together a successful application but also kick a– in the classroom.”
It’s a transition that Pavel navigated on his own. He applied to college and was rejected, so he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served five years with two non-combat deployments to Iraq. After separating from the military, he reapplied to college and was rejected again. Finally, after attending community college, he was able to transfer to the University of Michigan.
After graduating, Pavel taught high school and earned his law degree from the University of Virginia. During that time, he also learned about WSP. He helped bring a licensed version of the project to the University of Michigan and trained program directors.
“My winding path of being a sort of a very average Marine, a very average teacher, an average lawyer, right?” said Pavel. “All three of those pieces of my life, none of which were going to be the long-term thing for me, they actually come into play in this work that I’m very privileged to do.”
Pavel has been at the helm of WSP since 2019. Together with the rest of the nonprofit’s team, he aims to help servicemembers navigate separation with a better road map than he had. And it seems to be working.
Ryan Pavel, right, talks with program participant Anand Kathari during one of the WSP’s academic boot camps. (Photo by Craig Pessman for Warrior-Scholar Project)
“We’re very proud. About 90% of our folks go on to complete their degrees, which blows the overall college completion rate out of the water,” said Pavel. The overall completion rate for veterans is 72%.
Hunter Eggleston, 27, is a WSP boot camp grad and success story. After serving as a Navy corpsman for five years, Eggleston separated from the military in January 2023. He began applying for college and, after learning about WSP on Instagram, completed a boot camp at the University of Notre Dame. Now he’s three years into a five-year double major in electrical engineering and Chinese at the University of Vermont.
“Doing WSP is what made me confident enough to do the double major in the first place,” Eggleston said. “They taught me, hey, this is how you can be successful in an academic environment after being out of an academic environment for the past five years of [your] life.”
As a WSP alumnus, Eggleston keeps in touch with other academic boot camp grads. He also volunteered as a fellow in the summer of 2024, paying his good experience forward by mentoring other WSP participants in college readiness at a boot camp like the one he attended. More than likely, Eggleston said, he’ll volunteer again.
“If anybody is hearing about WSP for the first time, don’t hesitate to jump full force into it. It’s a super welcoming community,” said Eggleston. “I couldn’t recommend the program enough.”
Eggleston isn’t alone in his full-throated recommendation of the project. Every year, hundreds of participants attend WSP boot camps for free at roughly 20 colleges and universities across the United States. According to the nonprofit’s exit surveys, 99% of participants would recommend the program to other veterans and servicemembers.
Since its inception, WSP has prepared 2,500 veterans for higher education. Pavel estimated 50% of participants are separated veterans, 40% are active-duty servicemembers and 10% are in the National Guard or Reserve.
Lead fellow and veteran Alberto Vasquez-Varela mentors a STEM-focused cohort at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2024. (Photo by Alex Lopez for Warrior-Scholar Project)
“If I had my druthers, everybody would go through WSP six to 18 months before they transition out,” said Pavel. This way, newly separated veterans would be more likely to know who they are and where they’re going.
“We beat up on the Transition Assistance Program all the time, and … rightly so, it needs to get better,” said Pavel.
Veteran Shane Kissinger collaborates with participants at a WSP academic boot camp, where community-building is a core component of the program. (Photo by Sameer Khan for Warrior-Scholar Project)
“But even if you assume it’s a perfect government-run [program] … there’s still no way a broad program can meet the needs of an individual if that individual isn’t willing to do deep identity work, right? If you’re not spending time seriously thinking and answering, ‘Who am I right now? Who was I at the time of enlistment? What do I want to become? Can higher education help me achieve those goals?’ ”
WSP programming aims to help veterans answer those questions. The academic boot camps work like this. Applicants must be enlisted servicemembers or veterans, typically without an undergraduate degree. Pavel qualified that some applicants, say, with a 15-year-old degree that hasn’t been dusted off and applied might be accepted into a boot camp on a case-by-case basis. Interested individuals can find and fill out an interest form on WSP’s website, warrior-scholar.org. After submission, a member of the WSP outreach team will connect with them for a live conversation.
“If there’s alignment, then they get the full application,” Pavel said. “They’re not screening for academic qualities or merit. They’re finding out: Does this person really want to pursue higher education? Could they benefit from Warrior-Scholar? If yes, they find you a slot for one of the programs.”
Participants can attend an academic boot camp in one of three tracks: business, STEM or college readiness, which used to be called humanities. The cohorts are intimate, with only 10 to 15 participants and a student-to-instructor ratio of 2-to-1.
“That’s what really makes this function … that people know they’re cared for and we can help them every single step of the way,” said Pavel.
Instructors sort into three types. University faculty teach participants as if they’re university students enrolled in a college course. Fellows, like Eggleston, are academic boot camp graduates who mentor participants on what it takes to be successful college students. Contractors teach specific subject matter, such as writing, research and problem-solving or business case studies.
Participants arrive on Saturday and leave one week later.
“Saturday night, you’re reading. Sunday morning, you’re up early, and we start the process of actually going through it,” Pavel said. The boot camps are immersive and intensive, totaling 75 hours of work for no grade and no credit.
“As you start reading [Alexis de] Tocqueville’s ‘equality of conditions’ argument and you get really frustrated about that, it sort of opens the mind when somebody says, ‘OK, well, here’s actually how we unpack that to go into the college discussion.’ And then it’s empowering when somebody comes out the other end and says, ‘Oh my goodness, I can contribute.’ And then you get to start to build a sense of belonging.”
“If I had my druthers, everybody would go through WSP six to 18 months before they transition out.” —Ryan Pavel, CEO, Warrior-Scholar Project
He added, “By the middle of the course, you understand that it’s not actually just about the academics, right? It is actually the power of it—that community side—that nobody has to go at this thing alone.”
After an end-of-course reception, instructors encourage participants to sustain their enthusiasm for education as they head home and plan for civilian life.
Besides the weeklong boot camps, WSP offers one-day college success workshops at community colleges as crash courses to meet veterans where they are.
“So many enlisted veterans have the courage, the wherewithal, to start at the community college level but still don’t see themselves succeeding on the four-year side,” said Pavel.
WSP offers support to their alumni through the Career Pathways Initiative, which helps bridge the gap between education and a career with a five-month professional development cohort. The nonprofit also offers the Graduate Path-ways Initiative Scholars program to assist alumni contemplating graduate or professional school.
But that’s not all, Pavel teased. “There are some other alumni services that we’re cooking up that we’ll be launching in the next 18 months or so.” WSP leadership is also aiming to expand the academic boot camp footprint. “We really want a lot more active duty using Warrior-Scholar Project to make informed choices about what comes next.”
One brand-new initiative should help with that. WSP launched an on-demand version of the college success portion of the boot camps in the online learning platform Coursera. The course was four years in the making.
“I’m buzzing with energy and excitement over it,” Pavel said. “The idea for that is just to be able to have more people that can go through and at least get some dose of what we talk about in the full class and … make more informed choices. And then if that’s valuable, come to the full boot camp.”
Veteran Anastasia Wilson teaches during a Warrior-Scholar Project boot camp at Princeton University in 2023. (Photo by Sameer khan for Warrior-Scholar Project)
Featured Photo (Top): Marine Corps veteran Ryan Pavel has served as CEO of Warrior-Scholars Project (WSP) since 2019. For his work with WSP, Pavel was awarded the Marine Corps University Foundation’s inaugural General Alfred M. Gray Jr. National Award for Service and Education in 2025. (Photo by Violetta dominek for Warrior-Scholar Project)
About the Author
Jenna Biter is a proud military spouse and writer with a master’s degree in national security. Her writing has appeared in Reserve + National Guard, Military Families, Coffee or Die Magazine, The National Interest and more.
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On Aug. 14, 1990, infantrymen from 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, 7th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, debarked their aircraft after a long, transoceanic flight. The Saudi Arabian sun broiled each Marine as they heaved their packs onto their backs and plodded out onto the tarmac. Saudis around the flight line ushered them into barren metal warehouses, the Marines’ new home away from home. The structures adopted qualities more characteristic of an oven than a barracks as men packed inside. The more time passed, the more each Marine longed to set out into the open desert and do what they had trained for.
Their base at Al Jubayl lay undefended, barely 150 miles south of the Iraqi army staged in Kuwait. Less than two weeks earlier, Saddam Hussein had launched his forces across the Iraq-Kuwait border in a nighttime invasion, wrapping up the neighboring nation with stunning speed. He skillfully portrayed his army as an intimidating foe. The Iraqi forces numbered on paper as the fourth-largest army in the world. They appeared battle hardened following the Iran-Iraq War, which had lasted nearly the entire previous decade. The Iraqis proved ruthless through their willingness to utilize weapons such as poison gas. Without knowing the extent of Hussein’s intentions, the United States landed Marines in Saudi Arabia to deter further aggression and stop the Iraqi assault if it continued south.
For the initial Marines on the ground, the prospect of halting Iraq’s advance felt overly optimistic.
The Iraqis proved ruthless through their willingness to utilize weapons such as poison gas. Without knowing the extent of Hussein’s intentions, the United States landed Marines in Saudi Arabia to deter further aggression and stop the Iraqi assault if it continued south.
Iraqi soldiers surrender to Marines with 2nd LAR, 2ndMarDiv, in Kuwait.(Photo by Sgt J.L. Roberts, USMC)
“We went in with just our individual equipment and were really nothing more than a speed bump,” recalled retired Sergeant Major Michael Barrett, the 17th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps. During Desert Storm, Barrett served as the platoon sergeant of 3/9’s surveillance and target acquisition (STA) platoon. “We actually called ourselves ‘the speed bump.’ That was the term our whole battalion used.”
Maritime prepositioning forces arrived offshore with equipment as the days passed. Barrett’s sniper platoon commandeered gear and vehicles as more and more U.S. forces piled into the base. The humvees they acquired rolled off the cargo vessels bright green, standing in stark contrast to the drab browns and greys coloring their world. Lacking any other tools, the Marines mixed water with the talcum powder-like sand, creating a sludge to “paint” their vehicles brown. They staged with the battalion at Al Jubayl for more than five months. Meanwhile, American diplomats ramped up the pressure on Hussein, and senior military commanders drafted a plan to forcibly expel him from Kuwait, should the need arise.
The United Nations Security Council set Jan. 15, 1991, as the deadline for Iraq to voluntarily leave Kuwait. Hussein refused to cooperate as the date expired. Two days later, the United States opened Operation Desert Storm with a massive bombing campaign, stunning in both its scope and its swift destruction. Marine Captain Charles J. Magill, flying a U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagle in an exchange pilot program, scored an air-to-air kill on the same night the air war opened.
SgtMaj Michael P. Barrett retired in 2015 as the 17th Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps after 34 years of service. During Operation Desert Storm, Barrett served as the platoon sergeant for 3/9’s STA platoon.(USMC)
Bagging an Iraqi MiG-29, Magill remains the only Marine aviator with an aerial victory since the Vietnam War. The following morning, on Jan. 18, Iraqis shot down the first Marine aircraft of the war, striking an OV-10 Bronco from Marine Observation Squadron 2 with a surface-to-air missile. The two crewmembers survived the attack and were captured on the ground. They were the first of five Marine aviators shot down and detained as prisoners of war until the conflict ended.
While the air war raged, 3/9 waited. As the first arriving battalion in Saudi Arabia, these Marines were perhaps the most eager to get into the fight. They learned of aviators virtually erasing the entire Iraqi air force and wiping dozens of ground defense positions off the map. At the end of January, they heard of Hussein’s forces finally vaulting south across the Saudi border, the very contingency for which the battalion had landed months earlier. On Jan. 29, Iraqi forces seized the border town of Khafji, touting the advance as a propaganda victory. Three days later, though, his forces retreated back into Kuwait, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The battle to recapture the city cost coalition forces 43 killed, including 11 Marines. Tragically, several of those killed in action were victims of friendly fire. As February began, the scout snipers of 3/9’s STA platoon increased the tempo of patrols and observation posts north of Al Jubayl. The climactic event of the war, the final ground assault and liberation of Kuwait, now approached. Commanders scheduled the advance to begin on Feb. 24.
U.S. Marine and Army forces, along-side joint forces from multiple nations, divided across a massive front extending 300 miles inland from the Persian Gulf. While some units staged along the Saudi border with Iraq, those closest to the coast prepared to advance directly into Kuwait. Here, the Iraqi army constructed two defensive obstacle belts to impede the Americans’ progress, consisting of barbed wire, minefields, antitank ditches and more. Well before dawn on the 24th, the STA Marines deployed in advance of the rest of the battalion to identify breach points through the belts.
“Damaged Iraqi Tank” is a watercolor painting created by Marine artist, Capt Charles G. Grow.
“Our platoon was tasked with route recon for our entire battalion,” Barrett recalled. “We were 15 kilometers for-ward of the battalion, observing the battle area and identifying release points where our tanks and tracks would roll through the breach and deploy the ground forces. 3/9 had two battalions’ worth of 81-millimeter mortars. We had to find them a site as well where they could set up and fire into and beyond the breach. I don’t believe, in history, Marine snipers had ever been used in such a fluid environment mounted in vehicles. How do you employ snipers in a battlespace like that that was so fast, aggressive, and fluid? We kind of were creating those tactics as we went.”
Divided into two universal fire support vehicles, called “Wolf” and “Badger,” sniper teams roamed the battlefield alongside forward air controllers, forward observers and additional communications Marines while the remainder of the battalion advanced behind as part of Task Force Papa Bear. Engineers approached the breach site identified by STA on the first obstacle belt and cleared a path. Tanks equipped with mine-clearing plows followed, bulldozing a path wide enough for the battalion to safely filter through. By 9 a.m., the battalion passed the obstacle belt unopposed.
The enemy refused to cede the second defensive belt so easily. Iraqi artillery and mortars fell around the battalion as the Marines positioned into staging areas before the line of obstacles. Far ahead in the Badger vehicle, 23-year-old Corporal Bryan Zickefoose spotted an enemy forward observation post and mortar battery. Exposed and under fire, Zickefoose held his position with a laser designator, marking the targets for incoming airstrikes. Shrapnel from indirect fire explosions tore into the vehicle as the enemy walked rounds closer. Zickefoose held his ground until two jets soaring overhead wiped out the targets with precision bombs.
“We called in a ton of airstrikes and artillery missions that first day,” Zickefoose said. “At one point, we had an Iraqi tank shooting at us that I called in air support on, and we got a kill on that.”
As the day progressed and Marines penetrated deeper into Kuwait, surrendering Iraqi soldiers flooded the battlefield. They appeared at first in small groups. The snipers in their vehicles far ahead of the battalion instructed the Iraqis through interpreters to just keep walking. Eventually, they would meet someone equipped to handle them. In some places across the front, the surrendering soldiers arrived in groups so large it overwhelmed the rear units and hindered the Marine advance.
Despite the hordes of surrendering enemy, many chose to fight. At one point, while pressing toward the second breach, Badger and Wolf drove up on an extensive enemy trench line. Enemy mortars were still exploding in the vicinity and sporadic gunfire targeted the snipers. The entire battalion halted until the snipers could determine the threat posed by the enemy defenses. With time working against them,
When SgtMaj Bryan K. Zickefoose retired in 2020, he was the senior enlisted leader for U.S. Southern Command. He spent 36 years in uniform, and at the time of his retirement, was the longest serving enlisted Marine. During Operation Desert Storm, Zickefoose was a 23-year-old sniper.(USMC)
Barrett, Zickefoose and Lance Corporal Michael Kilpatrick exited their vehicles and sprinted forward.
“The rest of our STA teams got out and deployed their weapons systems to provide overwatch for us while we jumped into the trench,” Barrett stated. “We kept coming up on these hardened positions within the trench that we didn’t know if they were occupied, so each time one of us would throw a grenade in there, then we’d enter once it went off. Myself, Zickefoose, and Kilpatrick took turns going first, leapfrogging for 300 meters down the trench. It was an exciting moment. There was abandoned equipment everywhere, papers, comm gear, they left their weapons just laying inside the trench line, but after about an hour’s worth of clearing, we didn’t find any enemy.”
An M60A1 tank with Task Force Papa Bear sits near a burning oil well on Feb. 24, 1991. Note that this photograph was taken during daylight hours in the afternoon. (Photo by: LtCol Charles H. Cureton, USMC)
Enemy fire increased further when the battalion finally assaulted through the second breach that afternoon. LCpl Kasey Krock, an engineer assigned to 3/9, heroically distinguished himself when the charge from his MK154 mine-clearance launcher malfunctioned. The rocket-propelled line charge extended fully, carrying the 1,800-pound string of C4 100 meters in front of his vehicle, but the explosives failed to detonate. With the entire battalion waiting behind him, Krock gathered his equipment and ran ahead to manually detonate the charge. When he returned, the MK154’s second shot failed even worse. Not only did the charge fail to detonate, but the rocket failed to extend the line, leaving portions of it dumped on the ground in a winding mess. Once again, Krock exited his vehicle under direct and indirect enemy fire. He calmly pressed forward into the obstacle belt’s live minefield, following the line charge to prime it for detonation. He returned, detonated the second line and successfully opened the breach for the assault force to surge through. For his courage and decisive actions, Krock would receive the Silver Star.
“We were watching all of this unfold as we were going through the breach site,” said Barrett. “Off to our right flank, I remember watching some amtracs receiving artillery or mortar fire. A couple of them were hit, and we took some wounded. I remember one of our tanks hitting a mine and blowing the track right off of it.”
Through the breach, Task Force Papa Bear approached the Al Burqan oil field. Iraqi soldiers set oil wells aflame as they retreated, leaving a hellish landscape in the Marines’ path. Enormous columns of fire burned uncontrollably. Thick, choking black smoke enveloped the area. It was only midafternoon, but the smoke so thoroughly blotted out the sun it appeared to be midnight. Some units encountered smoke so thick their visibility reduced to less than 100 meters. With the oil fields ahead obscuring an unknown enemy and the obstacle belts successfully left in their wake, the Marines halted and arranged defensive positions for the night.
“That night, it got so dark it was pitch black. It was like something right out of the Bible,” Zickefoose remembered. “At one point, I jumped off the hood of the vehicle and turned around and literally could not see the vehicle I jumped off. So, we dug in that night right where we were at.”
Unknown to the Marines, Iraqi commanders spent the night rallying forces for a counterattack. Dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers crept slowly through the fire and smoke approaching Marine positions. In 3/9’s area, dawn over the desert illuminated a hazy world. Thick morning fog combined with the smoke, reducing visibility to less than 50 feet. Around 8 a.m., Task Force Papa Bear’s
Source: USMC History Division
leadership gathered at the regimental command post (CP) to lay out a plan for the day. The snipers assigned to the Badger and Wolf vehicles staged nearby, having transported the battalion commander to the meeting. Suddenly, through the fog, the unmistakable rumble of mechanized armor approached. The first tank materialized a stone’s throw away from the CP and halted. Before the Marines could react, the Iraqi brigade commander in charge of the mechanized force exited the tank and surrendered to the Marines conducting the staff meeting. The surrender message failed to extend any further than the commander’s own tank, however. Even as this ironic and startling exchange took place, additional Iraqi units appeared with guns blazing. Marines hit the deck and took cover as tank main gun fire, machine-gun tracers and even small arms rounds from the Marines’ own rifles tore through the CP.
“We were getting briefed up on the plan and preparations to take Kuwait International Airport and that’s when all hell started breaking loose,” said Barrett. “You could barely see anything, but you could hear that mech rolling up. Everything started during that briefing, and so all of the sudden, that plan just went right out the window.”
Zickefoose and Kilpatrick stood with their vehicle when two Iraqi armored personnel carriers (APCs) emerged. Soldiers streaming out were cut down quickly by Marine fire, which also ignited the enemy vehicles into a burning conflagration. Unable to see anything else and unwilling to wait for whatever else may be coming, the two snipers jumped in their vehicle and drove ahead into the fog. Kilpatrick inched forward into an area where visibility was around 50 yards. Two Iraqi tanks sat idling on the sand. Zickefoose yelled for Kilpatrick to back out before the tanks could react.
Back near the burning APCs, both Marines grabbed rocket launchers and moved on foot back into the fog. Zickefoose snuck around the flank of one tank and shouldered his weapon. He’d never before fired an AT4 rocket, but at less than 50 yards away he scored a direct hit, disabling the tank.
“After I fired, the second tank decided to shoot at me with his heavy machine gun on top of the tank,” Zickefoose said. “I started running back and Kilpatrick fired his LAW and took out the second tank. I don’t know if we just got mobility kills, but when we later drove up there, both those tanks were stuck in the sand.”
With the two tanks knocked out, Zickefoose and Kilpatrick withdrew under fire back to the CP. Additional Marines fought off the remainder of the imminent Iraqi threat. The task force’s tanks from 1st Tank Battalion rolled into the fray.
“Everybody immediately geared up and got to our vehicles ready to move forward into whatever we were going to do next, but there was really nothing we could do in this battle. It was an armor thing. Our M-60 tanks came up, and both sides just started lobbing rounds back and forth, hence the big tank battle. But two young guys from 3/9 STA just said, ‘Here we go,’ and started the whole thing,” SgtMaj Barrett said.
The rising sun steadily burned off the fog, increasing visibility. The snipers watched the show as their tanker brethren lay waste to the enemy on the field before them. Cobras from 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing swooped in overhead, adding to the destruction. In an epic fight lasting more than three hours, the Marines virtually annihilated two Iraqi brigades. According to the USMC History Division publication covering the battle, 1st Tank Battalion accounted for 50 Iraqi tanks disabled, 25 APCs destroyed and 300 prisoners captured—all with no Marine casualties.
The Iraqi counterattack that morning affected Marine and Army units across the entire front. Captain Eddie Ray of Company B, 1st Light Armored Infantry Battalion, 1st Marine Division, would receive a Navy Cross for his initiative and heroism maneuvering around the battlefield in his light armored vehicle, attacking the enemy and designating targets. Others, such as Lance Corporal Chris Sweeney serving as an antitank missile gunner with 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, would earn a Silver Star for singlehandedly eliminating six tanks and one APC from the turret of his vehicle with TOW missiles. In total, the Battle of Burqan, or the “Reveille Counterattack” as it is sometimes called, is today widely considered the largest tank battle in Marine Corps history. For their initiative and courage seeking out and destroying the enemy in the initial surprising moments of the counterattack, in combination with their actions identifying and destroying targets during the advance the day prior, Kilpatrick and Zickefoose both received the Silver Star.
One of two Iraqi tanks taken out on the morning of Feb. 25, 1991, by Cpl Bryan Zickefoose and LCpl Michael Kilpatrick. After the morning fog and smoke lifted, the Marines found both tanks disabled and stuck in the sand. For their heroic actions and initiative, both Zickefoose and Kilpatrick were awarded the Silver Star. (Photo courtesy of SgtMaj Bryan Zickefoose, USMC (Ret))
The assault continued for two more days. Having led the battalion’s advance through the obstacle belts and across the border, the STA platoon took a back seat for the remainder of the operation. The Marines remained on the cordon around Kuwait International Airport while LAVs secured the facility on the 26th. Following the airport’s capture, 3/9’s leadership presented the STA platoon with a more humanitarian mission.
“Once the airport was secure, we received direction from our battalion CO that we no longer needed our two wonderful Kuwaiti freedom fighters, our interpreters, so we loaded them up in our Wolf and Badger vehicles and drove them home,” remembered Barrett. “We drove them right to their home addresses there in Kuwait City. It was so neat. We got there and their families came outside and invited us in for tea and cake. It was really a wonderful moment because they had not seen their families in over six months and we got to witness that reunion.”
The battalion returned to the port in Saudi Arabia. As the first Marine battalion arriving in country nearly seven months earlier, 3/9 would be the first to return home. Driving south, the Marines witnessed scene after scene of the incredible destruction left in their wake during the advance. Hundreds upon hundreds of destroyed or abandoned Iraqi vehicles lined the roads. Groups of surrendering soldiers lingered, waiting to be processed. In total, during the four-day operation, I Marine Expeditionary Force estimated its forces accounted for 460 tanks destroyed, 600 tanks captured, 218 APCs destroyed, 390 APCs captured, 432 artillery pieces destroyed, 1,500 enemy soldiers killed and more than 22,000 captured.
The Marines of 3/9 STA moved on from the platoon following the successful conclusion of Operation Desert Storm. For Kilpatrick, the Silver Star he received held a special and unique personal meaning. When Kilpatrick was less than a year old, his father was killed in Vietnam. CPT Donald R. Kilpatrick served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot with the 187th Assault Helicopter Company. On Sept. 2, 1969, Kilpatrick piloted his chopper on a combat mission when an enemy machine-gun round tore through the canopy and struck him in the head. The rest of the crew remained uninjured and kept the bird aloft, but Kilpatrick died en route to the hospital. Twenty-two years later, the summer after his son returned home from the war of his generation, the younger Kilpatrick visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Kilpatrick left his medal at the base of the panel inscribed with his father’s name, stating his father was the one who truly deserved the medal. Kilpatrick remained in the Marine Corps for a total of 10 years, serving as a sniper and Force Reconnaissance Marine.
Zickefoose progressed in his career after the war. By that point, already six years in, the corporal was very much still at the beginning of what would become a long and historic career. Zickefoose enlisted as a rifleman in 1985 and, over the course of his career, held every infantry billet from 0311 to senior enlisted advisor, and performed duties in Marine Security Forces, as a drill instructor, as a scout sniper instructor and in recruiting. He retired in September 2020 after 36 years in the Corps. His final billet was serving as the command senior enlisted leader for U.S. Southern Command. At the time, Zickefoose was recognized as the longest currently serving enlisted Marine.
The “Highway of Death” photographed in March 1991. This was the road running west out of Kuwait City used by Iraqi troops and vehicles during their retreat. (Photo byBGen Granville Amos, USMC)
With 11 deployments under his belt, including combat in Somalia and Kosovo, and during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, Zickefoose always remembered his experiences as a young Marine in the Gulf War.
“My first platoon sergeants were all Vietnam vets,” he reflected today. “They had all gotten out by the time the Gulf War started, so most of our combat experience was gone. There were a lot of little things that we just didn’t know what to expect. By the time I went back to combat later in my career, all the things I’d been through in Kuwait and Somalia and Kosovo and the different places we went, all that combat experience helped me talk to the young Marines and help get them through whatever was going to happen.”
Barrett went on to an equally distinguished career, retiring in 2015 as the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps after 34 years of service.
“I was the battalion sergeant major for 2/7 during two deployments to Iraq,” he said. “I would always tell the Marines to trust your training. When in doubt, when the combat is right in your face, trust your training. Through Iraq and all the times I went to Afghanistan, I would always tell young Marines the same message. Marines like Kilpatrick and Zickefoose, two young stud warriors, they were magnificent to have in that platoon, and what did they do then? They trusted their training. It was truly an honor to stalk across the battlefield with them, and to have served with such wonderful human beings.”
The Marines of 3/9’s surveillance and target acquisition platoon during Operation Desert Storm. Then-SSgt Michael Barrett holds the Kuwait flag, center-left, while Cpl Bryan Zickefoose stands beside him, center-right. LCpl Michael Kilpatrick kneels on top of the vehicle, to the left beneath the U.S. flag.(Photo Courtesy of SgtMaj Bryan Zickefoose, USMC (Ret))
Featured Photo (Top): The “Badger” reconnaissance and fire support vehicle of 3/9, manned through Operation Desert Storm’s ground assault by Cpl Bryan Zickefoose, center, and LCpl Michael Kilpatrick, center right.
About the Author
Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-13. He is the 2019 winner of the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children.
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Emergency Extractions and the Lifesaver from the Sky
Second Lieutenant John Slater froze in place and stopped breathing. More than 20 voices closed within 40 meters of his position. His force reconnaissance team had inserted 24 hours earlier into Base Area 112, west of An Hoa Com bat Base, Vietnam. North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers combed the jungle, hunting the Marines from the moment they arrived. Now, with the enemy so close, the lieutenant’s request for air sup port was denied. The seven-man recon team would have to evade the NVA long enough to find an extraction site.
They escaped the enemy and survived another night. The next morning, Dec. 15, 1968, enemy soldiers again surrounded their position. Sporadic rifle fire came from multiple sides as the NVA attempted to locate and flush them out. Slater evaded the enemy once more and called for immediate emergency extraction.
These recon Marines are demonstrating the flying ladder, which in January 1969, proved to be the only means of escape for a team of recon Marines near An Hoa. (Courtesy of Dave Thompson)
CH-46 pilot Captain Laurence “Larry” Adams landed his transport helicopter at An Hoa for refueling as 2ndLt Slater’s call came into the First Force Reconnaissance Combat Operation Center (COC). Adams diverted from his original mission to go get Slater and his men. The team’s escape had led them farther up the side of the mountain under 60-foot jungle canopy and landing a helicopter was out of the question. They would have to be hoisted up into the hovering chopper using a jungle penetrator. The device looked similar to a three-pronged fishhook with its seats folded down, and it was designed for one man. In perilous circumstances, however, two men wrapped themselves around the hoist and each other to reduce the number of trips required to rescue an entire team.
Capt Adams dropped his helicopter over the area where the Marines held their ground. As the jungle penetrator lowered through the trees, enemy rounds shot skyward toward the bird. Sixty seconds passed before the hoist finally hit the jungle floor. Two Marines hooked on with snap links and began the journey up. The weight of two gear-laden passengers severely slowed the hoist, more than doubling the time of the trip. The Marines clung tightly as they watched tracer rounds smack the belly and sides of the helicopter that was supposed to be their haven. As they reached the helicopter, the crew pulled them inside; more than five minutes had passed.
The hoist began a second trip. Adams struggled to keep the chopper steady under fire. Marine UH-1N Huey gunships let loose at the enemy below. One friendly rocket exploded so close to Adams’ helicopter that shrapnel cut holes through the side along with the enemy fire. He could hear voices over the radio. “Two more on, but there’s still three on the ground!”
“Don’t worry,” he shouted into his microphone, “We’re not going anywhere; we’ll get you out!”
Nearly 15 minutes passed before the second group of Marines safely boarded the chopper and the jungle penetrator returned to the ground for a third trip. The CH-46 continued taking hits but miraculously stayed aloft. Two more Marines crowded onto the hoist. Lt Slater remained on the ground with the enemy closing in and the helicopter under continuous fire. Believing another five minutes alone on the ground meant certain death for his entire team if the aircraft went down, Slater grabbed the jungle penetrator as it lifted. He slid both arms under the legs of one of his Marines and held firm to the folded down seat. The Marine reached down and grabbed Slater’s belt. From his position under the hoist, it was impossible for Slater to hook up.
Adams lifted off as soon as the last of the team was on the hoist. Slater and the others scraped through the trees as they rose above the canopy. The crew chief tried to reel in the hoist, but discovered the weight of three Marines plus their gear was too much. He could not pull them up. Adams decided to land the helicopter to bring in the remaining Marines. He found a large sandbar 6 miles north and headed straight for it. The flight lasted only a few minutes, but tragically, that was longer than Slater’s strength could hold. As the helicopter approached the sandbar, Slater lost his grip on the jungle penetrator and plummeted 100 feet to his death. They landed, recovered his body and returned to An Hoa.
Back at the COC, First Lieutenant Andrew Finlayson reflected on the disaster. As the operations officer, he manned the other end of the radio with Slater the whole time. Almost two years earlier on his first Vietnam tour, Finlayson patrolled the same area his Marines now covered. He knew if they remained here for much longer, they needed a better way to get teams out.
Less than one week earlier, 1st Force Recon had moved to An Hoa. Slater’s team was one of the unit’s first patrols sent into the surrounding jungle, known as Base Area 112. The Marines faced innumerable difficulties here, gathering intelligence in support of Operation Taylor Common. Jungle-covered mountains dominated the area and few viable landing zones (LZ) existed. This was NVA country, flush with supply routes, fighting positions and professionally trained soldiers to man them. The NVA developed tactics specifically targeting recon patrols. They manned every feasible LZ to prevent inserts and extracts and patrolled on line to push teams out of hiding. Every aspect of the Marines’ new area was stacked against them.
U.S. airmen use a jungle penetrator. Notice two of the small seats are still folded upright, while the airman sits on the remaining seat in the down position. (USAF)
The jungle penetrator looked similar to a three-pronged fishhook with its seats folded down. (USA)
A recon team’s intelligence value remained highest as long as they were undetected. “Once a team made contact with the enemy, they really couldn’t carry out their mission,” said Finlayson, now a retired colonel and author of two books on his tours in Vietnam. “Then it became a case of simple survival. They’re either running to avoid the enemy or fighting for their lives.” In these circumstances, a team’s best course of action was to break contact, evade the enemy, and call for extraction. Until Operation Taylor Common, jungle penetrators were used to great success despite their weaknesses. Many recon Marines rode the hoist and owed their lives to it. Base Area 112 and the enemy who inhabited it, however, were not as forgiving. The amount of time it took to extract a full team was too long.
Major Roger Simmons, commanding officer (CO) of 1st Force Recon, tasked Lt Finlayson with finding an alternative. To help, he sent Finlayson to the Army’s elite Studies and Observations Group (SOG). Their experience inserting and extracting teams deep behind enemy lines inspired numerous devices for the task. Finlayson borrowed two concepts: the Stabilized Body (STABO) harness which seemed simple enough to adapt and produce and a giant swinging ladder.
A CH-46E transport helicopter, the main aircraft for recon inserts and extracts, parked at An Hoa. A UH-1 Huey gunship is in the background. (Photo courtesy of Dave Thompson)
The ladder, made of aluminum rungs and wire, was designed to roll up on the floor of a helicopter and kick off the tail when needed, unraveling to the ground. The Marines combined multiple sections of the original device, making it 8 feet wide and 80 feet long. An entire team could snap onto the ladder at once, and with no way to reel it in, no additional time was spent hovering. Marines extracted with this ladder knew they were in for a wild ride.
Capt Laurence “Larry” Adams, USMC (Courtesy of Larry Adams)
The device did not come without problems. The most serious risk came from the Marine CH-46 helicopters using the ladder. When pilots tested the device, they found it extremely difficult to lift off with a full recon team hanging below. The monumental task of steadying the chopper required perfect coordination between the pilot and crew. Air wing commanders did not approve the ladder for use in combat. Despite the risks, 1st Force Recon unanimously accepted the ladder as a great improvement over the jungle penetrator and began training with the device right away. In honor of their CO, the Marines rebranded the ladder as the Simmons Rig.
1st Force Recon patrolled through the New Year into January 1969. With hovering inserts and extracts on the rise, Maj Simmons decided more training was necessary to keep his Marines’ skills fresh. He gave the job of Insert/Extract Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) to one of his most experienced patrol leaders, Sergeant Robert “Bob” Buda. In his new role, Buda mastered the rigging and utilization of all insert/extract methods and provided the company with training. Few in the country were better suited for the role.
Buda arrived in Vietnam in November 1967. After 13 months, 45 patrols, six combat dives and two Purple Hearts, the 20-year-old platoon sergeant was an invaluable resource. It seemed like anything you could imagine behind enemy lines was something he had already experienced and survived, earning two Bronze Stars with combat “V” in the process. Buda extended to remain in country as the end of his tour approached. “My mindset was such that the only family I had was the guys at 1st Force Recon,” remembered Buda. “My family just became the guys at the unit and I had no intention of going home. I was going to stay there forever, I thought.”
His new position seemed perfect. It allowed him to remain with 1st Force Recon while minimizing the risk of a third Purple Heart—an automatic ticket out of Vietnam. Buda shrugged off numerous wounds in the past to avoid the “award” and was determined not to let another send him home.
Also nearing the end of his tour was 21-year-old Sergeant David Thompson. Thompson arrived in January 1968 and progressed to his role as a team leader after six months. Twenty-eight patrols and four combat dives lay under his belt by the time he reached An Hoa. He knew the pros and cons of a jungle penetrator from firsthand experience. On one occasion, Thompson was left behind. His nine-man patrol ran into trouble and called for emergency extraction. After three trips with the hoist, six Marines were in the chopper. On the fourth trip, Thompson put just one Marine on the hoist. In recon, the patrol leader was always the last on the ground. It was also true that the patrol leader’s most powerful weapon was a radio. Keeping himself and his radio operator on the ground, Thompson sent the Marine up by himself and waited for a fifth trip. The helicopter crew assumed that was the last of the patrol and took off. Thompson yelled into his radio at the pilot, who turned the helicopter around. The last two snapped onto the hoist and floated away through enemy fire.
Thompson trained on the Simmons Rig and took part in a demonstration of the device. “I called it the flying ladder,” remembered Thompson. “In truth, it was the lifesaver from the sky.” Given that it was not approved for use in combat, Thompson did not plan on the ladder getting him and his team out of a tight spot.
On Jan. 4, Thompson received a patrol warning order. His team, called Forefather, would insert 20 miles west of An Hoa to search for a suspected enemy supply station. Given the limited amount of time left on his tour, Thompson knew this would be his last patrol.
He had a feeling unlike anything he experienced before in Vietnam—a prem-oni tion of ill will. He had heard stories recently of other Marines with the feeling. Someone would say before going out that this mission would be “the one” and sure enough, they were killed or grievously wounded. Maybe Thompson’s premonition happened because this was his last patrol. Maybe it was the reputation of Base Area 112. Whatever the cause, the feeling left Thompson uneasy.
Forefather took off from An Hoa shortly after noon on Jan. 11. The helicopter flew them within a mile of their objective. Hovering 60 feet above a stream, the Marines rapelled to the ground. They rapidly moved into an ambush position along a nearby trail and waited. The noise of insertion always drew attention and they needed to determine how much.
Less than 20 minutes passed before the Marines saw three NVA soldiers moving north along the trail toward the suspected supply station. Two more followed shortly after. Another 20 minutes passed, and a group of six soldiers came down the trail. The Marines held their fire as they waited for the enemy to pass. One of the soldiers slowed and stopped several meters beyond the Marines’ position. He looked frozen on the trail, obviously eyeing something. The deafening silence of the jungle rang in Thompson’s ears as he put his M16’s front sight post on the soldier’s back and slid his index finger across the trigger. Suddenly the soldier turned, lifted his AK-47 and sprayed bullets into the brush.
(Sourced from Kyle Watts)
Less than one hour into the patrol, Forefather had already made contact.
Thompson squeezed the trigger and dropped the NVA soldier. The rest of the Marines opened up, killing two more. The remaining three fled down the trail. Thompson grabbed his radio handset. “Night Scholar, this is Forefather Six. We are in contact. Do you copy?” No response came from the COC. He tried again. No comms. They needed to contact An Hoa and to do that they needed higher ground. The team melted into the forest away from the trail. They moved 200 meters farther up the hill behind them. From their new position, Thompson established degraded comms with Lt Finlayson.
It was now after 3 p.m. and the sun dipped near the top of the mountains. The Marines had not seen or heard anything since their initial firefight on the trail. Thompson decided to remain in the current position for the night and the Marines spread out in a defensive perimeter. As darkness fell, those not on watch tried to doze off, but no one slept. “Forefather Six, Forefather Six, what’s your status?” The watch officer at the COC checked in to make sure the team had not been wiped out. Thompson clicked once on his handset’s talk button. This silently signaled back that all was okay. No one talked. No one moved. Everyone prayed for daylight.
Night finally turned to daylight, and the Marines prepared to move out. As they ate breakfast, checked their weapons, and reapplied paint to camouflage their faces, Thompson was again stopped by a feeling. Normal procedure would be to move out at dawn, but this morning, something was off. The jungle felt too quiet. Sometime during the night, the team had again lost comms with the COC. “That was the first time ever, with any team, I didn’t move out right away,” remembered Thompson. “Something wasn’t right, we just knew it, so we stayed there.”
The team returned to their perimeter. Thompson hoped they would soon see a Cessna Bird Dog overhead. These tiny, single-engine aircraft were used by forward air controllers, but could function as a radio relay and help him re-establish comms with the COC. Forefather waited in their position for several hours. Finally, around 11 a.m., a Bird Dog came into view. Thompson reached the airplane on his radio, which relayed his position. Finlayson told Thompson to resume his mission and move out.
The team picked up and moved toward their original objective. After an hour trekking through thick undergrowth, they emerged into a clearing under the jungle canopy. The point man halted the patrol and crouched down. Walking at an angle to their front, at least 20 NVA soldiers moved in unison, spaced apart on line. They traveled fast and light with AK-47s, but carried no packs or even canteens, conducting an anti-recon sweep to flush out Forefather. Both sides realized the others’ presence at nearly the same instant. NVA soldiers nearest the Marines opened up and the Marines returned fire, killing one. They poured fire at the enemy long enough to make the NVA scatter, then the Marines ran. Going toe-to-toe in the jungle with a force more than twice their size was not a good idea. Thompson and the others broke contact and headed up the hill to higher ground.
The team reached the crest of a knoll around 200 meters from where they made contact. They looked out in frustration as they came to an abrupt halt. A massive bomb crater—big enough to hold a house—cut off their escape. Thompson knew entering the crater with the enemy close behind would make them like fish in a bowl for the NVA. They were stuck, with the enemy closing in from three directions, and the crater blocking the fourth.
Sgt Dave Thompson is pictured with recon team “Stone Pit,” in Da Nang, Vietnam, 1968. Thompson is kneeling in the middle right of the front row.(Courtesy of Dave Thompson)
Thompson arranged his defense with the team and raised the COC on his radio. “Night Scholar, this is Forefather Six. We are in contact, request emergency extraction.” Upon learning the situation, Lt Finlayson forwarded the request for extraction up the chain of command. He immediately called for support from UH-1N Huey gunships and fixed-wing jets.
Thompson and his men heard the enemy all around. The sounds crept closer and closer until suddenly, an enemy soldier popped his head out from the brush 5 feet away. The closest Marine blasted him in the face and continued firing. The ensuing firefight resulted in three more enemy killed before they retreated. The Marines loaded fresh magazines and waited for the next contact. They had been in their position for more than an hour already. The sound of aircraft overhead finally sang in Thompson’s ears. He made contact with the Bird Dog, who relayed the team’s position and coordinated the operation. Jets screamed in, pummeling the jungle floor with their bombs. UH-1N Huey gunships followed with rockets and machine guns.
Despite the air support, Forefather continued fighting off the enemy on their own on the ground. Magazine after magazine fed through their M16s. Thompson, focusing on the radio, handed out his own ammunition as other Marines ran dry. Four more hours passed, and the sun began to set. Thompson knew if they did not get out, this night would not go as well as the last.
Approval for extract finally arrived. Finlayson’s voice came over the radio. “Forefather Six, this is Night Scholar Three, emergency extract is in route. Need you to move north toward alternate LZ, over.” Thompson looked north behind him at the bomb crater. “Negative Night Scholar, moving north not possible,” he replied. He tried to make their perilous situation clear, but it didn’t seem to sink in. “Roger Forefather Six, then need you to head west and cut back ASAP,” came the reply. Thompson’s frustration boiled over. “Night Scholar, I can’t go north. I can’t go south. I can’t go east. I can’t go west. I can’t move without losing the team! Either try to get someone in here to get us out, or send body bags in the morning!”
Back at An Hoa, Sgt Buda was conduct-ing a rapelling class. He stood atop the rappel tower when he saw a Marine sprint-ing toward them. “Sgt Buda!” the Marine yelled up, “Maj Simmons needs to see you, now. There’s a problem and they need your help!” Buda rapelled down and ran to the COC. Maj Simmons brought him up to speed on Forefather’s situation. He told Buda a CH-46 was going to get them, and he wanted Buda to ride along. His knowledge of the terrain could help the pilot get over the team faster, and his experience with the jungle penetrator would hopefully speed up that process as well. The helicopter stopped at An Hoa, picked up Buda, and headed toward Forefather.
Enemy soldiers had massed around the team as the afternoon hours passed. They moved farther up the hill above the Marines and waited for the helicopters they knew would come. They reached an elevation that a rescue chopper could reach and hover over the Marines. From this position, the NVA could shoot directly, or even down, at any aircraft going after the team.
Buda guided the pilot over the area where Forefather held its ground. At 2,000 feet, the CH-46 circled as Huey gunships swooped down and unloaded their awe-inspiring display of firepower. Buda looked on, knowing precisely how the gunships meant life or death for the team. Thompson heard bullets smacking trees and leaves like a heavy rain. The gunships closed in, and the sound turned to dull thuds as the rounds impacted the ground. Marines saw miniature explosions in the dirt, one after another in rapid succession, moving straight for them. The helicopters ceased firing with seconds to spare, stopping the stream of bullets less than 20 meters in front of Forefather’s position. A UH-1N Huey pulled up and roared over Thompson’s head. The next chopper repeated the gun run, and completed another after that. Nearly an hour passed before the CH-46 dropped in to attempt the hoist.
The helicopter came under fire before it even established a hover. The pilot held steady as Buda dropped the jungle penetrator through the floor. Lying on his stomach, watching the hoist descend, Buda felt a warm rain begin pouring through his hair and down his neck. He looked up to see hydraulic fluid spraying from a destroyed line. He watched streams of daylight appear through new bullet holes in the wall and debris flew
The swinging ladder was made of aluminum rungs and wire and was designed to roll up on the floor of a helicopter and kick off the tail when needed, unraveling to the ground. (Photo courtesy of Dave Thompson)
off as the rounds impacted the far side. In the cockpit, he witnessed every light on the control panel light up like a Christmas tree. “It’s coming apart,” he thought to himself. Over the intercom, the pilot ordered the crew chief to blow the line and drop the hoist. They had to get out of the zone. Thompson watched the chopper struggle to remain airborne. He saw the jungle penetrator fall away to the ground as the helicopter groaned and lifted higher. He knew they would have to hold on for a while longer.
The helicopter limped through the sky, miraculously making it 20 minutes back to An Hoa, where the pilot made a hard landing. As the chopper hit the ground, one of the rear rotor blades flew off. Buda jumped off, drenched in sweat and hydraulic fluid, but otherwise unscathed. He wondered what would happen now.
Lt Finlayson discussed the situation with Maj Simmons. They were running out of options for Forefather. Another try with the jungle penetrator would only produce the same results, or worse. “Sir, the ladder. We’ve got to give it a shot,” said Finlayson. Simmons agreed. It was their only other viable option. Finlayson sought out Buda as he watched others counting holes in the downed chopper. “Buda, get the Simmons Rig together. We’re trying it this time,” he said. Buda departed to prepare the rig, and Finlayson radioed for another chopper.
Capt Adams had just returned to his home airfield at Da Nang. It was around 4:30 p.m. He had logged more than eight hours flying time by that point, running resupply missions all day. He entered the squadron headquarters when the call came down from An Hoa for another recon extraction. Despite his exhaustion from the day, Adams volunteered to go. The 25-year-old pilot participated in many recon inserts or extracts. For his role extracting Lt Slater and his team the previous December, Adams was awarded the Silver Star. His fellow pilots nicknamed him “Blades” in honor of the exceptional number of rotor blades he damaged tucking his chopper into tight LZs between trees. Adams possessed experience and knowledge of the jungle penetrator, but had never seen or even heard of the ladder.
Sgt Buda moved the Simmons Rig into the LZ at An Hoa as Adams landed and started refueling. “What’s this?” Adams asked. “It’s a ladder, sir,” replied Buda. “We’ve been trying to get these guys out all day, but nothing’s working.” He explained how the ladder worked, and that he would come along to help. Adams told him to put it on the chopper and they would give it a try. Buda set up the rig and positioned the ladder on the tail. Adams lifted off with his crew and Buda around 5:30 p.m. The sun sank low behind the dark clouds of an approaching storm.
Adams approached the area and he circled at 1,500 feet. Gunships again strafed the jungle surrounding Forefather and the remaining jets dropped the last of their ordnance. As the other aircraft pulled out, Adams dropped his bird 80 feet above the team. The enemy on the hillside opened up on the hovering helicopter. Buda unhooked the ladder and kicked it over the tail. Adams’ crew chief, Corporal James Tyler, dropped prone on the tail ramp looking down over the unraveling ladder. Through his headset, he expertly directed Adams until the bottom of the ladder touched the ground close to the Marines. He told the pilot to stop, but the chopper kept moving. Tyler yelled louder into his headset, but the ladder continued in the wrong direction. He turned and realized a bullet had severed his communication line. Tyler stood and ran through the helicopter to the cockpit. He shouted commands directly into Adams’ ear over the din of the engines and gunfire. Tyler returned to the tail ramp through a hail of bullets to watch the ladder. Once corrected, he gave a thumbs-up to the copilot, who communicated to Adams to hold the chopper steady.
For the first time in six hours, the recon team left its defensive position and sprinted toward the ladder. Thompson grabbed ahold with his left hand and used his right to assist the others. Two Marines climbed 12 feet up the ladder making room for the rest to follow. Thompson noticed one of his Marines behind the rest of the patrol, slowly making his way toward the ladder. “Hey, what the hell are you doing? Let’s go!” Thompson shouted. “I can’t find my snap link!” the Marine replied. This vital piece of equipment attached the Marines to any extraction device, ensuring they would not fall. Thompson yelled at the Marine to find it and hurry up as he helped two more Marines scale the ladder. The fifth Marine began his ascent. Thompson looked back again and saw the lagging Marine now going through his pack in search of the snap link.
“Get up here now!” he yelled again, “We have to go, LET’S MOVE!!”
LtGen Henry Buse Jr., Commanding General, FMFPac, Maj Roger Simmons, 1st Force Recon CO, and Sgt Thompson discuss the ladder demonstration at An Hoa in early January 1969. (Courtesy of Dave Thompson)Maj Simmons explains the device to LtGen Buse as Sgt Thompson, left, and Cpl Sam Carver stand ready to demonstrate. (Courtesy of Dave Thompson)
Overhead, Adams fought the helicopter to keep it steady. The added weight of the Marines underneath proved challenging, and enemy rounds chipped away all over the helicopter. Gunfire mixed with the whine of the helicopter in a deafening roar. In the background through his headset, he heard his crew shouting. They were only overhead for a few minutes, but it quickly turned into a very bad situation. From the tail ramp, Tyler signaled to the copilot that five Marines were on the ladder. “Five on board, we’ve got five on,” Adams heard someone say. “Roger, five on. Let’s go,” he replied. No one told him how many Marines were on the ground.
Thompson felt the ladder pulling upwards out of his hand. His knuckles went white, willing the helicopter to stay. He looked at his radioman and the other Marine still on the ground. He knew he could not leave them. Thompson let go and hustled the others away as the ladder ascended. Run ning down the hill, he grabbed the radio and yelled to anyone listening. “We’re still down here! Three still on the ground!” His primary concern was that a gunship or jet might drop something on top of them, thinking the whole team was off the ground. The Bird Dog overhead responded he knew the Marines remained.
The remaining three ran until the heavy thud of their footsteps became louder than the fading helicopters and formed a tight triangle in the thickest brush they could find. In the sudden silence, Thompson realized his rapid breathing was the loudest thing in the jungle. The enemy obviously believed the entire patrol had been extracted. The Marines remained frozen and waited, hoping someone would find them before the NVA did.
Adams gained altitude with the five recon Marines hanging beneath the heli copter. As they rose to safety, the Bird Dog pilot’s voice came through relaying the news that three Marines were still on the ground. A sinking feeling grew in the pit of Adams’ stomach as he thought through the situation. He looked down at his controls. The stick felt good in his hands, and the helicopter readily responded to his commands despite the damage. He knew as long as the chopper could function, he could not leave the Marines behind. He made up his mind they would go back.
They located a forward artillery base on a secure hilltop less than 6 miles from the extraction site. Rather than making the 20-minute flight back to An Hoa, Adams elected to drop the recon Marines there. He arrived over the hilltop and lowered the helicopter carefully. Tyler directed from the tail and, without landing, gently let the five Marines down. Once they unhooked, Tyler gave the thumbs up and Adams turned back with the ladder fully extended beneath the bird.
The sun was gone and rain clouds further obscured any remaining light. Adams knew this was his last chance to get the Marines out before it was completely dark. The jets had expended all their ordnance and were gone. The gunships had also ran their guns and rockets dry. Adams would have to make the final rescue attempt on his own.
He dropped the chopper below 1,500 feet as he approached the zone. Tracer rounds arched skyward through the twilight as he descended. Before he could get into position over the Marines, the helicopter was already taking more hits from intense enemy fire. Adams yanked the chopper back into the air out of small arms range. He circled around and tried coming in from a different direction, yielding the same result. Adams knew that dropping down on top of the zone made him too much of a target and left him exposed for too long. He needed a different approach—a small stream ran up the valley at the base of the mountain.
A recon team demonstrates mounting the ladder beneath a hovering helicopter. (Courtesy of Dave Thompson)
Adams circled back for a third approach, this time continuing farther down the valley. He dropped the helicopter low and gunned the engines. The ladder whipped in the wind, standing out behind the chopper as it accelerated towards the Marines. When he neared the zone, Adams popped up 100 feet above the ground and the ladder dropped back vertical. As the enemy fire resumed, he swung the tail end around into the fire. The rear armor plating and smaller target profile facing the enemy gave the helicopter its best hope.
Thompson watched the chopper thunder overhead. The helicopter stopped in exact-ly the same spot it had been 20 minutes earlier. The ladder touched the ground and began moving in the Marines’ direction. As they moved back up the hill, Thompson noticed a tall bombed-out tree stump directly in the path of the ladder. His heart sank as images flashed in his vision of the ladder getting stuck and the struggling chopper coming down. The ladder eased against the stump, then up and over the top. As it dropped mercifully down the other side, Thompson and the others came sprinting.
Enemy fire raked the helicopter as Adams fought to keep it steady. Buda manned a door gun, blasting away at the enemy below. As he returned fire, he felt a punch in his left thigh. He looked down and saw a growing circle of blood staining his utilities. Adrenalin coursing through him shielded him from pain as he kept firing. Tyler positioned himself back on the tail ramp to direct Adams over the remaining Marines. He stood motioning to the copilot when a bullet entered his right leg below the buttocks. The round dropped him back to the deck, but he continued his commands to perfectly position the helicopter.
The Marines finally reached the bottom of the ladder. Enemy surrounded the area, but all fire focused on the chopper overhead. The radioman started climbing. Thompson looked back at the last Marine. “I never found my snap link!” the Marine shouted. “Then you’d better hold on!!” Thompson replied. The Marine stuck his arms and legs through the ladder, clinging with all four appendages. Thompson snapped on underneath of him. The last member of Forefather was finally off the ground.
Adams heard through the chaos that everyone made it onto the ladder. For a final time, he lifted above the jungle. Below the chopper, Thompson closed his eyes as rain began pelting his face. A final feeling overpowered his senses. They made it.
Adams lowered the ladder to the ground back at An Hoa. Thompson unhooked and immediately searched for the rest of his team. Lt Finlayson grabbed him and told him about the forward artillery base where Adams dropped the other five members of Forefather. The three Marines were whisked away for debriefing. By the time Adams landed, Thompson and the others were gone. He would never meet the eight Marines they rescued that day.
As others slapped his back, shook his hands, and offered him steaks, Adams surveyed his damaged helicopter. More than 100 holes
A Marine CH-46 helicopter piloted by Maj Bruce L. Shapiro, HMM-263, lifts a 1stMarDiv reconnaissance team to a secure zone southwest of An Hoa Combat Base. (Photo by CWO-2 H.L. Huntley, USMC)
were later counted. “I think it just wasn’t my time,” Adams reflected recently. “I think it was just time to rescue those guys, and maybe it wasn’t their time either.” A Huey picked up Adams and his crew and returned them back to Da Nang.
After two helicopters and three rescue attempts, Sgt Buda finally made it back to An Hoa, where he awaited medical treat ment. He lay outside looking on as others gawked at the beaten and destroyed helicopters that had been his rides over the zone. “What happened to you?” the doctor asked when Buda’s turn came. “Well Doc, I tripped over an ammo can. I might need a stitch,” Buda replied. The doctor removed the pant leg and began probing around in the wound. A few seconds later, the forceps emerged holding a bloody AK47 bullet. “An ammo can, huh, Sarge?” said the doctor, dropping the round into a pan. “I’ve heard that be fore. You see this tag? This guarantees you’re going to the hospital for follow up. There’s no way we’re going to ignore this.” The following day, Buda was evacuated to a hospital in Japan. There he received his third Purple Heart. Once recovered, he flew to Okinawa, then to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. He would not return to Vietnam.
This first use of the Simmons Rig in combat proved a turning point for recon emergency extractions. The success demonstrated the ladder’s capability as combatworthy tool. It also stood out as a stunning example of the heroics required for missions of this type. Sgt Buda and Cpl Tyler each received a Purple Heart for the wounds they sustained in the helicopter. Tyler also received a Silver Star for his actions directing Adams over the team. Sgt Thompson was also awarded the Silver Star for leading the team on the ground and for his decision to remain behind. For his heroic flying, warrior spirit, and refusal to leave any Marines on the ground, Capt Adams was awarded the Navy Cross.
First Force Recon utilized the Simmons Rig more frequently as 1969 progressed, replacing the jungle penetrator on numerous occasions. It was a great tool, but its flaws haunted the unit. Not long after the successful extraction of Forefather, another patrol met disaster. Being extracted from the banks of a stream, six recon Marines snapped onto the ladder. The pilot took off, but with the weight of the team under the chopper, he struggled to gain altitude. The helicopter dragged the ladder and Marines into the stream. After more than a minute under the water, dragging across the rocky bottom, two of the Marines were knocked off and drowned.
Insertion and extraction techniques continued progressing, and the STABO harness eclipsed the Simmons Rig as the preferred method. This was further improved into the Special Patrol Insertion and Extraction (SPIE) rig, which is still used today.
Following the presentation of his Silver Star, Sgt Dave Thompson was honored by his home state during an Independence Day parade through Madison, Wis. (Courtesy of Dave Thompson)
Larry Adams, Bob Buda, and Dave Thompson all left Vietnam and the Marine Corps shortly after the mission. Adams returned to the states as a flight instructor in North Carolina. He was surprised and disappointed by the nation’s indifference and politically motivated attacks on servicemembers. He discovered that while he was gone, two college friends attempted to take out a life insurance policy on him, figuring they could cash in when he didn’t return. Adams flew more than 1,000 missions in 600 flight hours in Vietnam, earning 50 Air Medals and two Distinguished Flying Crosses in addition to his Silver Star and Navy Cross. He married his sweetheart and settled in Washington, where he worked in the radio industry and became a successful entrepreneur.
After his recovery at Kaneohe Bay, Buda was presented with orders to be an instructor at Amphibious Reconnaissance Course in Coronado, Calif. Rather than accepting this dream job for any recon Marine, he opted to get out. Back now from Vietnam, Buda witnessed a side of the Marine Corps that disturbed him deeply. Race riots broke out on Marine bases across the nation, with one of the worst happening in Kaneohe Bay. “It was absolutely terrible,” remembered Buda. “It was a terrible time to be in the Marine Corps. I thought we were going to hell in a handbasket, and I didn’t want to be part of it.” Buda left the Marine Corps and joined the Honolulu Police Department and began life outside the military. He moved to the mainland where he continued as a police officer and detective in California for the rest of his career. He is now retired and living in Illinois.
Thompson returned home to orders as a drill instructor (DI) in San Diego. With only six months left on his contract, the Corps decided not to train him as a DI. Since they couldn’t send him back to Vietnam, they let him out early. Three and a half years after enlisting, Thompson returned to his home state of Wisconsin as a civilian. Two months after leaving the Marines, he found out he had been awarded the Silver Star in addition to a Navy Commendation with combat “V.” He donned his dress uniform for one final time as the governor of Wisconsin pinned the medal on his chest, followed by an Independence Day parade where he was honored as one of the main features. Thompson worked in manufacturing for many years, and finished off his career with the United States Department of Agriculture. He is now retired and living in his hometown.
Often, veterans like Adams, Buda, and Thompson discuss their experiences of 49 years ago with reverence and reluctance. The selfless examples of courage, humility, and dedication that many veterans have set throughout their lives serve as a continuation of their service to their communities and our country.
“At the end of the day, you’re called, and you go,” reflected Adams. “You don’t think about the political implications. You just go and do your job. There’s no great glory to that, there’s just a job that needs to be done. You find out what you need to do, and go ahead and do it. And by the grace of God, you’ll come out of it OK.”
Author’s note: To Dave Thompson, Bob Buda, and Larry Adams, thank you for reliving your incredible stories with me and allowing me to tell them. I hope these words can justly honor your service to each other and our beloved Corps. To all the Marines of 1st Force Recon and HMM-165 involved that day, and so many others, Semper Fidelis.
This Article was originally published in the April 2018 Leatherneck Magazine.
About the Author
Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-13. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children. In 2019, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation awarded him the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History for this story.
When we saw the tanks floating across the river, we knew we could not win against the Americans.
Of course, the Iraqi soldier who uttered these words wasn’t talking about tanks; he was talking about the Marine Corps’ assault amphibious vehicle (AAV) carrying Marines across the Diyala River into Baghdad in 2003. The venerable AAV carried Marines from the Kuwaiti border, through hundreds of miles of desert, on roads and in sand, and finally, across the river.
The Marine Corps has finally retired the AAV7A1 after 50 years of service, where it saw action across the globe—from small Caribbean islands to tsunami relief in Indonesia and even humanitarian missions in North Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana in the wake of terrible hurricanes. The AAV was a versatile vehicle capable of using caterpillar treads over roads and marginal terrain and impellers to propel itself through water. It came into service in 1972 as a direct descendant of the Roebling Alligator and the landing vehicles, tracked, designed to carry Marines and soldiers from ship to shore during World War II.
Marines conduct ship-to-shore movements utilizing assault amphibious vehicles from Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Oak Hill (LSD-51) during Amphibious Squadron MEU Integration Training in the vicinity of Camp Lejeune, N.C., July 15, 2019. (Photo by Cpl Nathan Reyes, USMC)
During the 1930s, the Marines trained and prepared for a war in the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean. The big question on everyone’s mind was, how could troops and materiel be moved from ship to shore? A question as old as warships themselves. In 1937, Admiral Edward C. Kalbfus, Commander, Battleships, Battle Force, United States Fleet, saw a Life magazine article that featured a unique vehicle. Engineer Donald Roebling had invented a vehicle that used caterpillar treads. It could float and propel itself in water or on land. After witnessing a devastating hurricane in Florida, he had the idea to build a vehicle that could conduct rescues in the marginal terrain of the Everglades.
The admiral told Marine Major General Louis McCarty Little, Commanding General of the Fleet Marine Force, about it, and Little in turn told the equipment board. The equipment board contacted Roebling, who made prototypes based on the Marines’ requirements—and the Marines loved them. However, after testing the vehicle, initially made of aluminum, they asked for changes, preferring it to be constructed of steel for rugged use in the south Pacific. The first production vehicles, known as landing vehicles, tracked, Mk1 (LVT-1), rolled off the line in 1941, and ever since, the Marines have had amtracs, a portmanteau of “amphibian tractor.”
As with most combat-tested equipment, the design and use of the vehicle evolved quickly. Initially, the LVTs did not have a ramp or carry offensive weapons. They were devised as logistics vehicles. Flat-bottomed boats with bow ramps, like the landing craft, vehicle and personnel (LVCP), or landing craft, medium, delivered Marines and equipment to shore.
Marines assigned to 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, 4thMarDiv, Marine Forces Reserve, conduct a platoon movement at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., as part of Integrated Training Exercise 4-23, June 10, 2023. (Photo by Capt Mark Andries, USMC)
These boats were speedy and carried tons of cargo, but their limitations became apparent as the 2nd Marine Division prepared to land on the Tarawa Atoll. The V Amphibious Corps Commanding General, Major General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, seeing that the reefs around the atoll would keep the LVCPs from getting close to shore, refused to complete the assault unless he had every available LVT in the Pacific to ferry troops ashore.
When the Marines made the assault, many of the landing boats got stuck hundreds of yards offshore and were forced to wade to the beach under withering machine-gun fire. The LVTs were able to make it all the way to the island’s seawall if they survived the Japanese defensive fire. This was at great cost to the LVTs though. By the end of the day, most of the vehicles were out of gas or disabled due to maintenance breakdowns or enemy fire.
Tarawa was a proving ground. There were 125 LVTs—75 LVT-1s from the Guadalcanal campaign and 50 brand new LVT-2s. They performed admirably, though for a short period of time and at great danger. Due to the lack of tank landing ships (LSTs), each LVT at Tarawa had to be craned into the water and loaded with Marines while it bobbed like a cork. Most of the LVTs that reached shore were shot so full of holes that they could not return to the transport ships to take more Marines to shore. Many sank as soon as they tried to reverse off of the reef back into the water. But the LVTs and their crews proved their worth in combat to take combat Marines to shore.
Some limitations remained, however.
Though Donald Roebling’s tracked vehicle was adapted for Marines, it was initially designed as a rescue vehicle in marginal terrain in the Everglades.Marines during the Battle of Tarawa take a moment to rest beside amphibian tractor 23. The battle was the amtrac’s baptism of fire.Combat Marines in Vietnam often rode atop the LVTP-5 rather than inside it, as the vehicle’s gas tanks were under the passenger compartment.
As a logistics vehicle, and as a vehicle whose survival required that it be light enough to float in heavy surf, it lacked heavy armor or offensive weapons. It also lacked a ramp. Marines were forced to load the tub-like cargo area in the rear of the vehicle from the top. On shore it was much harder to unload. Under fire, it was quite deadly. Marines who rode the LVTs to shore laden with heavy combat equipment had to jump several feet down from the top of the vehicle to dismount. Many broke or sprained their ankles and knees in the process.
The Marines went to work developing an armored version and a version with a ramp in the rear. The armored versions boasted machine guns, and some carried a turret with a 37 mm tank gun while others carried a 75 mm howitzer.
The Marines went all-in on the amtrac. Just months after the Battle of Tarawa, during the invasion of Saipan, they loaded more than 50 LSTs with Marines and put the LVTs in the well deck. Each LST could launch 15 combat-loaded LVTs in minutes, saving time and making the dangerous process of having Marines climb down a cargo net into a tiny, bobbing amphibious vehicle unnecessary. More than 700 LVTs participated in the operation. Saipan also saw the combat debut of the LVT-4, the first amtrac with a rear ramp; the LVT(A)-1, the amtank which boasted a 37 mm cannon on a turret; and the LVT(A)-4, which carried a 75 mm turret-mounted howitzer.
As the war progressed, the cargo capacity and horsepower increased. The early models landing on Guadalcanal had a cargo limit of 4,500 pounds and were powered by a 150-horsepower engine. The last unarmored LVT fielded in the war, the LVT-3 (which was fielded out of order, after the LVT-4) had a capacity of 12,000 pounds, two 220-horsepower engines and a ramp in the rear capable of carrying a jeep that could be easily rolled on and off without assistance from a complicated gantry.
Still, the open tubs made the occupants vulnerable to airbursts or Japanese gunners firing down from cliffs. As LVT crews took their vehicles inland, the exposed Marines were picked off by Japanese sharpshooters. Wounded Marines riding LVTs away from the front to aid stations suffered many such incidents.
After WW II, the Marines converted some LVT-3s to carry extra radios and added an aluminum-hinged covering to protect the Marines from shell splinters, designating the newly modified amtracs the LVT-3C, the “C” indicating it was a “command” variant. Marines used this updated LVT in the Inchon landing during the Korean War. But by then, the LVT-3C was old technology, and could only carry WW II-era sized jeeps for equipment. Still, the Marines wanted bigger.
An AAV7A1 from Co C, 1st Bn, 5th Marines, RCT-5, 1stMarDiv, moves along an Iraqi highway during a sandstorm during Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Photo from Sgt Kevin R. Reed, USMC)
The fact that the Marines still wanted a tracked landing vehicle was somewhat controversial in the age of the atom bomb, and with the advent of guided missiles. Landing vehicles only work if the troops inside can survive the ship-to-shore movement. The threat of nuclear weapons on the battlefield was all-consuming. One tactical nuke could wipe out entire military formations. The Army even reorganized itself into “pentomic divisions” to fight a nuclear war, leaving the Marines as the force that still thought about amphibious assault and tactical amphibious logistics.
Even if a nuclear weapon could wipe out a naval task group and its component landing craft, the Marines still felt there was room to prepare for smaller conventional wars and small wars as the nation’s ready expeditionary force. At the time, propelled with paddle-like grousers on their caterpillar tracks, LVTs spewed water into the air at the back of the craft, making their positions apparent to defenders. Worse, the slow ship-to-shore trek made them potential sitting ducks with long transit times. This put the Marines in amtracs at serious risk. But they plodded along, continuing to design, field, and implement tracked landing vehicles.
One of the major weak points of the design of amtracs to that point was the tracks. They were fragile and prone to breaking. The grousers were like cleats, running along the contact surface of the track and jutting off sharply. On sand, these were ideal, but they would tear up road surfaces. It was one of the many things that the Marines looked to improve with the next generation of landing vehicles.
The next iteration of tracked vehicle was the LVTP-5, which first saw service in the mid-1950s. This generation had more roles than the WW II-era predecessors. In addition to an amphibious armored personnel carrier, there were command, mine-clearing and recovery vehicle variants, all built on the same chassis. This was the final generation to have an artillery variant, the LVTH-6, which mounted a 105 mm howitzer. It was also the first and only variant so far to have a bow-mounted ramp. These amtracs saw widespread use in Vietnam but were also used in landings in the Levant and Caribbean. The grousers that propelled the vehicle in the water were much improved in their shape, though the steel treads still damaged road surfaces.
There were several issues with this family of vehicles. It used an 800-horse-power gasoline engine with fuel tanks that ran along the bottom of the vehicle. These were critically vulnerable to mines. An exploding mine would rupture the gas tanks, setting off an inferno inside the vehicle. Marines using these behemoths in Vietnam often chose to ride on top of the vehicles, setting sandbags around themselves for protection. It was also exceedingly heavy. Its rear-mounted engine sat low in the water, and when traveling it would sag and the intakes would get swamped. The solution was to add a superstructure at the back of the vehicle to keep the intakes well above the water line.
Marines use an AAV7A1 for cover during a fire fight with Iraqi forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Photo by: Sgt Kevin R. Reed, USMC)
Development for the current, and final, iteration of these LVTs began as soon as the LVTP-5s hit the fleet. The conflict in Vietnam showed the limitations of the large, very heavy vehicles. Amtrac crews had difficulty moving around, and the Marine Corps took these limitations to heart.
The first prototypes of their replacement, known as the LVTPX-12, rolled off the assembly lines in the late 1960s. During the development of what would become the LVTP-7, the Marines decided to return to aluminum hulls to reduce weight. Diesel engines replaced the gasoline ones, and were placed at the front, with the ramp in the rear. Using diesel made the new amtrac much less likely to explode when hit. Designers also incorporated a hinged door on the roof, as with the LVT-3C, for ease of loading and escape. Later, these hinged roofs served as a place to load the mine-clearing line charge launchers used in Operation Desert Storm. Importantly, the Marines wanted the new amtrac to be capable of keeping up with tanks. Initially, the personnel variant was slated to have a 20 mm cannon mounted on a turret at the front, but that was scrapped in favor of a .50-caliber machine gun, which lacked the firepower ashore that the Marines desired.
The first LVTP-7s began arriving in the fleet in 1972—more than 50 years ago. The vehicle worked well and had almost all the same variants as the LVTP-5. The Marines wanted to implement a heavy weapons version using the 152 mm Shillelagh weapons system, but the aluminum frame could not withstand the repeated heavy vibrations of the weapon being fired. Though there were multiple attempts to put a more powerful offensive weapon in, the budget shortfalls of the post-Vietnam era made the Marines reevaluate.
But in the post-Vietnam time frame, the Corps turned within in an era of austerity. Planners knew the Marines would not have the larger budgets they had in the years past. Marine thinkers, lamenting the Corps’ turn to jungle warfare, wanted to return to amphibious and littoral warfare, which for the most part had been neglected during Vietnam. The LVTP-7 afforded the Marines the opportunity to turn back to the littorals and large-scale maneuver warfare. The new amtrac could do something its predecessor could not do easily: drive on improved roads due to its rubberized treads, lighter weight and smaller footprint, and it could operate at the same speed as tanks in the same environments.
Marine engineers use AAVs to breach obstacle belts in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm. (Courtesy of National Archives)
During the LVTP-7’s 50-plus year lifespan, it went through multiple upgrades to stay relevant to the Marines, and it even survived the attempt to replace it with the advanced assault amphibious vehicle (AAAV). There were still many hotspots in the world where the amphibious and expeditionary nature of the Marines allowed for multiple deployments, in an era hallmarked by the decline and collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Islamic terrorism. Where there was a shoreline to land on, the Marines took their amtracs with them. Marines deployed this vehicle in Beirut and Grenada in the early 1980s.
During a major service life extension program overhaul period in the mid-1980s, the LVTP-7 received several upgrades, which replaced its powerpack and saw the addition of a retractable bowplane to help it plow through the surf during amphibious operations. The Marines awarded a contract to Cadillac Gage to add an MK19 40 mm automatic grenade launcher alongside the old .50-cal. machine gun in the up-gunned weapons system. However, they were not coaxially mounted; the gunner had to aim each weapon individually. Along with the change, the Marines redesignated the vehicle to the assault amphibious vehicle, or AAVP7A1.
The Marines returned to their first large-scale involvement since Vietnam in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. The AAVs showed their value by keeping up with the tanks across the open desert terrain, carrying Marines and supplies as the task forces punched through the obstacle belts that Saddam Hussein had built in Kuwait to slow them down. Tank units, like 3rd Tank Battalion, used the AAV7CA1 command variant to keep the battalion on task and fighting. A dozen AAVs were tasked to mine-clearing operations, carrying mine-clearing line charges and launchers on top and towing additional charges on trailers behind.
After Desert Storm, the AAV7A1 was nearing 20 years of arduous service. Although it was proving to be a capable combat vehicle, armored personnel carrier and utilitarian vehicle, the Gulf War showed that it would need more improvements to continue operations into the 21st century. New applique armor systems were devised to improve protection against arms fire on the battlefield. The new P900 system, which was essentially two sheets of stacked perforated steel shaped in blocks and bolted to the sides of the vehicle, was quickly upgraded again to the enhanced applique armor kit (EAAK). Its corrugated sheets of composite sandwiched between steel fit the contours of the vehicle and bolted onto the vehicle’s sides and top so as not to interfere with waterborne operations.
The 1990s were marked by landings on foreign shores, like the humanitarian missions in Haiti, Somalia and Kosovo. Although the country lacked a major adversary, the aging AAV fleet was wearing out. It had been in service longer than any one type of amtrac had, and its projected replacement, the AAAV, was still on the drawing board. This made it necessary for the Marines to extend the life of the AAV once again. This time, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Marines replaced the running gear and powerpack with those identical to the M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, calling the upgrade the reliability, availability, maintainability/rebuild to standard (RAM/RS).
During the aftermath of 9/11, the AAV7A1 RAM/RS with EAAK armor found itself participating in the global war on terror, though it never served in Afghanistan. Its next big deployment would be in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Unlike in Desert Storm, where several of the Marine task forces walked into Kuwait by foot, the entire Marine Corps that participated in the invasion was mechanized, using humvees, medium tactical vehicle replacements and the venerable AAV. These amtracs crossed the line of departure carrying Marines who braced themselves from the fold-open roofs. Spending hours shut inside the vehicle was uncomfortable and hot, often causing motion sickness.
Marines search the streets in the city of Fallujah, Al Anbar Province, Iraq, looking for insurgents and weapons on Nov. 9, 2004, during Operation Phantom Fury. (Photo by LCpl Ryan Lee Jones, USMC)
Marines of 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion use their amtrac to search for survivors near New Orleans, La., in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
The decision to drive the amtracs all the way to Baghdad as an armored personnel carrier was not without detractors. Many claimed it was too big and not armored enough to risk the effort. And it was designed as a landing vehicle, not an armored personnel carrier. It was vulnerable to rockets, mines and IEDs. When the amtracs reached the shores of the Diyala River, no one was sure that they would be able to float in a shore-to-shore operation due to the excessive wear of the 300-mile trek from Kuwait.
During 2004’s Operation Phantom Fury, as Marines and soldiers methodically worked their way through the streets of Fallujah, rooting out and killing insurgents, Marines used amtracs to deliver supplies to the front and evacuate wounded to the rear. Unfortunately, the AAV was still susceptible to propelled grenades and mortar fire. But IEDs in Iraq soon became a very large problem. The hull of the amtrac was designed to help it float through the water, not to protect it from blasts. This led to AAVs being used less in Iraq, as Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles became available.
The AAV still proved useful in humanitarian operations around the globe. In 2004, the 15th MEU used AAVs, in conjunction with helicopters and landing craft, air cushion, to provide aid to Indonesia in the wake of a devastating tsunami. The amtrac Marines used AAVs in Louisiana and Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and in 2018 in North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Florence, to deliver much-needed emergency supplies and evacuate victims.
By the late 2000s, it had become clear that the AAAV was in trouble. Cost over-runs and reliability issues kept it from being sent to full production. It was redesignated as the expeditionary fighting vehicle, or EFV. The main two issues that the EFV was trying to solve was the vehicle’s slow landing speed and lack of firepower. The AAV was not much faster at waterborne operations than its WW II predecessors: only moving at about 8.5 miles per hour. The U.S. Navy grew concerned about ship-killing missiles if they brought their amphibious ships too close to shore. The Marines wanted to send troops in armored landing craft from nearly 30 miles offshore at high rates of speed and have a vehicle with some fire-power once there. As missile technology improved, the Navy felt that their amphibious ships would need to be even more than 30 miles away from shore—closer to 60—to be protected from missile attack. Having Marines ride in a fast but enclosed box for 60 miles was not feasible, and the EFV was cut.
The Navy would instead work to make it safe to put their amphibious fleet closer to shore to complete a ship-to-shore land-ing. One course of action the Marine Corps looked at was putting the AAV into a survivability upgrade package and keeping them in service until 2035. They decided instead to change their amphibious assault vehicles from tracked landing vehicles to wheeled ones in the newly fielded amphibious combat vehicle (ACV). Breaking with tradition, the new ACV has eight wheels and sports a more powerful engine, making it capable of traveling on land at 65 miles per hour, though its top speed on water is still roughly the same as the amtracs from WW II. Its shipboard dimensions are smaller than the AAV7A1, though it is heavier, and its survivability against mines and IEDs is much improved.
An AAVR7A1, or recovery variant amtrac, keeps Marines afloat as they prepare to enter the well deck of USS Wasp (LHD-1) in 2017. The Marine Corps retired the AAV in 2025—ending more than 80 years of tracked amphibious vehicle tradition dating back to WW II. (DOD photo)
The Marine Corps phased out the AAV in September 2025 after more than half a century of service. During that time, the LVTP-7 underwent multiple upgrades to stay relevant to the Corps, survived attempts to replace it and, as the U.S. extricated itself from Vietnam, continued to deploy to global hotspots. With the decline of the Soviet Union and rise of terrorism, wherever there was a shoreline, Marines brought their amtracs. Not bad for a vehicle that was expected to have a service life of 10 years. This marks the first time since before 1941 that the Marines have not possessed a tracked landing vehicle. The AAV’s long history stands as proof of its reliability and adaptability—and of the Marines’ enduring ability to go wherever the country needs them.
Featured Image (Top): Marines prepare to exit an AAV7A1 during the multinational relief effort Operation Restore Hope. The AAV’s unique ability to move troops, supplies and aid workers across beaches, flooded roads and debris-strewn urban terrain made it invaluable in operations far beyond combat.
Author’s bio:
Kater Miller is an Outreach Curator and Exhibit Chief for the National Museum of the Marine Corps and has been working at the museum since 2010. He served in the Marine Corps from 2001-2005 as an aviation ordnanceman.
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A hallmark trait of Marine veterans is the immense pride we take in having earned the right to wear the uniform and serve alongside our fellow warriors. Within the active-duty force, numerous entities push this a step further, separating themselves based on military occupational specialty, duty station or unit affiliation. Some of the fiercest and proudest Marines stem from the smallest and most specialized groups. One of these may also be the least recognized yet proudest section stationed at “8th & I.”
Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., houses no shortage of special units with high-visibility duties. Visitors attending any Sunset or Evening Parade may witness the immaculate marching platoons, the brilliant Silent Drill Platoon, the elite Commandant’s Four Color Guard, or flawless elements of “The President’s Own” U.S. Marine Band or “The Commandant’s Own” U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. Each Friday night throughout the parade season, while other barracks Marines wow the crowd beneath the spotlights, one small group stands silent in the dark at the end of the field, patiently awaiting their part in the performance. Without introduction or verbal cue, the Marine Corps Body Bearers fire three cannons at the appointed times, casting a smoky haze across the parade deck. For the casual viewer, the true identity of these shadowed figures may feel of less importance, their role in the show less consequential than the Marines flipping rifles, clashing cymbals or saluting a star-spangled general beneath the flagpole. For a Body Bearer, however, this perception fits perfectly in line with their occupational goal; never be in the spotlight, never draw attention to yourself and never distract from the purpose of the ceremony.
U.S. Marine Corps Body Bearers with Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., conduct the “final raise” at the funeral of Cpl Thomas H. Cooper, a World War II Marine killed in action on Tarawa. Cooper was not repatriated until many years later, at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., on March 10, 2022. The final raise serves as a last salute to the fallen Marine.
The true function of these Marines is showcased outside the barracks at Arlington National Cemetery where the section performs funerals for Marines and Marine dependents. The Body Bearers’ precision at each funeral reveals the daily training they endure to perfect their craft. Relentless attention to detail in every movement intentionally keeps the focus off of the Body Bearers and directed toward the Marine being laid to rest.
Other branches of service, such as the U.S. Navy and Air Force, maintain similarly dedicated units, highlighting the vital importance of their mission. Though similar in task, the Marine Corps scripts its funerals differently to ensure the fallen Marine and their family remain at the center of attention. While the other branches utilize eight pallbearers, the Marines operate with six, two fewer bodies blocking the family’s view of the casket being transported to the gravesite. Each branch of service trains to carry the casket at waist height, a uniform method adopted during joint funerals. At Marine funerals, though, Body Bearers hoist each casket up to their shoulders from the hearse or caisson all the way to the gravesite. In so doing, family members in attendance witness their loved one in their final journey to his or her resting place, rather than losing sight of the casket amidst a surrounding crowd of splendidly uniformed service members.
Through rain or snow, over ice, gravel or grass, in freezing or scorching temperatures, the Body Bearers execute their duties. Some caskets may weigh upwards of 600 pounds. Some gravesites may lie hundreds of feet away. Regardless, six Marines with stoic faces level the flag-draped casket at their shoulders and march in unison to the appointed place. At the gravesite, in one final and uniquely Marine salute, the Body Bearers face the casket, raise it up above their heads and freeze there for 10 seconds before lowering the casket down to the ground and folding the flag. After a funeral is complete, the Body Bearers prepare to do it all over again in a different section of Arlington, sometimes performing up to three funerals per day.
Accomplishing every funeral to the Corps’ standard of perfection requires each Marine to rigidly maintain his bearing. Any visitor to any gym in the nation will likely roll their eyes at some point watching another nearby patron grunting and hissing and sucking down air as they throw up a bar full of weight, a performance likely captured on a phone for instant upload to social media. This brand of self-serving distraction would clearly be unacceptable for Marines raising a 600-pound casket overhead in a final dignified salute. For Body Bearers, proper bearing is achieved through physical strength—astounding and extraordinary levels of endurance found few other places across the Corps.
“The distance we carry a casket can vary significantly. It can be a little as 20 feet off the road to one we did where it was probably two and a half football fields,” said Corporal Glen Hafemeister, a former Marine Body Bearer who served with the section from January 2023 to August 2025.
Cpl Jacob Dorton performs deadlifts during a workout at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., on Aug. 1, 2025. The workout session, conducted with Muscle & Fitness magazine, gave insight into the Body Bearers’ rigorous training regimen and functional fitness.
“For the majority of funerals we conduct, you might not need to have the strength that we require, however, there are always going to be a few every month where that strength is absolutely necessary, and we never know if the next funeral is going to be like that.”
Some of the most memorable moments from the history of other elite ceremonial units at 8th & I originated with mistakes made and worked through. Even the Silent Drill Platoon, renowned for precision and perfection, celebrates members who maintained their bearing and finished the performance through mishaps such as a rifle butt slashing open a Marine’s face or a bayonet stabbing into a Marine’s thigh. The Body Bearers’ training, however, mandates that no mistakes are made; perfection at every funeral, every day.
“Every Marine deserves our best, and we’re going to give our all for him,” said Cpl Jacob Dorton, a three-year member of the section. “He is our brother. He earned the title and served honorably. We’re going to give everything we have to give him a flawless funeral. We have a no-fail mission. We can’t have extra Body Bearers following along behind in case one of us falls out.”
“We’re also less than 5 feet away from the family,” added Hafemeister. “We don’t fall out.”
For many prospective Body Bearers, the enormous physical challenge embodies their initial interest and hook. Marines with the section deploy twice a year to both coasts on recruiting tours. They visit graduating classes from the Schools of Infantry at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Camp Pendleton, Calif., in search of candidates. While on base, they pin up recruiting posters at the local gyms challenging corporals and below already in the fleet to try out and see if they have what it takes. With fewer than 15 slots available, trials are extremely competitive.
Any Marine hoping to join must first score a first-class physical fitness test and combat fitness test. This serves primarily to weed out the candidates who stand little chance of completing phase two: the Body Bearers’ uniquely crafted initial strength test. This minimum requirement consists of 10 repetitions of each exercise, including a 225-pound bench press, 135-pound overhead press, 115-pound bicep curl, and 315-pound squat. Each rep on each exercise must be completed with good form and bearing. The section chooses new candidates from the pool of Marines who complete the initial requirements and demonstrate exemplary character, then cuts them orders to 8th & I. Here, the most grueling phase of training begins.
LCpl Phillip Meckna, left, a Body Bearer with Bravo Company, Marine Barracks Washington, conducts morning drill practice with the section at 8th & I, on Sept. 17, 2025. The Body Bearers train daily to uphold the highest standards of precision and discipline while carrying out one of the Corps’ most solemn missions, honoring fallen service members and their families.(Photo from LCpl Brynn L. Bouchard, USMC)
Every Marine arriving in D.C. begins their tour with Ceremonial Drill School (CDS). While most barracks new joins practice marching, rifle drill, and other disciplines with the marching platoons on the parade deck, prospective Body Bearers spend the duration of CDS out of sight, training in the parking garage. Candidates arrive in small groups throughout the year. To accommodate them, Body Bearer CDS operates as a continuous, self-paced evaluation placing new joins alongside experienced Marines in daily training and exercise. Cpl Dorton currently serves as the senior instructor for Body Bearer CDS.
“We train down there to be out of sight,” he said. “We don’t like a lot of attention towards us and the job we do. We want the attention to be on that Marine and his family. That’s why we work towards flawless bearing, so that the family can focus on their Marine, his service and life. We are just there to carry the casket, fold the flag, and walk away so they can have their moment.”
Candidates take six to 12 months to perfect each movement under the intense scrutiny of their peers. A candidate must flawlessly perform every ceremonial movement in coordination with the rest of the team. They must demonstrate perfect bearing under extraordinary physical strain in order to successfully graduate.
A Body Bearer candidate exercises below ground in the parking garage at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., during Ceremonial Drill School. New candidates train in the Corps’ standard green-on-green until they complete CDS, at which point they earn the section’s coveted black and gold uniform.
As one metric to gauge their bearing, each candidate must pass the final strength test, consisting of the same exercises and weights used in the initial strength test, but with double the repetitions. During CDS, candidates train wearing the Corps’ standard green-on-green. When they graduate, they receive the coveted black and gold tank top displaying the section’s logo and motto, “The Last to Let You Down,” officially signifying the Marine holds a spot within the section and has earned the right to perform the sacred duty at Arlington.
Sergeant Joshua Williams, the Body Bearers’ platoon sergeant, coordinates with the cemetery several weeks in advance. He determines which Marines perform funerals each day and which will remain at the barracks for training or other duties. The amount of support required at the cemetery depends on the type of funeral being conducted, whether a dependent funeral, standard honors for any Marine or full honors for higher ranking enlisted or officers, Medal of Honor recipients, or Marines killed in action or held as prisoners of war. The funeral may have a casket or an urn. The family may request other specifics, such as a horse-drawn caisson. Variations in weather create friction but will not be a reason for delay or cancellation. Ultimately, the Body Bearers will not know exactly what is required of them until they arrive on site.
“I had an experience one day where there was a funeral we didn’t know about that was not on our schedule,” Williams remembered. “We had to get everybody ready with everything they needed and in place in less than two hours. We had another instance where we set up to perform a funeral, and it turned out to be two caskets. In that case, the Marine and his dependent were being buried at the same time, so we had to carry the dependent first, then the Marine.”
Other unique experiences or special circumstances stand out from the hundreds of funerals each Marine completes during the course of their tour. Joint funerals performed with other service branches often prove most memorable. In January 2025, several Marines took part in the funeral services for President Jimmy Carter. Dorton served as a pallbearer, transporting the casket to and from the U.S. Capitol building where President Carter lay in state. Two days later, Hafemeister helped move Carter into Washington National Cathedral for his state funeral.
“We do quarterly sustainment training with the other services to make sure we are always ready to perform a joint funeral,” Hafemeister stated. “That way when we show up, there might be a different team of individuals and each branch has a different drill, but we all have a baseline that we can work off of pretty easily.”
Many Body Bearers hold similar impactful memories from the opposite end of the public visibility spectrum: funerals conducted with a single person, or sometimes even no one else, in attendance.
Body Bearers carry the casket of the 30th Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Carl E. Mundy, Jr., USMC (Ret), during a funeral service at the First Methodist Church in Waynesville, N.C., on April 19, 2014. (Photo from Sgt Mallory S. VanderSchans, USMC)
Body Bearers prepare to march with the remains of MajGen John A. Studds, USMC (Ret), during a full honors funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., on April 10, 2018. (Photo from Sgt Robert Knapp, USMC)
Cpl Jacob Dorton, center, LCpl Ethan Barlow, left, and Sgt Joshua Williams, Body Bearers assigned to Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., take part in caisson refamiliarization training at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., on May 13, 2025. (Photo from LCpl Kiara Rawls, USMC)
“No matter how many people are there, it doesn’t matter if it is a private first class or the President of the United States, the whole country watching or nobody watching, the training and attention to detail that will go into that funeral are identical,” Hafemeister added.
Regardless of the experiences that may come after, many of these Marines cherish most the memory of their first funeral.
“That one will always stand out to me,” said Dorton. “Just the nerves I had beforehand going into it and then, during and after, being able to see the impact that I had on that family really meant a lot to me. It kind of cemented in my mind why I wanted to do this job.”
“Being on my first casket was an honor,” Williams reflected. “I could feel the presence of that Marine, even though they were deceased. At the end, a family member whispered, ‘Thank you for all that you do.’ For me, that reinforced the reason why we do what we do. The reason why I love what I do is the impact and comfort we give the families. You never forget that feeling.”
A Marine’s time with the section varies greatly. Some, especially those joining from duty stations already in the fleet, might spend as little as two years with the Body Bearers. Others, particularly those joining straight out of School of Infantry, could potentially spend their entire four-year enlistment there. Hafemeister began his enlistment as a 0331 machine gunner with 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, at Camp Lejeune. After more than two and a half years and 250 funerals completed with the Body Bearers, he left active duty. Williams is one of the less typical members who joined from the fleet, will remain with the section for four years, and intends to reenlist. He began his career as an automotive mechanic with 1st Battalion, 12th Marines, in Hawaii, before finding the Body Bearers’ recruiting poster at the gym. Now, with less than a year left in his tour at 8th & I, Williams is preparing to return to the fleet as a senior sergeant. His time with the Body Bearers has prepared him for the future in multiple unique ways.
“Going through CDS was very, very challenging,” he stated. “Going through anything else in the Marine Corps after that will seem fairly easy.”
Whether a Body Bearer, a marching platoon member, a machine gunner or a mechanic, every Marine possesses the drive to be the best, and believes they are. Relentless perfectionism and unwavering dedication to honoring our heritage are foundational to wearing our cloth. The Marine Corps Body Bearers demonstrate this daily, both on display at Arlington and in the privacy of the barracks parking deck. Their professionalism serves as an understated, little recognized, yet hard-to-match example of commitment to these core values.
Body Bearers conduct ceremonial cannon fire during the conclusion of a Friday Evening Parade at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C., on May 16, 2025. The final cannon salute signifies the end of the parade, honoring the Marine Corps’ traditions of precision, professionalism and ceremonial excellence.(Photo from LCpl Brynn L. Bouchard, USMC)
Featured Photo (Top): Body Bearers carry the casket of Gen Samuel Jaskilka, USMC (Ret), the 16th Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps, to its final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., on Jan. 26, 2012. With only six Body Bearers around the casket, and the casket carried at shoulder-height, the Marines make every effort to keep the focus of the ceremony on the fallen Marine.
Author’s bio:
Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-2013. He is the 2019 winner of the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History.
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The theater aboard USS Yorktown (CV-10) at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, S.C., went dark March 29, National Vietnam War Veterans Day. Archival films of the Vietnam War lit that darkness. In the audience, Medal of Honor recipient Major General James Livingston, USMC (Ret), and other Vietnam War veterans and families watched their shared history.
It was a remarkable opportunity to see their generation of Marines in action—and it’s an opportunity that is increasingly available to all Marines and their families, thanks to a partnership between the Marine Corps History Division and the University of South Carolina Libraries that is preserving and making public over a thousand hours of historic films from the Division’s archives.
The United States Marine Corps Film Repository is one of the most comprehensive archives of its kind, containing thousands of films that span the 20th century. Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC) at the University Libraries is actively in the process of digitizing the films and adding them to a free, search-able database that anyone can access.
The films bring to life the Marine Corps experience in a way that both allows veterans to re-engage with memories and helps their families and friends understand more fully what that experience was like.
MajGen Livingston knows firsthand about living with the memory of a battle that people at home can only ever imagine. He was awarded the Medal of Honor while serving as the commanding officer, Company E, in action against enemy forces in Dai Do, Quang Tri Province in the Republic of Vietnam, according to the award citation.
Livingston visited the MIRC last year to see where the U.S. Marine Corps Film Repository calls home. This wasn’t the first time he had come to see the collection, however. He made the trip to Columbia in 2017 for the ribbon-cutting of the new cold storage vault and digital scanning center that now holds the collection. The vault—both temperature and moisture controlled—is lined with shelves upon shelves of film canisters, each individually labeled and identified by carefully trained hands. At the time of the ribbon-cutting, few of the films had been digitized and even fewer were available to the public.
Thousands of restored reels can be found in the LtCol James H. Davis Vault.
By his second visit in June 2025, thousands of films were available to be digitally sifted through, watched and enjoyed. No longer stuck in preservation-grade canisters, the films brought the history MajGen Livingston and his fellow Marines lived through back to life in front of his eyes. Beyond his own memories, he was able to access the shared endeavor that all Marines embrace when they earn the eagle, globe and anchor.
“The United States Marine Corps Film Collection is more than old films—it’s our history in motion,” he said. “It’s the story of courage and sacrifice told through the lens by those who lived it.”
The films came to the University of South Carolina Libraries when the Marine Corps University reached out to MIRC in 2015, with the goal of finding a permanent storage facility for the canisters, which had been housed at Quantico, Va., for generations. The Marine Corps University wanted to provide the materials with a state-of-the-art home, and the films to be preserved, digitized and shared with the wider community. MIRC’s expertise and experience with archival film made them an obvious choice for the vast collection.
Left: A combat engineer looks on as an M-60 tank rumbles by during a training exercise at Twentynine Palms, Calif., in 1980.
Center: Marines celebrate their return home from Iwo Jima in 1945.
Right: Pilots from VMF-351 celebrate on the decks of USS Cape Gloucester (CVE-109) after a 1945 aerial victory.
USC Libraries’ ultimate task was, and is, to care for and conserve these films. In doing so, they hope to give the public an important piece of their collective history.
The collection captures more than just Vietnam footage. The United States Marine Corps Film Repository is one of the most comprehensive archives of Marine Corps footage in our nation, holding over 19,000 reels of 16 and 35 mm films dating from the 1910s through the 1980s. They document the operations of the Corps throughout the 20th century. Footage includes clips from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, giving viewers glimpses of what it was like on the front lines of battles that still live in public memory today.
Combat is just one of the many facets of Marine Corps life the films capture. The collection also contains peacetime films of training, testing and public relations activities. These films give detailed insight into the life of soldiers while they’re deployed, from the most routine daily activities to highly specialized training. Viewers see Marines laughing, cooking, joking around, training and conversing with each other as if they were at a barbeque back home.
In fact, one of the most important impacts of the films is the way they humanize our nation’s soldiers and bring them to the forefront of our minds, showing us who they were beyond the battles they fought. Seeing these films allows current and future generations to remember who these Marines were and what they fought for in a way that goes beyond learning about their sacrifice in the two-dimensional world of history books. Now, through USC Libraries’ efforts, the experiences of these American heroes are readily available to any scholar, researcher, student, veteran or casual viewer who wants to see this history for themselves.
While such a vast archive of films capturing several generations of Marine Corps life might seem to present an overwhelming amount of information to the typical viewer, the digital collection is maintained in a specifically organized and curated online platform that is freely available and searchable by the public. That makes it easy for viewers to approach the films in whatever way they’d like, whether it’s dipping in and out of the films at random, exploring a particular time period or researching specific information about a particular battle.
To make this possible, the films go through a multi-step process to conserve the fragile material and ensure they are readily available online, with keyword searching and easy identification on MIRC’s database.
Dr. Greg Wilsbacher, Curator of the U.S. Marine Corps Film Repository, oversees this process as well as the staff who operate it. Various staff members, students and even volunteers assist in conserving such a vast and significant piece of America’s past.
“Being stewards of the Marine Corps’ film heritage is a privilege for all of us in the University Libraries who work on the project—students, staff and volunteers,” said Wilsbacher. “Every day, we see the best of America on film, men and women who have committed themselves to the defense of the nation. Every day, we watch this history unfold in some distant corner of the world or on a base here at home. Every day, we are humbled by the personal sacrifices captured on film. Keeping this history alive and available for all is one way we can honor all Marines, past and present.”
A screenshot from a film of Marines of 1stMarDiv as they are greeted by loved ones upon their arrival in San Francisco, Calif., March 5, 1951.
The processing of each film in the collection begins with an inspection by a careful hand on a film bench to check for and repair any damage that might have occurred to the reel. A protective film leader is added to the beginning and end of each reel to ensure no further damage occurs. Film technicians then assign a new inventory number to the reel and begin to gather basic information about the content of the film so that it can be described in the record. That information contains everything from general location and date, if available, to what can be seen going on in the film, and any other notable identifying information.
Once the film has been generally described and, if necessary, repaired, it is then moved to a preservation-grade film storage can where it gets a new label, barcode and other identifying features. The films are then placed into cold storage in the Lieutenant Colonel James H. Davis Film Vault, named to honor a University of South Carolina alumnus and family member of longtime library supporters Richard and Novelle Smith, who funded the vault.
When the films have been processed, they are ready for digitization. Staff bring the films to the John S. Davis Scanning Center, named after another Marine and South Carolina alumnus of the Smith family. There, they are scanned at 2K resolution. Staff create online streaming copies of the films before reviewing them in their entirety to be catalogued and described in as much detail as possible for the average viewer. Only then are the videos able to be placed online in a keyword-searchable database.
The thorough cataloging process ensures that films can be searched by location, time period, units or topics. If viewers want to see combat footage or public press relating to Iwo Jima, all they need to do is type it into the search bar and let the database retrieve the footage. If a viewer has a family member they know served in the 1st Marine Division, they can search unit specific footage without sifting through thousands of films.
Films from the History Division’s collection are first inspected by hand on specialized tables like the one used by Kat Favre of University of South Carolina Libraries. The process ensures that the films are properly identified and that it is safe for them to be digitized.
Moving Image Research Collections uses state-of-the-art film scanning equipment to recover the history of the Marine Corps and make it available to the public. Sam Heidenreich is one of two scanning technicians performing the skilled task.
This degree of searchability has been especially helpful for people looking to reconnect with a presumed lost history of their loved ones. A recent visitor to MIRC, retired LtCol Robert Barrow, after leaving the university, went home and spent all afternoon searching through the repository. Barrow ended up finding footage of his father, General Robert H. Barrow, 27th Commandant of the Marine Corps from 1979 to 1983, who passed away in 2008, during his time of service. It’s footage that Barrow never thought he would get the chance to see for himself.
“The tour we had last year was truly inspiring,” said LtCol Barrow. “Just as a test, I asked to see what footage the website might have on my father. To demonstrate the ease of search … in a matter of seconds, [Dr. Wilsbacher] pulled up some footage I never knew existed on Dewey Canyon in Vietnam. I shared one link with my siblings that showed only the hands and watch of a Marine reviewing a map in the field in Vietnam. They all came back with the same conclusion: ‘Those are Dad’s hands and definitely his watch.’ ”
That ability to witness the experience of a loved one whose service may have taken place halfway around the world, or even before the viewer was born, is transformative. Many Marines have lived through extraordinary events, fighting for freedom and liberty on foreign coasts, while their families were at home unable to imagine what their loved ones went through overseas. Often, these memories have remained shrouded in the past, unable to be fully articulated to those who were not there to experience them. The United States Marine Corps Film Repository preserves these stories for generations to come. Now, USC Libraries’ digitization of the films makes them accessible to all and brings them vividly to life for both those who have lived through them and those who have not.
Featured Photo (Top): A Marine holds a slate for PFC Baker of Combat Camera during the filming of a training exercise at Onslow Beach, N.C., August 1952.
Author’s bio:
Abigail Cole is a staff writer and photographer for University of South Carolina Libraries in Columbia, S.C. Her work has appeared in The New York Times.
Executive Editor’s note: These films are available to watch by anyone, anywhere, at any time. Visit digital.library.sc.edu/marinecorps to get access to the Marine Corps Film Repository. To searchthrough the films, click the “Watch the Films” tab at the top of the page. The re–pository is keyword searchable.
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In 2000, Hollywood scriptwriter Graham Roland enrolled in college, halfheartedly taking classes at Cal State-Fullerton when he decided he needed a challenge. He wanted to become a writer but needed money for school. A California resident who spent his summers with his dad in Oklahoma, Roland was also looking for a male role model in his life and found it in the Marine Corps.
“Coming out of high school, I was an OK student, not a great student,” Roland said. “I had already formulated this idea I wanted to write and hadn’t really focused in on writing for film and television yet, but I knew that I needed something to write about.”
Initially motivated by the promise of the GI Bill, a couple of key experiences inspired Roland to join the Corps. A friend of his had joined the Marines right after graduation, and his transformation left an impression on Roland.
“I saw him when we came back and he was like a totally different person. … His personality, the way he carried himself … [In school] he was a knucklehead, he wasn’t very focused. He was a good student … after boot camp leave. That really changed him. That stuck in my mind.”
Roland enlisted in the Corps in 2000 at a recruiting station in the Bay Area and completed boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego. He trained for two months at Fort Sill, Okla., to become a forward observer, 0861 MOS, in artillery, and the base was about two hours from where his dad lived.
Cpl Graham Roland, center, with GySgt Dallas Miller, left, and LCpl Roberto Mancha, waiting to leave the wire at Camp Ramadi, Iraq, December 2005.
Roland had come of age in the ’90s, and believed there wouldn’t be another ground war. The ’90s involved a lot of bombing people, and Desert Storm happened fast. But by the time he deployed to Fallujah in 2005, the Corps didn’t need forward observers. He had been taken out of his artillery battery, where he was a reservist in Seal Beach, Calif., and put with an active-duty field military police (MP) company, the only MP company in the 1st Marine Division. Roland didn’t do anything artillery focused during the deployment. Instead, his unit executed convoy security and prisoner transfers in country. They also did security for Personal Security Detachment missions around the election, escorting high-value individuals.
“[We would] take them to a house in Ramadi. Watch the house, they would come out and we would take them back to Camp Fallujah.” In hindsight, he said he liked how it turned out. He didn’t know what it would have looked like to be in an artillery battery during the occupation phase of OIF. He had friends he trained with who had been part of OIF 1 in 2003. When it came time for Roland to go the war, “it had shifted into such a different place,” he said. “I am grateful for how it happened.”
Within his MP company, Roland, a corporal at the time, led a small unit of 25 to 30 reservists. The reservists attached to three platoons. Most of his platoon was active duty, doing their second or even third tour in Iraq.
“They whipped us into shape, told us what to expect, and I felt a great measure of comfort being with these guys because they had done it before,” Roland said. He got to see much of the country during deployment because his team, while based in Fallujah, was constantly moving between Baghdad and Ramadi. His team even went to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. “We were on the move a lot,” he said. “It was an exciting job to have.”
Having arrived in Fallujah in September, his team spent the winter working almost exclusively at night. They didn’t have a lot of enemy contact or activity during the winter, but that changed as the weather turned and got warmer, with longer days around mid-February 2006. Roland recalled, “The last couple of months of our deployment, things really started to pick up. We went through a period of a couple of weeks [where we] got hit with IEDs three or four times in a really short period of time.” Nobody was severely injured because their vehicles were up-armored, although a few of his teammates were concussed. Roland’s own vehicle was hit. He didn’t see the IED, but his driver saw it and swerved the truck violently, thinking it looked like an 88 mm mortar wired with a piece of detonation cord.
“I don’t remember the incident,” Roland said, “but the aftermath of it … being in shock and looking for the people that might have set it off.”
They finished the mission and headed back to base. He remembers the adrenaline. “I was young, we all were young. I thought naively that nothing bad was going to happen to me. Nothing really did … it was scary, but physically I was OK.
“The IED was on my side, and had he not [swerved] we would have rolled right over it. The one soft spot in the humvees was the undercarriage; he could have driven right over it. … Who knows, it might not have done any damage … that was the first time I felt like, ‘This is real.’ ”
It was jarring for him, and near the end of the deployment, it put him in a “different mental space for the rest of [his] time in country.”
“I was very hyper-focused, and so hyper-aware, every time we left the base; we were all counting the days; ‘We’re almost home, nothing bad can happen.’ ”
After their deployment, some of the Marines whom he had served with in Iraq ended up going to Afghanistan. “The stories I heard, it was much more kinetic, and the fighting was much more [like] Vietnam. For us, our deployment was like fighting ghosts. You would get hit with an IED, or someone would shoot off a couple of rounds at your direction, and they would just be gone.”
He remembers the frustration of the enemy taking cheap shots but never having the ability to confront them. He remembers enemy attacks as poorly executed and not very effective. “In our battalion, we had a couple of people KIA doing security at a polling station when a suicide bomber was in line and detonated his vest. It was in our battalion, but not my platoon or company.”
Roland shared a vivid memory from his deployment. “[There was] a guy that was, in hindsight, doing a dry run to see what our reaction would be. … We were on our way back to Abu Ghraib, and he was coming at us from a frontage road. We passed him, and the .50-cal from the truck behind us engaged him. He didn’t stop. ‘Shots fired’ came over the radio, and we stopped. [Our] gunner put a lot of rounds in the engine block and wind-shield, completely disabled the vehicle. I thought that guy was dead. We surrounded the vehicle, and he came out.
“He survived and, even with all those rounds, he had only lost his thumb. It was like a miracle. There was nothing in the vehicle. … We had given so many different warnings with flares, used our escalation of force (EOF), and everybody knew the EOF rules.
“This guy went way past it. … You could tell they were planning something, and this was the dry run. They were poking the bear to see how we would react to it.”
A lot of Roland’s memories of Iraq are in the gray-green night vision goggles. His team wore the old, heavy ones that give you headaches. He and his team had to learn to drive and operate at night, wearing them for hours on end. They would operate blacked out (with no lights) and experienced lot of tense moments that were so “eerily spooky that you didn’t know what was going on, and it ended up being nothing.”
His team called their trail vehicles “ghost vehicles,” and when he got promoted in country to sergeant, he was put in charge of one of them. Roland’s job at the end of his deployment was to be the first one out of the wire, to check to make sure there was nothing laid out in the road. He’d be “getting out of the truck and deciding if it [was] enough to call explosive ordnance disposal on a pile of trash in the road. Either we had extra-ordinarily good luck or, by combination, they just weren’t very good.” His team’s experiences were after the Battle of Fallujah, “so it wasn’t totally safe, but nothing like it was.”
Graham Roland, left, brings his Marine experiences on set with director Morten Tyldum during the filming of “Jack Ryan,” Season One, June 2017, Marrakech, Morocco. (Photo courtesy of Graham Roland)
Roland’s enlistment was up six months after he returned. He had a year of college left. He changed his major from film and took a writing class taught by TV writer/producer Robert Engels (“Twin Peaks,” “Andromeda,” “SeaQuest DSV”). Engels was teaching a class that had never been offered at the university before, on the one-hour TV drama. Roland had taken other writing classes but had “no aspirations at all to be a TV writer. I wanted to work in features and be a director. I thought my career was going to be very different.”
He wrote a spec script, a hypothetical episode, of his favorite series, “The Sopranos.” He turned out his first round of pages for the professor about three weeks into class. At the end of one class, Engels said, ‘Who’s Graham?’ Roland responded with, “That’s me.” He said, “Oh, yeah, the Marine guy … Walk with me to my next class.”
Engels told him, “I really like your writing, but I’m curious about your experience in the Marines. I’m wondering if you can write me an original pilot about being a Marine and your experience overseas. It doesn’t have to be true; it just has to be inspired by that.”
Roland said, “I think I can do that.”
Engels replied with, “If you can do that, I will give you an ‘A.’ All you have to do is finish it. It doesn’t have to be good. Give me 50 pages of you and your story.”
He wasn’t doing this with anybody else in the class; he was making them spec their favorite TV show. Engels wanted to see what Roland could do. Roland “rogered up” and finished the script. Engels gave him notes as if he were a working writer.
When he finished, Engels said, “I think you can do this for a living.”
Roland had never met a working TV writer, and this experience boosted his confidence. Engels helped him get a manager within a couple of weeks of graduation. The manager told him to move out to LA.
“He really got the ball rolling,” Roland reflected. Engels’ practical advice and support stemmed from his own experience as a working writer on “Twin Peaks,” a show Roland loved growing up. Telling Roland he thought he could “make a living at this,” he said, was maybe the “biggest thing that ever happened to me, career-wise.”
“It went from being like, ‘We’ll see how it goes,’ to a tangible kind of thing where this guy believes I can do it, and now I believe I can do it. I got very lucky. That same spec I wrote about being in Iraq, it got me a manager, an agent and my first job on the show ‘Prison Break,’ all within a year.”
He’d been back from deployment for less than two years when he started his career on “Prison Break.” Using his Marine Corps experience as a touchstone, Roland said, “Really, had I not had that [deployment] experience, I could have never written that script. … Looking back on it, I didn’t know anything. … I knew very little about being a writer. I learned about being a writer after I got a job being a writer.”
Early in his writing career, although he was inspired by certain shows, Roland was unable to sit down and have a clear concept of what made “a good drama.” He struggled to tell someone what made a good scene and settled for things he thought were “cool.” Conveying authenticity, though, was something he was good at.
Authenticity is what people respond to in his writing.
“All those moments and characters … that I came across in my deployment [were given an outlet in that] script,” he said. The script was science fiction, not based in reality at all, but “it was the setting … the world … how Marines talked to each other. How the characters interacted was what people responded to.”
The script he wrote led to his second job on “Lost.” He had the opportunity to co-write three episodes for the hit show. The opportunity introduced him to producer and showrunner Carlton Cuse, who he has worked with several times since. They even produced one of Roland’s own shows together. “That spec did everything for me,” he said. “It changed my life.”
On set of “Dark Winds,” Season 2 (left to right): director, Chris Eyre; co-creator, Graham Roland; and showrunner, John Wirth.
Roland carries the Marine Corps’ training with him—the perseverance and putting in the hours to continue pushing forward when “you think you can’t anymore. That is definitely something I got from being a Marine … and the tactfulness and chain of command. All of those things I learned there has played a role in my career.”
Roland drew on his Marine Corps service to co-create the hit Amazon Prime Video “Jack Ryan” series. “I had done some traveling, but I had never been to a place that was seemingly so different from my home [than when I was in Iraq]. These people are a lot more like me than people realize. That was born out of being around them every day. Their lives were kind of existing around us. Seeing the majority of them just wanting the same things we all wanted—take their kids to school, take care of their families, be able to work, [although] yes, there were differences. … When we decided to do a story on Islamic extremism, the antagonist for that season was a Middle Eastern terrorist. I remember … thinking, ‘If I am going to do this, I am going to do my best to show that person’s story too.’ ”
Graham Roland, second from right, with the cast and producers of “Dark Winds” at the show’s premiere in Santa Fe, N.M., June 2022. (Photo courtesy of Graham Roland)
He wanted to show “how they could have gotten to that place. That is why the pilot started out with the [character] when he was a little boy. You find out that this extremely traumatic event happened to him and his brother. There is a scene in one of the episodes I wrote where he is playing an Arabic version of Monopoly. They were all little attempts to say this person is misguided and lost, but I think, at the core of it, there is more to the story and to people, that [they] are more similar than dissimilar. I don’t think I could have done that storyline had I not deployed and had that experience.”
Roland’s new series, “Dark Winds,” which airs on AMC, is based on the novel series Leaphorn & Chee, written by decorated Army World War II veteran Tony Hillerman. He has strong characters who are military veterans throughout the show. The lead character, Joe Leaphorn, portrayed by Zahn McClarnon, is a Korean War veteran. Sheriff Gordo Sena, played by A Martinez, is shown as a World War II veteran.
“I got everything I thought I wanted out of [the Marine Corps,]” Roland shared, “and a lot more. The things that I carry with me are those friendships that are unlike any other you’ll ever have. … When I see them, it is like no time has passed.” The Corps was a “tough experience,” but, he said, “I wouldn’t change anything about it. Some of my favorite memories are from that period. They are all usually based around those friendships.”
Featured Image (Top): Future Hollywood writer Graham Roland in Camp Fallujah, Iraq, September 2005.
Authors Bio:
LtCol Joel Searls, USMCR, is a journalist, writer and creative who serves in COMMSTRAT for the Marine Corps Reserve. He has completed the Writer’s Guild Foundation Veterans Writing Project, is a produced playwright, a commissioned screenwriter and an entertainment consultant. His most recent feature film-producing project is “Running with the Devil,” and his most recent TV series producing project is “Top Combat Pilot.” He is a graduate of The Ohio State University.
Executive Editor’s note: The following article received 1st place in the 2025 Leatherneck Magazine Writing Contest. The award is provided through an endowment by the Colonel Charles E. Michaels Foundation and is being given in memory of Colonel William E. Barber, USMC, who fought on Iwo Jima during World War II, and was the recipient of the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. On Jan. 1, we will begin accepting submissions for the 2026 Leatherneck Magazine Writing Contest.
Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima and the Chosin Reservoir are the Marine Corps’ three touchstone battles—names that hit like a mortar round in the chest. They’re the gold standard: Marines charging into hell, bleeding for every scrap of ground and coming out on top when the odds say we shouldn’t. I carried those stories with me through my time at 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, Scout Sniper Surveillance and Target Acquisition (SS STA) 3/6, Camp Lejeune, N.C., until I hung up my uniform on Jan. 25, 2004.
As the Corps turns 250, I’ve been chewing on what other fight deserves to stand with those giants. For me, it’s the Battle of Khe Sanh, Vietnam, 1968. That siege wasn’t just a battle—it was a crucible, a 77-day gut check that forged Marines into something unbreakable. It belongs up there with the big three, and here’s why.
Khe Sanh started in January 1968, when the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) clamped down on the Khe Sanh Combat Base, a speck of dirt near the DMZ and the Laotian border. About 6,000 Marines and allies—mostly the 26th Marine Regiment—found themselves surrounded by 20,000 to 40,000 NVA troops. The enemy’s plan was straight out of its playbook: besiege, bombard and bury, just like they did to the French at Dien Bien Phu. For 77 days, those Marines took a pounding—over 10,000-15,000 rounds of artillery and rockets, in addition to U.S. bombing, and more than 1,000 rounds a day at the worst of it. Hill 881 South, Hill 861, the main base—they became islands in a sea of mud and fire. Supplies ran thin, the weather was a soup of fog and rain, and the NVA kept coming. But the Marines didn’t just hold—they fought.
That’s what makes Khe Sanh a touch-stone: the sheer stubborn will it took to stay in the fight. I picture those grunts in their trenches, caked in red clay, patching bunkers after every barrage. Resupply drops came under fire, with C-130s and Hueys dodging antiaircraft guns to get ammo and chow through. It was chaos, but it was controlled chaos, the kind I saw in my own small way at Lejeune with SS STA 3/6. We weren’t in combat, but we kept the battalion’s gears turning—logistics, comms, planning. Khe Sanh was that on steroids: Every Marine, from the commanding officer to the newest private, locked in to keep the machine running. Patrols slipped out to hit NVA positions, artillery crews fired until their barrels glowed, and air support—Marine, Navy and Air Force—dropped over 100,000 tons of bombs, turning the hills into a wasteland. When Operation Pegasus rolled in with Army and Marine reinforcements in April, the NVA limped away, leaving bodies and broken plans behind.
Air Force F-100s deliver close air support following an assault on ARVN Ranger positions, Khe Sanh, 1968.
Khe Sanh mirrors Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima and Chosin in ways that cut to the bone. Belleau Wood was raw guts—Marines rushing German lines, taking casualties but never stopping. Khe Sanh had that same fire, just pinned down instead of charging. Iwo Jima was about digging in, making a volcanic rock a fortress—Khe Sanh’s hills were the same, only with jungle and mud instead of ash. And Chosin? That frozen march out of a Chinese trap, outnumbered 10 to one? Khe Sanh was its echo—surrounded, outgunned but never outfought. The difference is the siege itself: 77 days of unrelenting pressure, a modern test of what Marines can endure. It wasn’t about maneuvering or grand strategy; it was about standing fast when everything said to break.
Now, some will argue Khe Sanh doesn’t fit because we pulled out after the siege. The base got torched and abandoned in July ’68, and critics say that stains the victory. Fair point: Nobody’s raising a flag over Khe Sanh today like we did on Suribachi. But touchstones aren’t about holding dirt forever; they’re about what the fight reveals. Khe Sanh was a slugfest that messed up the NVA’s Tet Offensive, tying down divisions they needed elsewhere. It cost them thousands—estimates run from 10,000 to 15,000 dead—while we lost under 500 KIA. More than that, it was a middle finger to the idea that Marines could be cracked. I’d tell those doubters victory isn’t just a map pin; it’s the message you send. Khe Sanh screamed, “You can’t take us.”
Khe Sanh was that spirit writ large—Marines doing the dirty, thankless work to hold the line. I remember a gunny who’d been at Chu Lai in ’69, not Khe Sanh, but he talked about Vietnam like it was yesterday. He’d say, “You don’t win by running—you win by staying.” That’s Khe Sanh: staying when every instinct says go. I left the military in ’04, honorable discharge in hand, but that lesson stuck.
In the White House situation room, President Lyndon B. Johnson (second from left) examines a scale model of the Khe Sanh Combat Base, Feb. 15, 1968.
It’s what I’d tell the boots today: Stand your ground, because that’s what Marines do.
The battle’s legacy runs deep. It showed combined arms at its peak—air strikes syncing with arty, infantry holding the perimeter. I can see the forward air controllers on those hills, calling in Phantoms while mortars pounded the treeline. It’s a blueprint for how we fight now—integrated, relentless. Khe Sanh also cemented small-unit leadership. Lieutenants and sergeants kept their squads tight, kept them believing, even when the sky was falling. That’s the Corps I knew: NCOs running the show when it counts. And the vets? I’ve met a few—gray-haired, quiet types at VFW halls. They don’t brag, but you see Khe Sanh in their handshake, their nod. It’s the same steel you feel from Chosin survivors or Iwo vets—a brotherhood forged in the worst of it.
Khe Sanh’s place as a touchstone isn’t just about ’68; it’s about 2025 and beyond. It’s a reminder that wars change but Marines don’t. We adapt, sure—Vietnam wasn’t Belleau Wood’s trenches or Iwo’s beaches, but the core stays: Fight hard, fight smart, fight together. Khe Sanh teaches that isolation isn’t weakness; it’s a chance to prove what you’ve got. I’d tell any Marine to study it. Feel the weight of those 77 days. It’s not just history—it’s us, at our toughest, our proudest. Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, Chosin—they’ve got a brother in Khe Sanh. On our 250th, let’s give it the honor it’s earned.
Marines of 1st Platoon, Company K, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, salute as the American flag is raised during a memorial service at Khe Sanh. Joined by soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ceremony paid tribute to those lost during the 77-day siege. (Photo by SSgt Fred Lowe III, USMC)
Featured Image (Top):During the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh, Marines stacked tons of expended 105 mm shell casings,a testament to the intensity of the bombardment. (Photo by Sgt T.H. Nairns, USMC)
Author’s bio:
HM3 Brian Nielson served with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, Scout Sniper Surveillance and Target Acquisition (SS STA) 3/6 at Camp Lejeune and was honorably discharged in 2004. Nielson served as the senior corpsman of SS STA on Camp Lejeune and is the founder and CEO of Kern + Bellows, a defense contractor specializing in re-cruitment and advertising.
On Nov. 27, 1950, the 5th and 7th Regiments of the 1st Marine Division were in Yudam-ni, a mountain hamlet on the western side of the Chosin Reservoir, positioned for a thrust west across the upper reaches of the Taebaek Mountains and a link-up with the American 8th Army. The Marine offensive would be part of the “Home by Christmas” offensive, the grand design of the U.S. Commander in Chief, Far East, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, to end the Korean War. As proposed in his double envelopment strategy, found in Roy E. Appleman’s “South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu,” the X Corps, which included 1stMarDiv, and 8th Army would act as giant pincers, ensnaring and destroying the remnants of the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) that were fleeing north after the breakout of the 8th Army from the Pusan Perimeter and the successful amphibious landings of 1stMarDiv at Inchon in September.
In developing this stratagem, MacArthur’s war planners seemingly disregarded reports that Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) were amassing in southern Manchuria, and that perhaps tens of thousands of them had already crossed into North Korea by the middle of October, writes Appleman.
Entrapment and Breakout
The 5th and 7th Marines began moving west and were shortly engaged, not by the disorganized units of the NKPA but by the hardened troops of the 79th and 89th Divisions of the CCF’s IX Army Group, 3rd Field Army. A third division, the 59th, struck to the rear at the Toktong Pass to interdict the main supply route (MSR). After four days of violent combat, the 5th and 7th Marines began a fighting withdrawal to Hagaru-ri, the division’s forward operating base some 14 miles south. They brought with them all their wounded and dead; and they did so during one of the coldest winters seen in northeast Korea—blustery, snowy Siberian winds dropped the temperatures into the minus 30s, causing weapons, artillery and vehicles to malfunction. Moreover, though they had been issued cold-weather gear, an alarming number of cold-weather casualties began to appear—hypothermia, chilblains, trench foot and frostbite of the face, hands and feet.
The 7th Marine Regiment at Yudam-ni prepares to depart, ready to fight its way back to Hagaru-ri and on to the sea for extraction in December 1950.
Meanwhile, more divisions of the IX Army Group struck south at Hagaru-ri, Koto-ri and Chinhung-ni and cut the MSR in several places. The hardest hit was Hagaru-ri. There, on the night of Nov. 28—“Hagaru’s Night of Fire,” according to Lynn Montross and Nicholas Canzona’s “The Chosin Reservoir Campaign”—the 58th Division attacked the southwest defensive perimeter and threatened to overrun a medical battalion hospital and the partially completed airstrip, which Lieutenant Colonel John H. Partridge’s 1st Engineer Battalion had been working on since the division arrived in Haragu-ri on Nov. 15. Fortunately, with the help of a detachment of engineers who left their heavy equipment and took up arms, the attack was thwarted.
As the fighting in the southwest wound down, another CCF division attacked East Hill, the largest of the hills surrounding Hagaru-ri. During the ensuing seesaw battle, the Chinese Communists took the hill and resisted several attempts to dislodge them. By the morning of Nov. 29, the only force preventing a CCF breakthrough at East Hill was a ragtag group of defenders—administrative and supply personnel, and bits and pieces of infantry units—bolstered by several tanks and machine-gun emplacements.
Though seriously outnumbered, the doughty defenders of Hagaru-ri had held the line, and further CCF attempts to breach the defensive perimeter would fail.
During the early morning of Dec. 1, General Oliver P. Smith met with his division surgeon, Captain Eugene R. Hering Jr., at the division command post at Hagaru-ri. Smith recorded the reason for the meeting in his aide-mémoire (war journal) entry for that day: “The casualties in his installations were piling up and he was concerned over his ability to provide suitable medical care. At that time he had about 600 casualties at Hagaru-ri awaiting evacuation.” Hering expected “400 additional casualties” to arrive from the east side of the Chosin Reservoir, where the 7th Infantry Division’s 31st Regimental Combat Team had been decimated by several CCF divisions, and many, many more from the 5th and 7th Marines, who were fighting their way back to Hagaru-ri. “The only solution to our casualty problem,” wrote Smith, “was the completion of the C-47 strip.” However, he noted that “the Engineers considered the strip to be only 40% completed”; nonetheless, “it was decided to bring in a C-47 on a trial run.”
At about the time of their meeting, General William H. Tunner, commander of the Combat Cargo Command of the U.S. Far East Air Force, received a message from Colonel Hoyt Prindle, his liaison officer with X Corps—a composite of 1stMarDiv and the 3rd and 7th Infantry Divisions, commanded by Army General Edward M. Almond. In the message, Prindle related the important details of recent staff meetings at the Corps headquarters in Hungnam, which can be found in Tunner’s book “Over the Hump”: “I am in General Almond’s outer office and waiting to get in to see him. I attended briefings both last night and this morning … The situation at and near the Chosin Reservoir is critical. We must exert every possible effort to airdrop supplies and ammunition into that area in order to get the 1st Marine Division out or we will be lost. There are already between 900 and 1,000 casualties that urgently need air evacuation now. If we don’t get them out, they won’t get out.”
Prindle also briefed Tunner on the status of the landing strip at Hagaru-ri: “A 3,200-foot strip being hacked out of the frozen earth will be ready by 4 p.m. this afternoon. It may or may not be under enemy fire. We will have to take that chance. If usable it will help the air evacuation situation and also re-supply the unit that is near the strip. The support of others must be handled by air drop.”
He further expressed the need for immediate action, stating that “roughly ten Chinese Red divisions” were “closing in” on Hagaru-ri and that waiting a “few more days” was not an option. He wrote, “The roads to this area are cut in a number of places and everyone will have to fight his way out.”
Later that same morning, Prindle again messaged Tunner: “I just came out of Almond’s office and he asked me to express to you in the strongest terms the urgency of the situation in the Chosin Reservoir area. Re-supply of those units will have priority over all other requests.” Prindle emphasized in his closing remarks that “the drop situation and the relief of the 1st Marine Division is most urgent,” and recommended a course of action: “It is a C-47 operation entirely from the way I look at it … if we are able to air land into the strip which is located one mile south of the southern end of the reservoir.” C-47s and their Marine Corps variant, the R4D, were large, multi-engine transports that could carry up to 6,000 pounds of cargo, 28 troops or walking wounded, or 18 stretcher cases—and more often than not carried far more.
Tunner, who had directed the 1948 Berlin Airlift, agreed with Prindle. After receiving the approval of his superior, Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, commander of the U.S. Far East Air Force, he recalled telling Pringle, “I am going to move every C-47 I’ve got up there.” He also committed to using “two squadrons of C-119’s … to do air drops of ammunition, clothes, and anything else” the Marines needed.
According to Paul C. Fritz’s article “The Kyushu Gypsy Squadron in Korea” in Air Power History, word was soon passed to the 21st Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS)—the “Kyushu Gypsies”—at Itazuke Air Base in Japan to dispatch 11 C-47s to Yonpo Airfield, the aviation facility closest to the port city of Hungnam, the southern anchor of 1stMarDiv’s MSR.
Last Days at Hagaru-ri
The first Gypsy C-47 touched down at Hagaru-ri on the afternoon of Dec. 1, but, according to “The Chosin Reservoir Campaign,” the landing and subsequent takeoff were anything but uneventful: “It was a tense moment, at 1430 that afternoon, when the knots of parka-clad Marine spectators watched the wheels of the first FEAF C-47 hit the frozen, snow-covered strip.
The big two-motored aircraft bounced and lurched its way over the rough surface, but the landing was a success. An even more nerve-racking test ensued half an hour later when the pilot took off with 24 casualties. It seemed for a breath-snatching instant that the run wouldn’t be long enough for the machine to become airborne, but at last the tail lifted and the wings got enough ‘bite’ to clear the hills to the south.”
Several more planes of the 21st TCS flew into Hagaru-ri after that, offloaded their cargoes and left for Yonpo fully loaded with casualties. The last arrival of the day, a Marine Corps R4D heavily laden with ammunition, broke its landing gear on touchdown and crashed. A total of 211 casualties were flown out of Hagru-ri that day: 157 by C-47s and 54 by Stinson OY-1 aircraft and Sikorsky HO3S-1 helicopters of Marine Observation Squadron 6.
According to Captain Annis G. Thompson’s “The Greatest Airlift: The Story of Combat Cargo,” few planes flew in and out of Hagaru-ri without experiencing damage from harassing enemy groundfire or mishaps.
In fact, the Air Force considered the flights to be so dangerous that it prohibited flight nurses of the 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron based at Yonpo from participating in them; only aeromedical technicians of the squadron provided in-flight care.
When casualties from Hagaru-ri arrived at Yonpo Airfield, they were triaged by X Corps medical clearing teams to one of the three fully staffed and equipped hospitals in the Hungnam area; to the hospital ship, USS Consolation (AH-15), moored in Hungnam Harbor; or flown to a military hospital in Japan.
The evening of Dec. 1, survivors of the embattled 31st Regimental Combat Team began arriving at Hagaru-ri. About 1,050 of those making it to safety required evacuation.
On Dec. 2, “an all-out effort was made to evacuate the casualties on hand by both C-47 and liaison plane,” Smith wrote in his aide-mémoire. Nine hundred and sixty casualties were flown to Yonpo that day. According to Gail B. Shisler’s book “For Country and Corps: The Life of General Oliver P. Smith,” things were so busy at the airfield, that it reminded Smith of LaGuardia Airport.
At about this time, Fritz, the assistant squadron officer of the 21st TCS, flew into Hagaru-ri, and later wrote of the experience: “Hagaru-ri lay in a bowl formed by mountains in all directions, except on the north side, which opened to the reservoir, a long narrow lake extended northward. The hamlet and our newly hacked airstrip area were protected from excess water by a long east-west dike about twenty-five high. The airstrip was oriented north-northwest to south-southeast, with the north end pushing right up to the dike. These features dictated landings north, with a guarantee of no over-shooting, and takeoffs south.”
Fritz also noted that runway was “about 2,500 feet” and that there was a “parking area for three C-47s.” Between the hamlet and airfield to the west was a “drop zone for C-119s,” above which “Marine Corps and Navy fighter aircraft droned in lazy circles.” But what he found most memorable was what he saw in and around the makeshift terminal: “After parking, I learned that people can overcome unbelievable difficulties. To an ex-Minnesotan and ex-infantryman/officer, this was a composite of a disaster and catastrophe. Severe cold greeted us, with a horrible stench—a pungent combination of vehicle exhausts, fired gunpowder, smoke from bonfires, and men’s bloody clothing over unwashed bodies.” Those ambulatory casualties who were waiting to be evacuated were “huddled speechless in knots, their eyes vacant from witnessing untold horrors, unshaven for days, and wearing blankets draped over their shoulders.” Everyone was disabled in one way or another: “Many hobbled about with walking poles or canes fashioned from tree limbs. Some were barefoot with bright-red or gangrene-blackened feet. One man who boarded my C-47 flipped away all of his toes like rotten apples before getting aboard. Not a word was spoken—a brief flicker in their eyes was their thanks for our ‘magic-carpet’ that would whisk them away to safety and medical attention.”
Some 464 casualties were evacuated to Yonpo on Dec. 3. At dusk, when air operations ceased, most of the casualties remaining at Hagaru-ri were those unable to be transported out and those among the survivors of the 31st Regimental Combat Team trickling in.
Sometime that day, Capt Hering went to the division command post to see Gen Smith. In his oral history transcript in the Marine Corps University Archives, Smith would remember that Hering was “fit to be tied” because he realized that some men with minor wounds or mild frostbite were gaming the system. Apparently, medical malingerers “would go down to the strip and get a blanket and a stretcher and then groan a bit,” and try to talk their way onto a flight. “It was our fault probably,” Smith admitted, “because the Air Force had sent up what they called an Evacuation Officer, and the doctor [Hering] assumed that the Evacuation Officer would see that the proper people got aboard the planes, but that was not his function at all; he was just thinking in terms of planes, not on what was flown on the planes.” As a stopgap measure, Hering promptly introduced a stationed at the loading area of every outgoing plane. “Nobody after that got on any plane without a [doctor-issued] ticket that showed that he was due to get out,” said Smith.
Hering also issued strict, multilevel triaging procedures for frostbite casualties, documented in a 1stMarDiv special action report dated Oct. 8-Dec. 15, 1950: “All frostbite [cases] were screened three times, once by their own unit surgeons, again by the medical companies and finally by a team consisting of the Division and Regimental surgeons and a senior line officer from each regiment. As a working criterion, those with large blisters or large discolored areas [Grade 3 frostbite] were considered candidates for evacuation.”
Borderline cases were referred to Hering, who later explained the simple but austere standard—the “Lessenden Rule”—that he used to decide for or against evacuation in his article, “Combat Medical Practice”: “This sorting of frost-bite added greatly to our medical burden and was … almost brutally done, as we needed every man capable of bearing a rifle … I personally passed on all controversial cases, using as my criteria the feet of the 5th Regimental Surgeon [LCDR Chet Lessenden]. He refused to be evacuated although he could not walk without great pain, but insisted on riding in an ambulance with his medical section. Those worse than we evacuated, those less fought their way back.”
Marines of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, set up a command post in the hills around Chosin Reservoir.
Just after 7 p.m. on Dec. 3, the lead element of the column from Yudam-ni entered the Hagaru-ri defensive perimeter, and about twenty hours later, the rear guard arrived. As noted in one account of the heroic withdrawal from Yudam-ni in “The Chosin Reservoir Campaign,” “The four-day operation passed into history. Some 1,500 casualties were brought to Hagaru, a third of them being in the non-battle category, chiefly frostbite cases. It had taken the head of the column about 59 hours to cover the 14 miles, and the rear units 79 hours.”
The medical needs of the arriving casualties overwhelmed the medical facilities and personnel at Hagaru-ri. Yet, as Capt Hering later recalled, “Somehow they were sorted, those in need given resuscitation and definitive care, sheltered, warmed, and fed.” The critically wounded were shunted to the two medical battalion hospitals, Charlie and Easy Med, which were near the airstrip.
The commanding officer of Easy Med, Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles K. Holloway Jr., a veteran of the Second World War and one of the most experienced surgeons in the division, vividly remembered the challenges he faced on Dec. 4, as recounted in his unpublished manuscript “Escape From Hell: A Navy Surgeon Remembers Pusan, Inchon, and Chosin”: “We had so many patients lying, sitting, and standing that we could hardly see the floor. The 300 triple-deck bunks of our expanded capacity were simple wooden frames that held the patients’ own litters. I stacked patients like sardines in the commandeered pyramidal tents, 25 casualties in a circle around the center stove.
Their own body heat and warmth from the heater kept them from freezing until we could load them on planes in the few hours of safe operation left at the airstrip. There was not much else we could do for them at the time, but it was enough to save most of them.”
Those requiring “emergency surgery, and there was surprisingly few, managed to get it.”
CAPT Eugene Hering, USN, 1st Marine Division surgeon, right, shows Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews the hospital at Hamhung.
Those whose surgery could be delayed “were evacuated by air to get needed surgical treatment later at the First Marine Division Hospital in Hamhung.” Those “who had made the supreme sacrifice for their buddies” were placed in a “morgue tent” erected in front of the hospital.
Dec. 5 was 1stMarDiv’s last full day at Hagaru-ri, and the rush was on to evacuate the remaining casualties. That day, according to Air Force historian William M. Leary’s book “Anything, Anywhere, Any Time: Combat Cargo in the Korean War,” the 21st TCS “flew 44 missions into the perimeter … the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing flew 10, and a detachment of C-47s from the Royal Hellenic Air Force flew 8.” Together they “brought in 254,851 pounds of freight and 81 replacement Marines” and evacuated “1,561 casualties.” Regretfully, wrote Leary, “there was neither the time nor the space on the airplanes to bring out all the bodies of the dead.”
While the busiest day of the airlift unfolded, correspondents scrambled to file their last-minute reports from Hagaru-ri. All civilians and nonessential personnel were directed to leave by the end of the day, as Gen Smith had ordered 1stMarDiv to begin the breakout from Hagaru-ri the following morning.
Their dramatic stories, accompanied by maps, filled the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Their common theme: The oldest and most venerated division in the Marine Corps, the finest group of fighting men in the world, was in mortal danger of being annihilated by an overwhelming force of Chinese Communists. An estimated nine divisions had taken up positions along the MSR with the avowed intent of exterminating the 1st Marine Division. When a reporter asked Gen Smith whether he was retreating or withdrawing from the Chosin Reservoir, he replied that he had done neither. There is no retreating or withdrawing when you’re surrounded, he was purported to say, you can only attack. His response was quickly transmuted by the press into perhaps the most memorable phrase of the war: “Retreat, Hell! We are just attacking in a different direction.” Smith had refused General Tunner’s earlier offer to fly out the entire division—“It just didn’t occur to us that we wouldn’t be able to fight our way out,” he later said, according to the Marine Corps University Archives transcript.
During the snowy, sub-freezing morning of Dec. 6, the 7th Marines passed through the Hagaru-ri defensive perimeter and proceeded along the MSR toward Koto-ri, some 11 miles to the south; the breakout from the Chosin Reservoir had begun. “Twenty miles of icy, winding, mountain road barred by a 6,000-foot pass with enemy spread on both sides, stand between the Marines and the open road to the ocean,” wrote war correspondent Keyes Beech that day.
A wounded Marine sips hot coffee from a canteen cup while awaiting evacuation to a rear area hospital for treatment.
While this was unfolding, the evacuation of the remaining casualties continued. At noon, the director of operations for the Combat Cargo Command, Colonel Robert D. Forman, flew into Hagaru-ri to direct the final evacuation flights. Accompanying him was Michael James of the New York Times, who later described the final moments they spent at the airstrip: “By this time the whole area was a sea of flames. Not only were Marines burning their surplus stocks, but two slightly damaged C-47 transports, neither of which could be flown out due to lack of immediate repairs, went up in flames.
Colonel Forman who flew the last transport out … was notified by radio jeep that there was one more wounded man desperately in need of expert medical attention. For one hour Forman waited while the enemy closed in on the field. Eventually a jeep drove up with the last casualty who was taken aboard.”
As the plane lifted off through a swirling snowstorm and hail of enemy gunfire, countless Chinese Communist foot soldiers swarmed over the abandoned airfield.
An Unparalleled Aeromedical Operation
The following day, General Stratemeyer sent a redline message to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, General Hoyt Vandenberg, reporting that 4,369 wounded Marines and soldiers had been evacuated by the Combat Cargo Command during the six-day Hagaru-ri airlift, as documented in “The Three Wars of Lt. Gen. George E Stratemeyer: His Korean War Diary.” By any standards, it was a historic achievement—a “very outstanding performance,” commented Stratemeyer in a dispatch to General Tunner. Time magazine was so impressed with the airlift that it featured Tunner on its Dec. 18 cover, calling him the “Airlifter.”
Marine tanks maneuver around a blown bridge south of Koto-ri as the allies push to break out from a Chinese Communist encirclement en route to the beachhead at Hungnam, December 1950.
Gen Smith was unsparing in his praise of the Hagaru-ri airlift. “I believe the story of this evacuation is without parallel,” he wrote in his aide-memoir. “Credit must go to the troop commanders whose determination and self-sacrifice made it possible to get the wounded out, to the medical personnel whose devotion to duty and untiring efforts saved many lives, and to the Marine and Air Force (including Greek) pilots who accomplished this difficult task without a fatal accident in spite of the hazards of the weather and the rudimentary landing strip.”
The “fabulous” airlift ushered in a new era in combat medicine, Hering said in a press conference after 1stMarDiv reached the safe environs of Hungnam, prompting one exuberant Kansas City Star reporter to label aeromedical evacuation as the “great medical weapon” of the war. Later, Hering would clarify its role in military medical operations in the article he wrote for The Military Surgeon journal: “Air evacuation is only a link in the chain of casualty care. It is a strong member of the team, but it is not the whole answer. Every other member of the team must be utilized under most conditions, from the company aid men all the way through to the evacuation hospital, the naval hospital ship, and the base hospitals in the zone of the interior. It is a wonderful adjunct, our greatest advance in the evacuation of casualties, but still an adjunct.”
Featured Image (Top): Casualties are loaded onto a C-47 at Hagaru-ri for evacuation during the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, December 1950. Over six days, more than 4,300 casualties were flown out under constant threat of enemy fire.
Authors:
Dr. Eugene Ginchereau is a military historian and retired Navy physician.
André B. Sobocinski serves as the historian at the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
In July 2005, the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) put to sea from California with Battalion Landing Team (BLT) 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, embarked. The deployment began in typical fashion. Marines made port calls and participated in exercises through Australia, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. By September, the MEU had sailed into the Red Sea and on to Egypt. As the Marines transited the Suez Canal, word disseminated of their next operation. The BLT was headed to combat in Iraq.
The new orders proved largely expected. Throughout the previous year, numerous MEUs supported the fighting in Fallujah, Najaf and other areas of Iraq. Even 2/1 had previously experienced an identical situation in 2003 as part of the 15th MEU, surging north from Kuwait with the initial invading force. By 2005, several invasion veterans lingered in the battalion. Considerably more had fought through the battalion’s next Iraq deployment during the First Battle of Fallujah in April 2004. Now on its third deployment in as many years, senior leaders called on the BLT to support the largest Marine Corps operation in Iraq since Operation Phantom Fury. The main effort focused on arresting control of the wildest part of Iraq’s “Wild West,” the Al Qa’im region.
Then-GySgt Michael D. Fay produced numerous paintings and drawings during Operation Steel Curtain. In this scene, Capt Ross Parrish, the Fox Co Commander, coordinates his forces over the radio in Karabilah, Iraq, during combat on the Marine Corps Birthday.
Al Qa’im made up the northwest corner of Iraq along the Syrian border. In 2004, while 2/1 battled insurgents some 200 miles down the Euphrates River valley, other Marines faced uprisings throughout Al Qa’im. On April 14, 2004, in Karabilah, Corporal Jason Dunham was mortally wounded smothering a grenade and saving the lives of two other Marines. He became the first Marine to receive the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. Conditions worsened as the year progressed, culminating in November when virtually all American forces departed Al Qa’im to support Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah. The battle forced insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi out of the city. He retreated northwest and reestablished a base of operations in Al Qa’im. Zarqawi cemented his control over the region throughout 2005, despite a persistent Marine presence and limited offensive operations. The approach of Iraqi parliamentary elections, however, demanded a secure environment in which to conduct voting. The balance of power in Al Qa’im would not truly be tested until the arrival of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, that August.
The Marines of 3/6 occupied Camp Al Qa’im, based several miles south of the urban centers along the Euphrates River. One company operated out of another American outpost called Camp Gannon, guarding over the Syrian border crossing in Husaybah. The Marines executed Operation Iron Fist at the beginning of October, sweeping through portions of Karabilah and Sadah and establishing forward battle positions across the region. The battalion was spread thin manning each position, most engaging the enemy in daily firefights to hold their ground.
3/6 occupied the Al Qa’im region prior to BLT 2/1’s arrival. Beginning at the western edge, Operation Steel Curtain aimed to clear through Husaybah and Karabilah before pushing east into Ubaydi.
As 3/6 maintained the foothold in Al Qa’im through the remainder of the month, BLT 2/1 flew into Iraq. Both battalions would work together through the next phase of the Marines’ attack plan, dubbed Operation Steel Curtain, to clear the entire region, building by building, and drive out the insurgency before the election. The BLT transitioned rapidly from the MEU training mindset to mental preparation for imminent combat.
“Everything felt pretty surreal as I remember it,” said Justin VanHout, then a lance corporal in 2/1’s Fox Company, 2nd Platoon, 1st Squad. “Everything happened so fast. We flew from Kuwait up to Al-Asad and staged there. They sent a convoy up from Kuwait bringing all of our equipment. About that time, we got word there was some sort of accident, a vehicle rollover, and we lost our first Marine. Lance Corporal Christopher Poston. I think that moment kind of set a demeanor for a lot of us, like, ‘Well, here we go.’ Kind of gave us the impression that we were actually in it.”
LCpl Jeff Jendrzejczyk, an 0351 assaultman attached to 2nd Plt, Fox Co, BLT 2/1, rests during combat operations in Karabilah on the Marine Corps Birthday. Michael D. Fay produced a painting based on this photograph titled “The Other Side of Exhausted.”
“For me, things still weren’t hitting that we were actually in a combat zone,” added Shawn Studzinski, another lance corporal in 2nd Platoon’s 1st Squad. “We’d be walking around base at Al-Asad and all of the sudden an alarm would go off because there was a mortar strike, but still it’s not clicking. Then, on one of our company’s first missions, we were barely outside the wire when one of our 7-tons hit an IED. Everybody made it out OK, but that really kind of woke me up.”
By Nov. 5, VanHout, Studzinski and the rest of 2nd Platoon had staged at the Syrian border crossing on the outskirts of Husaybah, prepared to attack east into the city. Fox Company occupied the left flank of 2/1’s advance. Their objective was to clear a modern grid-style section of the city known by Marines as “the 440 district” for the number of buildings it contained. Tense house-to-house fighting erupted across the front in spurts, increasing in frequency and ferocity as the Marines advanced. Grenades, rockets or tank main gun rounds frequently preceded grunts kicking in doors to soften up the enemy inside. The Marines worked methodically through Husaybah for three days, then moved directly on to Karabilah. After nine days of fighting, anyone left to oppose the Marines fled east down the Euphrates.
Through Steel Curtain’s opening days, 3/6 operated as the main effort. As the battalion advanced, rifle platoons re-mained behind to establish new battle positions and prevent the enemy’s return. By Nov. 13, 3/6 occupied nine separate positions sprinkled throughout Husaybah, Karabilah and Sadah. There was only one city that hadn’t been cleared. That task fell to BLT 2/1.
The city of Ubaydi lay in the center of a heart-shaped bend in the Euphrates at the eastern edge of Al Qa’im. The main road running directly up the center of the heart divided Ubaydi into “old” and “new” sections. Old Ubaydi consisted of sparsely populated farmland and anti-quated structures. New Ubaydi looked mostly like the modern urban center the BLT Marines had advanced through in Husaybah. Commanders called in supporting U.S. Army units to sweep through Old Ubaydi, while also securing any avenues of escape to the north across the river. BLT 2/1 was tasked with clearing the new city. Shooting it out in the streets morphed into point-blank combat house to house, with booby traps and hardened defensive positions greeting Marines behind each barricaded door. The insurgents’ backs were against the river, and with Americans waiting on the opposite bank, they faced the oncoming wave of Marines with no option but to hold out and fight to the death.
The grunts marched into their as-sembly areas outside Ubaydi under the cover of darkness on the night of Nov. 13. They moved dismounted into the city due to the significant threat of IEDs surrounding the area, especially along the roads. Tragically, their concerns proved well founded. As the battalion approached Ubaydi before dawn on Nov. 14, Major Ramon J. Mendoza Jr., the Echo company commander, stepped on a pressure plate. The resulting explosion killed Mendoza and wounded other Marines in the vicinity.
Marines from Fox Co, BLT 2/1, push into the palm grove standing between the edge of New Ubaydi and the Euphrates River. Many of the enemy who ambushed 2nd Plt on Nov. 16 were killed as they fled into this wooded area.
The BLT assaulted north shortly after sunrise. A new level of intensity hindered their progress. From Fox Company’s 1st Platoon, LCpl Christopher M. McCrackin burst into one house, triggering a hidden explosive device. Shrapnel tore into his body, leaving him mortally wounded. Several hours later, Cpl John M. Longoria breached a door with his fire team and ran into five insurgents armed with machine guns. In the ensuing firefight, Longoria was shot in the neck and killed.
“There was one point where our [standard operating procedure] was to put a grenade, M203 round or SMAW rocket into every building before Marines went in because you just didn’t know what you were going to meet on the other side of the door,” said Jeff Jendrzejczyk, an 0351 assaultman and SMAW gunner attached to Fox Company, 2nd Platoon, 2nd Squad. “I fired 113 SMAW rockets in combat. Most of those were in Ubaydi.”
LCpl Jeff Jendrzejczyk, an 0351 assaultman attached to 2nd Plt, Fox Co, BLT 2/1, fires a SMAW rocket in Ubaydi, Iraq
For two days, Fox Co pushed through the city, emerging from the urban maze into a sprawling countryside of farmland leading up to the Euphrates. On the morning of Nov. 16, the company spread out on line to sweep across the remaining ground. 2nd Platoon fell in the company’s center. A complex of 20 farmhouses and other structures stretched across several hundred meters along the Marines’ path—the last buildings between them and the river. A large grove of palm trees stood beyond the houses, obscuring the Marines’ view of the riverbank.
Three rifle squads filled out 2nd Platoon. 1st Squad cleared through structures around the outer rim of the complex, while 3rd Squad moved up the center. 2nd Squad remained behind, providing ground security for the BLT’s tank platoon.
“1st Squad was moving along this long stone wall towards a building on the edge of a collection of farmhouses,” VanHout said. “We stopped for a minute and all of the sudden there was a big boom. Something went off on the other side of the wall. Next thing we knew, there was gunfire everywhere and everything is going to hell. We sprinted to the end of the wall and got into our assigned building. Just as we finished clearing the first floor and another team was moving up the stairs, an insurgent burst into the house through an open back door. He had no idea we were in there. Shawn Studzinski and several others were still in the hallway when the insurgent started firing. Sparks were flying everywhere and one of our engineers got shot through the wrist. I was just inside a room next to them. I remember watching Shawn like in slow motion. He turns, drops to a knee, perfect freaking Marine form, and ‘Boom! Boom!’ Double-taps the guy right in the chest.”
“The insurgent fell into a room down the hall … and we could see his feet sticking out into the hallway,” said Studzinski. “We could see he was still moving. The engineer who was shot started screaming behind me. One of the team leaders yelled at us to frag the room. I kept watch on the doorway while VanHout moved up and pitched a grenade into the room. Somehow, the guy was still alive after it went off, so we captured him and turned him over to the Iraqi forces with us.”
“I made it up to the roof and someone told me to start firing 203 rounds into the palm grove beyond the houses,” VanHout said. “I looked down into the courtyard outside the house and saw a blown-up car and dead cow blown to pieces. I was trying to connect all the dots; the explosion, the gunfire, the insurgent we killed. In that moment, we were all so isolated inside that house. We had no knowledge of what was going on with the rest of the platoon. In hindsight, I think that initial explosion was the kicker that started everything that morning. But at the time, we had no idea that 3rd Squad and some of the other guys were in total mayhem.”
As the shooting began, 3rd Squad moved toward the buildings near the center of the complex. The squad oper-ated short-handed with only two fire teams. One team set up in a building to provide overwatch while the remaining team prepared to make entry into a farmhouse 75 yards away.
Nineteen-year-old LCpl Ben Sanbeck stacked up with his fire team outside the front door. Sanbeck took point with Cpl Joshua J. Ware next in line and two more Marines behind him. Ware pushed his hand against Sanbeck’s shoulder, silently signaling the junior Marine to dart right once they made it through the door. Over the preceding days, every Marine in 3rd Squad had expended their fragmentation grenades clearing house to house. The only thing Sanbeck possessed was a flashbang.
Above: In this heartbreaking depiction, Michael D. Fay captures a glimpse of the emotional and chaotic scene inside the casualty collection point on Nov. 16, 2005.
“I threw the flashbang through the door and all that did was stir the hornet’s nest,” Sanbeck reflected today. “That gave them timing. They knew as soon as it went off, we were coming through the door. I rounded the corner and as soon as I made entry, the insurgents already had a grenade in the air. It landed between me and Ware and went off before I could even yell ‘Grenade.’ Then an RPK machine gun opened up and chaos ensued.”
The Marines unknowingly made entry into a barricaded insurgent stronghold: the enemy’s last stand. Numerous enemy fighters lay behind toppled wardrobes or other objects providing cover. Others carved small mouse holes through walls at waist level, directing their fire just below the Marines’ body armor. More of the enemy waited outside in other structures or concealed within the palm grove, waiting to engage additional Marines coming to rescue those who ended up inside.
Sanbeck’s momentum carried him through the doorway and into a room off the main hallway just inside. Three machine-gun bullets grazed off his helmet as he fell. The grenade blast decimated both his legs and blew his M16 out of his hands. The grenade mortally wounded Ware, who slumped in the hallway. A machine-gun bullet struck the next Marine in line in the center of his helmet, ricocheting off the night vision goggle mount and knocking him back through the door. The last Marine in the stack also fell back outside the front door with shrapnel wounds from the grenade blast.
“I was so beat up from that grenade, I’m pretty sure the enemy thought I was dead,” Sanbeck said. “There was so much blood coming out of my legs, I’m pretty sure at some point I probably lost consciousness. I was stuck inside that room, knowing the rest of my team was pinned down outside, trying to figure out where they were, but they couldn’t hear me over all the gunfire.”
From their overwatch position 75 yards away, the remainder of 3rd Squad watched in horror as their fellow fire team shattered. They were close enough to see and hear what was going on, but too far away to communicate. Each team possessed personal short-range radios. Amidst the gunfire and explosions, no one from the team inside the stronghold was answering. Cpl Jeffry A. Rogers, LCpl John A. Lucente, LCpl Joshua Mooi and a combat engineer attached to the squad immediately sprinted toward the house.
Insurgents opened fire as the Marines dashed over the open distance. One bullet tore through the engineer’s leg. Rogers helped him move to cover while Mooi and Lucente reached the house and staged outside the front door. The last two Marines from Sanbeck’s fire team lay bleeding and dazed just inside. Mooi and Lucente snatched them both and moved them 25 yards under fire to another structure nearby.
“That building became our casualty collection point simply because we brought the wounded there and that was the best we could do,” remembered Mooi today. “This very quickly went from a casualty incident to a mass casualty incident.”
In the aftermath of the ambush on Nov. 16, 2005, one of the structures where enemy fighters took shelter stands in ruin.
Staff Sergeant Robert Homer pushed up to the front door as Rogers, Lucente and Mooi returned to search for Sanbeck and Ware. As 2nd Platoon’s platoon sergeant, Homer immediately communicated the situation over the radio and ordered 1st and 2nd squads to collapse on the house. Standing at the front door, Mooi shouted through the opening trying to locate Sanbeck, who struggled to respond over the roar of gunfire. Finally, the Marines lay down enough covering fire for Mooi and Lucente to push inside and drag Sanbeck out by his Kevlar vest.
Rogers, Lucente and Mooi stacked up again at the front door, determined to recover Ware. A burst of machine-gun fire tore through Lucente’s abdomen as they pushed back into the house, mortally wounding him. As he lay dying, Lucente passed a grenade to Mooi. He shoved it through the mouse hole in the wall where the enemy fire originated, killing the enemy gunner behind it.
Second Lieutenant Donald R. McGlothlin, the platoon commander of 2nd Platoon, entered the house and pushed passed Mooi and Lucente, placing himself between his Marines and the enemy trying to kill them. He returned fire as Mooi dragged Lucente back outside. Mooi returned and finally recovered Ware while McGlothlin remained engaged.
LCpl Joshua Mooi, painted by Michael D. Fay during Operation Steel Curtain. For his outstanding heroism, initiative and dedication to his fellow Marines on Nov. 16, 2005, Mooi received the Navy Cross.
“I was outside talking to Rogers, and I asked him where the Lieutenant was,” Mooi remembered. “I didn’t realize that he never came back out. I knew I had to go get him, so I went back inside. That was the last conversation I had with Rogers.”
Mooi pushed back into the house on his own and located McGlothlin lying mortally wounded from grenade shrapnel and machine-gun bullets. As he neared a stairwell leading to the roof, Mooi encountered an insurgent standing on a landing, throwing grenades over the roofline into the courtyard. Before the enemy could react, Mooi shot and killed him. As Mooi dragged McGlothlin out the front door, he discovered that in the time it took him to kill the insurgent and remove McGlothlin, Rogers had also been shot and killed. The scene outside the house juxtaposed absolute chaos with astounding heroism, as wounded Marines and corpsmen treated and packaged for evacuation others who were more wounded than themselves.
Simultaneously, 2nd Squad walked behind a line of tanks several hundred feet away, advancing toward the farmhouses. The tanks throttled up and bolted toward the enemy fire when the ambush kicked off. 2nd Squad sprinted behind the last tank, trying to keep up. Tiny explosions impacted the dirt around them as they ran from insurgents targeting the Marines. The last tank finally stopped, and the Marines took cover. Cpl Javier Alvarez, the 2nd Squad leader, picked up the phone on the back of the tank and directed the crew to put a main gun round into the house where the enemy fire originated. The Marines plugged their ears as the 120 mm cannon roared. They trudged alongside once again as the tank rolled out, enemy rounds still cracking through the air.
“I was focused on engaging the area next to us where a lot of enemy fire was coming from, so I wasn’t paying attention to the radio to know what was going on,” Alvarez remembered. “Someone told me to have the tank put another main gun round into the building in front of us, only about 40 feet away. I relayed that to the guy inside the tank, and he said he couldn’t because there were friendlies inside. I looked around the side and saw Cpl Rogers down injured next to the building. There were insurgents popping out and shooting at us and our machine guns were engaging them. It was really close. I had been in my own world and had no idea what was going on in that house. It was chaos.”
Alvarez organized his squad and sprinted across the open area between the tank and the house. He emptied one magazine into the windows and reloaded as he ran. Abrupt punches across both his legs stole his attention. Bloodstains on his trousers rapidly increased in size, flowing from multiple gunshot wounds. Somehow, the injuries failed to take him down. He inserted a fresh magazine and continued sprinting until he fell against the side of the house beneath an open window. Seated upright with his back to the wall, Alvarez spread his legs out in front of him. Multiple bullets tore through both thighs and his left calf, each wound bleeding steadily.
A Marine pulled tourniquets for both of Alvarez’s legs. As he placed them high on Alvarez’s thighs, an insurgent appeared in the window above them and shot the Marine in the head. The round struck off his helmet, knocking him to the ground between Alvarez’s legs in a daze. Alvarez lifted his rifle and emptied another magazine into the window.
“I brought my rifle down to reload and was looking off to my right,” Alvarez said. “When I looked back down, I saw a grenade rolling around next to me. There were friendlies inside, a stacked team in front of me, a Marine behind me, a Marine in between my legs; instantly I just thought, ‘I need to get this away from us.’ So, I picked it up and tried to throw it away, but as I turned to release it, it detonated.”
The explosion went off an arm’s length above his head, causing Alvarez to black out. He came to seconds later and im-mediately felt his hand burning. When he raised his arm, he discovered the hand was completely gone. The Marines around him lay wounded by the blast. Homer ignored his own injuries and ran up to Alvarez, placed a tourniquet on his devastated arm, and assisted him to the casualty collection point (CCP).
Hospital Corpsman Third Class Jesse Hickey accompanied 2nd Squad up to the house. He immediately went to work treating the wounded Marines piling up outside. The insurgent inside lobbing grenades over the roofline maintained a steady barrage until Mooi finally pushed through the house and killed him. Hickey, Homer and numerous others suffered wounds upon wounds as the explosives detonated.
“It was just grenade after grenade after grenade,” remembered Jendrzejczyk, who also made the dash under fire with Alvarez’s 2nd Squad. “Me and Doc Hickey carried Rogers’ body to the collection point, then went back to grab Lucente. When we went to pick him up, a grenade came out the window and Doc took all the shrapnel from that. Now, he’s there trying to bandage himself while I’m trying to bandage Lucente. It was just absolute chaos.”
“Our other platoon corpsman, Doc Eric Rust, had almost the same wounds as me,” said Sanbeck. “He took a grenade to the legs while he was bent over working on somebody. Our corpsmen were just remarkable. We called them, ‘Devil Docs’ because they were really just Marines with band-aids. They aren’t supposed to be in the fight like that, and yet here is Doc Rust shooting his 9 mm pistol with one hand and putting a tourniquet on with the other. I don’t think anything in medical school prepared him for that.”
Lance Corporal Roger W. Deeds served as a machine-gun section leader attached to 2nd Plt. As Marines began to fall in and around the house, Deeds handed off his machine gun to another Marine and sprinted forward to help. He assisted the corpsmen treating the wounded and prepared them for evacuation. Like so many others, Deeds responded when the platoon sergeant called for help. He remained exposed outside the house providing covering fire until he too was mortally wounded.
Homer crossed the deadly 25-yard kill zone between the house and the CCP numerous times, moving casualties away from danger. Grenade shrapnel stitched across his side, leaving him severely wounded, yet he refused to join the others piling up at the CCP. Mooi eventually found Homer at the CCP after they both helped evacuate separate casualties to inform him Lt McGlothlin was dead and Homer was now in command.
After evacuating Lucente, Jendrzejczyk realized he was the most medically trained Marine available at the CCP.
“I had gone through advanced combat lifesaver training in Egypt before we flew into Iraq,” he said. “That probably helped me the most. I threw down my rocket and was able to help the corpsmen because nobody else was really trained, and both corpsmen had been hit. There were enough rifles around that I didn’t need to go out there and fight the fight. What I needed to do was help with the mass casualty [situation], so I focused on the CCP and trying to get all these wounded Marines to the medevac bird while the fighting was still going.”
Mooi returned to the house once again, following his conversation with Homer. After watching his entire squad wiped out in the fighting, Mooi determined to personally finish what they had started.
“I decided, it took all of them, so it was either going to take me, too, or we were going to win this,” he stated. “At the time, I’m a 19-year-old infantry Marine; like, I thought I was untouchable. I ran back to the house and took point on a mixed team from 2nd Squad. Someone passed me a hand grenade because I didn’t have one. I tossed it inside, then went back in.”
Several Marines followed Mooi as he led back through the house clearing room by room. They engaged more insurgents, eventually arriving at the back door. Mooi burst into the light with his rifle shouldered at the ready.
“We came rolling out the back door into the yard. There was a pile of fuel barrels right there, and a guy with a machine gun lying next to them. I turned and fired a couple rounds at him as he turned and fired a couple rounds at me. I don’t know if I hit him, but he definitely hit me. I am the luckiest person in the world. Three of the rounds he fired hit my rifle magazine and did not go through. Another round hit the upper receiver and got stuck in the bolt carrier group. That all would have been in my neck and face. I went to fire again and realized my rifle was down, so I rolled back to try to get back inside the house. The Marine behind me opened up and was able to kill the insurgent.”
By the time Mooi and the Marines from 2nd Squad finished clearing the house, the majority of casualties outside were moved to the CCP. First Squad arrived from their supporting position to assist with the casualties.
“Everything was happening so fast,” VanHout said. “So fast it really kind of rocked us. We cleared through our house and got onto the roof, then we got the call over the radio about the mass casualty incident and immediately moved down and were trucking back along the stone wall towards the CCP. As we were coming back that trail, that’s the first time all of us in 1st Squad saw one of our casualties coming out of the battle the rest of the platoon was in.”
“We got to a little break in the wall and I saw a Marine dragging another body,” Studzinski remembered. “I realized the person he was dragging was wearing our cammies, then saw the name tape on his back and it was Ware. Then I turned towards the building where all the fighting was going on and saw Cpl Rogers’ body leaning up against a pillar of the carport parking area. Lt McGlothlin was lying nearby, and I could see in his face that he was dead as well. We moved towards the CCP and as soon as I was about to go through the door, I saw another Marine lying face down. I saw the name tape on the back of his Kevlar and it was LCpl Deeds. The first thought that immediately came into my brain was that he just had a daughter born while we were on ship. I went inside and saw Cpl Alvarez with a chunk out of his leg and his hand looking like a fist full of spaghetti. I went into another room and saw Lucente laying on the ground with Jendrzejczyk and Doc Hickey working on him, while another Marine was working on Doc Hickey because he was wounded too.”
“By that point, most of the combat in that main house was over, and we were already starting to get Blackhawks in for medevac,” VanHout added. “I don’t know what adrenaline was doing to the timespan, but this was only a matter of 15 or 20 minutes. I remember seeing Lt McGlothlin at the CCP leaned up against a wall with a poncho liner over him, half blown off by the breeze. It was the most surreal moment of my life. A couple of us went to him and started getting him ready to go on the helicopter. We brought him to the chopper, and I thought I was watching a scene from ‘Apocalypse Now’ or something, with blood running out of the bird and down over the skids. I just couldn’t believe it. But, we loaded him up and I just turned around and went back looking for the next guy.”
While 2nd Platoon’s battle raged inside the house, the Fox Company command group set up on the roof of a three-story building nearby. Captain Ross Parrish, Commanding Officer, Fox Company, ordered a 100-round fire-for-effect mor-tar mission into the palm grove beyond the house. Numerous enemy fighters fleeing the buildings were cut down in the trees by falling explosives. Standing next to Parrish, Capt Brian Gilbertson masterfully worked the radio coordinating air support. A C-130 transport pilot by trade, Gilbertson attached to Fox on the deployment as their forward air controller. Less than 30 minutes after the shooting started, he had U.S. Army and Marine Corps helos on the ground evacuating casualties. Simultaneously, he vectored in Cobra gunships from Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 369, pouring rockets into the palm grove.
While Fox Co remained in Ubaydi for several days, a Marine etched marks on the side of one building tallying the enemy dead. By the time the Marines departed, the count reached 57.
“We reconsolidated at the command post after clearing the house,” said Mooi. Miraculously, he emerged from the ferocious firefight without a scratch. “There was stuff going on all around that building now; tanks shooting main gun rounds into it, helicopters flying all around doing gun runs. There was a mortar team on the roof at the CP just letting it rain down into the palm grove where the remaining bad guys were at. It was beautiful. We were at the point where all the support weapons are doing their job, so all the ground guys kind of slowed down. That’s when everything really started to sink in, and all the adrenaline started to fade.”
The fighting lasted less than an hour. The house where 3rd Squad encountered the insurgent stronghold partially col-lapsed under a barrage of tank main gun fire. Thousands of bullet holes, scorch marks, and spalling marred the outside walls. The BLT remained in Ubaydi for three more days patrolling around the same area. At some point, a grunt began scrawling tally marks on one of the buildings counting the enemy dead who lay where they fell. By the time the battalion departed, the tally reached 57.
Operation Steel Curtain closed successfully achieving its goal. The Marines of 3/6 remained in Al Qa’im to oversee the elections. BLT 2/1 pulled out of the region to the city of Hit, where they remained through Christmas. After the new year the battalion returned to their ships, and the 13th MEU sailed home.
Fox Co’s 2nd Platoon completely disintegrated in the aftermath of Nov. 16.
“We went into Ubaydi with 43 Marines,” said Jendrzejczyk. “Only 17 of us walked out. That changed all of us forever.”
The survivors amalgamated into other platoons, left to wonder how many of their brothers fared after disappearing from the battlefield on medevac helicopters. The wounded dispersed through hospitals across Iraq, Germany and eventually the United States, all of them only later learning the full extent of what happened to their platoon.
Sanbeck underwent his first surgery to save his legs while still in Iraq. Despite the heavy dosage of morphine coursing through his bloodstream, doctors made him sign a waiver stating he understood they might have to amputate both lower limbs. As more casualties from the battle arrived, Sanbeck overheard someone listing the Marines who had been killed. Only then did he understand how devastating the ambush had been.
Alvarez woke up in a hospital in Germany with burns across his face, eardrums blown, shrapnel throughout his body, four gunshot wounds in his legs, and his hand completely gone. He went unconscious and was intubated during the flight to Bethesda, Md., where his long road to recovery began. Alvarez’s rapid evacuation immediately severed him from contact with his platoon. Without any telephone numbers or an account on social media, Alvarez struggled to reconnect with the remainder of 2nd Platoon.
Capt Parrish undertook the monumental task of piecing together the ambush in the weeks following Nov. 16. On the voyage home, he asked his Marines to write witness statements detailing their individual points of view. The resulting picture of the battle revealed the awesome depth of selfless heroism exhibited by many Marines that day. Parrish next determined to ensure his Marines were appropriately recognized and worked with his staff to author citations for individual medals.
“November 16th is certainly an exception from my 30 years in the service,” Parrish reflected today, now a colonel still on active duty nearing retirement. “It’s what we train for, but those kinds of high intensity, close quarters engagements don’t occur that frequently. Those Marines fought like lions. I couldn’t be more proud of them. When fatigued, when under duress and under fire, with an enemy that has you ambushed, they flipped the script with their level of proficiency, professionalism and violence.”
The awards churned slowly through the Corps’ bureaucracy. After three years, Robert Oltman, the commanding officer of BLT 2/1 during their time on the 13th MEU, received promotion to colonel and a transfer to Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. Oltman never lost sight of his Marines from 2/1 and those who died in Iraq. He regularly drove across base to the awards branch to inquire on the status of the awards. He became a persistent visitor, personally ensuring the packages for each of his Marines worked through the system.
“There were a lot of heroes that day that nobody knows about,” Oltman said. “So many Marines did so many extraordinary things that allowed more people to come home than may have, had they not taken the actions they took.”
Joshua Mooi left active duty in August 2008 and returned home to begin civilian life around Chicago, Ill. That fall, he received a call informing him the Marine Corps had awarded him the Navy Cross, a medal for valor second only to the Medal of Honor. He flew to Camp Pendleton, Calif., the following January, where Oltman proudly presented him with the medal. Mooi did not stand alone. Homer, Alvarez, and Doc Hickey shared the stage, all receiving Silver Stars. The family of Lt McGlothlin came forward to posthumously accept a Silver Star on his behalf. Numerous others received Bronze Stars with combat distinguished devices, including Lucente and Deeds recognized posthumously. Additionally, Oltman pinned Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with combat distinguished devices on Marines such as Jendrzejczyk, and Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals with “V” on many others like Sanbeck. Still more came forward to receive a Purple Heart.
“I had it all written down at some point because it was just mind-blowing how many citations and commendations were awarded,” Sanbeck remembered. “When we had that ceremony, more of Fox Company went forward for some kind of award from Col Oltman than not. Here are all the young guys in the battalion looking at us like, ‘Holy cow, these are the guys training us now.’ It reminded me of when I came to 2/1 and all my seniors were receiving awards for things they did in Fallujah.”
The passage of 20 years has done little to dull the memory or pain of Nov. 16. For the Marines of 2nd Platoon, the awards they received serve as a persistent call to memory of the brothers they lost.
“I have carried that day with me ever since,” said Jendrzejczyk. “The guys who were there, we very rarely talk about it. What we lived through wasn’t just combat. It was hell. Through it all, we forged a bond that it doesn’t matter the distance or the time that goes by, nothing is going to erase that. We all know Steel Curtain is still there, and if we are struggling and need to talk about it, we can. We always try to remind ourselves that we need to live a life that they would have been proud of.”
“We all live for who we lost and try to do them proud,” echoed Sanbeck. “We were so young and everything happened so fast. I don’t think a day goes by that I haven’t thought about them or that I haven’t made a decision based on that. I think early on, a lot of us didn’t want to have fun in life because we had guilt and felt like you shouldn’t enjoy life. A lot of us were mad and angry at the world for losing what we had and trying to fit into ‘normal’ civilization with no one understanding and listening to people complain about such simple, meaningless things. Now, I think it’s more of a mentality where a lot of us feel like, ‘You know what, they wouldn’t want us to live like that.’ Not everyone can just make that shift, but for me, I don’t leave any rock unturned in life now. If there’s something I can go do and enjoy it, I’m going to go do it. It’s time to take ahold of life, because that’s what they would have wanted us to do.”
BLT 2/1 holds a memorial service in Iraq for the Marines killed in action. During three months in country, the BLT suffered nine killed and many more wounded. Five of the KIA died on Nov. 16.
“Sixteen November: The Line Held”
By Devon Wilfong
In eternal memory of:
2ndLt Donald R. McGlothlin
Cpl Jeffry A. Rogers
LCpl Roger W. Deeds
LCpl John A. Lucente
Cpl Joshua J. Ware
The sun rose slow on foreign sand,
Where war had scarred the
river’s hand.
Fox 2/1 moved house to house,
Through Ubaydi’s deathtrap, silent,
doused.
They knew the risk, they knew the cost,
Each man beside them worth more
than lost.
Then thunder broke from
walls unseen—
An ambush split the desert scene.
No time for fear, no room for doubt,
Just fire and smoke and shouted route.
The alley screamed, the rifles spoke,
And every breath drew heat and smoke.
They fought with grit, they fought
as one,
Five lives were taken before
day’s done.
But not before their courage roared—
Their names now etched in
Marine Corps lore:
2ndLt Donald R. McGlothlin, bold,
Who led them straight into the fold.
Cpl Jeffry A. Rogers, fierce and fast,
Who stood defiant to the last.
LCpl Roger W. Deeds, unshaken,
proud,
Who faced the storm and never bowed.
LCpl John A. Lucente, sharp and true,
At just nineteen, he saw it through.
Cpl Joshua J. Ware, all heart and fire,
Whose will outlasts the gunman’s ire.
They did not run. They did not bend.
They held the line until the end.
And though they fell on foreign ground,
Their echoes in the Corps resound.
So raise your glass and say their names,
Not lost to time, nor war’s cruel games.
For they remain in memory sealed—
On Sixteen November, the line held.
Author’s bio: Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-13. He is the 2019 winner of the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History.
Featured Image (Top): 2nd Plt, Fox Co, BLT 2/1, entered Ubaydi on Nov. 14, 2005, with 43 Marines. When the operation ended a few days later, only 17 walked out unscathed. The survivors are pictured here preparing to leave the city. Then-GySgt Michael D. Fay accompanies the platoon in this photo, leaning on the truck door in the foreground.
