Editor’s note: The following article, written by the commander of Weapons Company, pro-vides a firsthand account of 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment along the Emerald Wadi in Al Qa’im, Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in October 2005.
The 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment deployed to the Al Qa’im region of Iraq in late August 2005. When 3/6 assumed control of the battlespace from 3/2 late in the summer of 2005, the entire region was strongly influenced by insurgents and foreign fighters.
Operation Iron Fist began on Oct. 1, 2005, in the towns of Sadah and eastern Karabilah in the Al Qa’im region of Al Anbar province. Task Force 3/6 was given the arduous mission of clearing insurgents and disrupting the lines of communication along the Euphrates River Valley from Syria. The intent was to establish battle positions (BPs), maintain a presence in the towns and create relationships with the locals. The mission was accomplished, and both towns were cleared as the battalion began to conduct patrols and build a rapport with the local population.
The Emerald Wadi, running left to right above, is the dry creek bed separating eastern and western Karabilah, Iraq. The 3rd Bn, 6th Marines’ Scout Sniper Plt, known as Reaper, was tasked with maintaining observation of its two bridges.
After the success of Operation Iron Fist, elements of Weapons Company, 3/6 oriented to the west along the dried creek bed known as the Emerald Wadiin order to disrupt and interdict insurgents attempting to move to the east. According to Captain Brendan Heatherman, the commanding officer of Co K, 3/6, the positions along the wadiled the insurgency to believe that a push into Karabilah and Husaybah from the east was imminent. This mistaken belief would be especially beneficial in later months during Operation Steel Curtain when 3/6 came from the opposite direction.
Lieutenant Colonel Julian D. Alford, CO, 3rd Bn, 6th Marines, assigned Weapons Co’s First Mobile Assault Platoon (MAP 1), led by First Lieutenant Jeremy Wilkinson, and its Scout Sniper Plt (Reaper), led by Gunnery Sergeant Donald Rieg, with the mission of maintaining continuous observation of the two bridges (one north and one south) over the Emerald Wadiseparating western and eastern Karabilah. Gunny Rieg had recently taken command of the platoon when 1stLt Tom Wilberg was wounded after his up-armored HMMWV (high-mobility, multipurpose, wheeled vehicle) struck an improvised explosive device (IED) a few days earlier.
Gunny Rieg, along with two four-man sniper teams (Sergeant Jeremy Riddle’s and Lance Corporal George Hatchcock’s teams), established a position in a building along the wadi. It was a typical large two-story concrete house with a walled roof that provided clear observation of both bridges and good fields of fire. The house, known as Reaper base, also had an unusually tall and thick concrete-walled yard where two or three gun trucks could be parked.
It did not take long for the enemy to take umbrage at Reaper’s presence, and they launched a volley of rockets, mortars, small-arms and machine-gun fire at Reaper’s position. During the fight, one Marine finished staging ammunition and equipment in a ground-floor room when a C5 rocket exploded in the house, narrowly missing both the Marine and the ammunition. Reaper exchanged fire across the wadi for at least two hours until shortly after nightfall.
It was an indication of what was to come for the next 21 days.
On the morning of Oct. 7, other Reaper teams and two tanks (Tiger teams 3 and 4) arrived, and improvements for the defense of the house began immediately. The plan was for Tigers 3 and 4 to rotate with Tigers 1 and 2 every few days. Loopholes were created, and sandbags were trucked in to reinforce the walls and sniper hides. During the day, the enemy launched more than a half-dozen rockets and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at the house and tanks—with little effectiveness. The tanks returned fire with main gun rounds at the enemy firing positions, silencing the rocket and RPG fire. Sporadic and inaccurate small-arms fire was received throughout the day, which proved to be more annoying than effective. The pattern continued for the next two days.
CAMP AL QA’IM, Iraq (Oct. 26, 2005) — A shot helmet, belonging to Lacey Springs, Ala., native Lance Cpl Bradley A. Snipes, antitank assaultman, 3rd Mobile Assault Platoon, Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, rests on a benched marked as property of Weapons Company, 3rd Bn., 6th Marines. (Official U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Jerad W. Alexander)
On Oct. 10, a squad of “Kilo” Co Marines arrived from BP Chosin to help with security as sniper teams were pulled from Reaper base to conduct other missions. Capt Heatherman, the Co K commander, said, “We didn’t feel our mission was to go out and find firefights because they would find us.” His words were proven true that day as the squad from Kilo Co was welcomed by the enemy opening up with RPGs and small-arms fire.
Reaper teams led by Sgt Riddle and Sgt Thomas Smith departed Reaper base early the next morning across Route Diamond to set up an ambush on an enemy firing position. At 0700, two men were spotted with rockets moving to another firing position. Shortly afterward, rockets were fired at Reaper base, causing no damage. Knowing the probable egress route the men would take, the Reaper teams prepared for their return. The two men, carrying their rocket launchers, soon returned the same way they had come; they would not fire at Reaper base, or anyone else for that matter, again.
Later that day, one of the Tiger teams engaged with and killed three men who were preparing to launch RPGs from a house across the wadi. Two main gun rounds ensured no fire was received from that house again. Later that night, mortar rounds landed just outside the house walls. Reaper remained on alert throughout the night, expecting a night attack that did not materialize.
The morning of Oct. 12 dawned with sporadic rifle fire on Reaper base, but the origin of the shots could not be determined. Two hours later, Sgt Smith was in the firing position on the north side of the house when he spotted two insurgents shooting at the base. He took two shots with his heavy barrel M16, putting one man down immediately and hitting the other. The second insurgent managed to find cover before he was killed. It had become clear that as long as Reaper base was occupied, the insurgents would try to force out the Marines.
The leadership of 3/6: Capt Clinton Culp (CO, Wpns Co); Capt Conlon Carabine (CO, Co I); Capt Justin Ansel (CO, H&S Co); Maj Chris O’Connor (S-3); LtCol Julian “Dale” Alford (Bn CO); Maj Toby Patterson (Bn XO); Capt Rich Pitchford (CO, Co L); Capt Brendan Heatherman (CO, Co K); Capt Mike Haley (CO, Co B, 3rd AA Bn) and Capt Robb Sucher (CO, Wpns Co, 1st LAR).
LtCol Alford sent one of the battalion’s forward air controllers, Capt Ryan Pope, call sign “Zero,” and his radio-telegraph operator, Corporal Kevin Williams, to assist in the fight. They went right to work as, yet again, machine-gun and mortar fire was inbound. With marking assistance from the tanks, Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 369, the “Gunfighters,” made several gun runs on the insurgent firing position and forward observer.
At the same time, Kilo Co was under mortar attack at BP Iwo Jima. Cpl Scott Royal’s Reaper team 2 and LCpl Hatch-cock’s team 7 had moved to a building in eastern Karabilah to observe Main Supply Route (MSR) Diamond, west of BP Iwo, looking for the insurgent mortar crews. Within five minutes of the mortar fire stopping, two men forced their way into the building where the Reaper teams were located but were shot by the security man on LCpl Hatchcock’s team as they entered the building. The insurgents started to fire on Reaper base early on the morning of Oct. 13 and continued to do so with small arms until midday when machine guns began firing from multiple positions.
Kilo Co’s 3d Plt had a BP to the south, and it began to receive fire as well. The accuracy of the insurgents’ rounds seemed to improve dramatically. Reaper identified one building across the wadi from which insurgents were firing; Zero had the Gunfighters engage with hellfire missiles, and the fire from the enemy decreased significantly.
Cpl Eliel Quinones, or “Q” as his fellow Marines called him, was in the “crow’s nest” on the roof of Reaper base when he took a single round to the head. The round cracked his skull, removing his hair and portions of his scalp, yet somehow he remained conscious. As he was pulled out of the firing position and moved into the house, he managed to identify the building from which the insurgent shot him. A medevac was called for, but Army helicopters were out too far to assist.
Zero and Cpl Williams worked diligently to get a UH-1N Huey on station from the Gunfighters to conduct the medevac, and with two tank teams and a light armored reconnaissance (LAR) platoon providing covering fire, the Huey was able to conduct the medevac. In an incredible feat of flying prowess, the helicopter put down in the tiny landing zone, with less than 6 feet from the rotors to light poles. It took less than eight minutes from the time Cpl Quinones was hit until the time he was placed in the Huey. He was awarded a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with combat “V” for his efforts in identifying the source of fire despite his wounds.
Marines from the Scout Sniper Plt on the roof of Reaper base in October 2005. (Photo courtesy of Maj Clinton A. Culp, USMC (Ret)
As the insurgents’ accuracy increased, Reaper Marines took more and more care with their movements, even ducking behind curtained windows. A C5 rocket sailed just over Reaper base and hit the house to the south. It missed Reaper base by only a foot or so.
On Oct. 14, Zero vectored in ScanEagle, to take a look at the buildings and road just to the west side of the buildings that were directly adjacent to the wadi. As the afternoon began, enemy machine-gun and small-arms fire began anew. ScanEagle located the source of fire, and a GBU-12 bomb was dropped on the position. Shortly afterward, the tank platoon commander was struck by small arms while moving down MSR Diamond. The tanks returned fire as the tank moved back to a covered position for the medevac. As the sun went down, so did the incoming fire.
The morning of the 15th brought more of the same, including more accurate small-arms fire from one or two shooters. The tank teams needed to pull back to the railroad station at Al Qa’im (3/6’s main base) for some maintenance, so the LAR Plt took up positions to Reaper’s immediate flanks. No sooner had it pulled into position than it began to receive RPG fire. The platoon returned fire while Zero dropped another GBU-12 on the insurgents’ position. Insurgent fire died off for the rest of the day.
Before sunup on Oct. 16, Cpl Royal’s and Sgt Erik Rue’s Reaper teams moved to a hide position that would cover the flank of the LAR Plt. At 0815, the teams spotted two insurgents moving along MSR Bronze with RPGs and AK-47s in order to get a firing position on the light armored vehicles (LAVs) and tanks. The enemy was dispatched, but the teams began to take fire from other insurgents.
As the LAR Plt moved to extract the teams, more insurgents were spotted mov-ing to get a line of fire on the LAVs. Mean-while, Zero brought in rotary-wing close air support (CAS), and it seemed the per-fect time to try the MK19, which had re-cently been installed on the roof of Reaper base after one of the snipers had remarked, “If 240s are good, MK19s are better!”
The tall mount was then taken off a cargo HMMWV and sandbagged on the roof and a tarp placed over it for concealment. The MK19 thumped away as the Gunfighters made a few runs in support of the extraction. The engagement escalated as more insurgents moved to isolate the Reaper teams; even 3rd Plt, Kilo Co got into the mix as the fire and movement spilled over into its sector. LAR Plt and the Reaper teams were able to return to the Reaper base around 1230. Every vehicle had taken multiple small-arms and machine-gun hits. Each also had at least one flat tire and several near misses of RPGs. At least 18 insurgents had been killed with no Marine casualties.
Brass litters the rooftop of Reaper base after one of many firefights during October 2005.
The next few days were relatively quiet, and on the 19th, Air/Naval Gunfire Liaison Co’s (ANGLICO’s) Wild Eagle 3-1 arrived on deck to assist Zero with the CAS fight. One of the Reaper teams spotted several insurgents setting up a mortar on a roof-top. After waiting until the insurgent mortar team was ready to fire, Reaper opened up with the MK19. It took a few rounds to get on target, but all five insurgents and their weapon system were eliminated. The battalion took a hard hit that same day when a suicide vehicle was driven into a squad of Marines from Co K just north of BP Iwo Jima. LCpl Norman Anderson III was killed and every other squad member wounded. The next day brought another near miss from a C5 rocket, which impacted the house to the south again.
On the morning of Oct. 22, a large dust cloud formed in front of one of the tanks after an RPG impacted less than one meter in front of it. The tanks returned fire with .50-caliber rounds and a main gun round. About an hour later, Reaper teams spotted two insurgents with AKs and RPGs trying to sneak across MSR Diamond; the teams dispatched them. Only light fire was received throughout the rest of the day and for the next few days.
After a relatively quiet few days, six insurgents were spotted on MSR Diamond on Oct. 25; one was shot before the LAVs maneuvered on the insurgents’ anticipated route and caught them in the open. Mortar fire was called in to close off the insurgents’ egress. At the same time, Reaper base was receiving small arms and machine-gun fire. Tanks returned fire with the help of a Hellfire missile from one of the Gunfighters’ Hueys.
The highlight of the day occurred shortly after the engagement ended as LtCol Alford reenlisted Sgt Riddle on the roof of Reaper base.
The morning of the 26th started at 0625 as more than 20 insurgents with AKs and RPGs were spotted moving on the west side of the Emerald Wadi. Reaper base, tanks and LAR were put on “stand-to,” and air was requested. Reports were received of several of the insurgents placing IEDs along the roads on the west side of the bridges that crossed the wadi. Both 3rd Plt, Kilo Co and MAP 1 were put on notice as well. Before the air arrived on station, the tanks and LAR Plt maneuvered into position and mortars were called in as Reaper, tanks and LAR engaged. Several of the insurgents fell in the initial volley, and the rest fled into the surrounding buildings. The insurgents tried to consolidate their position and returned AK, RPK (Soviet light machine gun) and RPG fire to no avail as rotary-wing and fixed-wing CAS arrived on station.
From left: Sgt Thomas Smith, Reaper team 5 leader; Cpl John Stalvey; and Cpl James Guffey, Reaper team 1, before the Battle of the Emerald Wadi. Cpl Stalvey, one of the battalion’s snipers, was killed by an IED, Oct. 3, 2005.
Capt Phil Laing and his LAR Co arrived at the same time for a battle handover. The 27th saw light small-arms fire which Laing’s company easily returned. On the morning of the 28th, 1stLt Durand Tanner’s MAP 2 arrived to extract Reaper. The LAR Co provided cover for Reaper as they withdrew to Al Qa’im to rest and refit for the next mission: Operation Steel Curtain.
The Scout Sniper Plt, with the help of MAP 1, 3rd Plt, Kilo Co, tanks, LAR and CAS had kept the insurgents looking in the wrong direction for 22 days. Alford later reflected proudly, “Those boys had a hell of a fight for those three weeks, and it allowed us to move behind the enemy and attack them in the rear. Classic operational flanking movement.”
The Battle of the Emerald Wadiwas a critical element in 3/6’s ability to consolidate combat power in Al Qa’im before the launch of Operation Steel Curtain.
Executive Editor’s note: The November issue of Leatherneck will include an article about the “Fox” Co, 2/1 Marines who were fighting in New Ubaydi during Operation Steel Curtain.
Author’s bio: A prior enlisted Marine, Maj Clinton A. Culp was commissioned in 1997 and served as an advisor to the Afghan Commando Battalion during Operation Enduring Freedom and as the CO of Weapons Co, 3rd Bn, 6th Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He re-tired in 2009.
Featured Image (Top): A Marine sniper from 3/6 takes a well-earned break.
Team Rubicon has made a name for itself by leading from the front and being on the ground in some of the world’s largest and most significant catastrophes.
Most recently, the humanitarian organization was in Texas, supporting the relief efforts from the floods that devastated the state’s south-central region. They arrived in Kerr and Tom Green counties less than a week after the tragic floods on July 4; by July 10, Team Rubicon volunteers, known as Greyshirts, were deployed to remove debris blocking homes and provide muck-out services for the survivors.
“Our Greyshirts stepped in pretty early, and we were initially helping with the volunteer coordination,” said Jeff Byard, Marine Corps veteran and senior vice president of operations. “You can see the best of humanity and the worst of humanity in a disaster. … [There was] a lot of outpouring from all over Texas and beyond. There was such a volume of spontaneous volunteers that it made our workload a little lighter, which was good.”
Team Rubicon’s Greyshirt volunteers were already on the ground on July 10, providing support less than a week after the Texas floods killed more than 130 people.
Team Rubicon had 30-man operations running in Kerr County, where Camp Mystic and the bulk of fatalities occurred. Many of the homes were destroyed, and a lot of the area was actively conduct-ing search and rescue, said Byard. Vol-unteers conducted a traditional muck out by removing drywall, flooring and everything down to the studs in order to eliminate mold growth.
“Everyone that you talked to either had a direct fatality or they were one person removed,” Byard said. “The emotion was really thick. It was a heavy one for many of our first-time Greyshirts to walk into.”
In the aftermath of the Texas floods, Team Rubicon’s Greyshirts conducted a variety of tasks including damage assessments, clearing routes, removing debris, performing expedient home repairs and mucking out flooded homes.
Much of the firm’s top leadership was on-site to lead and support the operations. Jim Brooks, the new CEO—a former Navy SEAL and CIA officer—exper-ienced the devastation firsthand during his fourth morning on the job in Hunt, Texas.
“We’re driving down here in a three-vehicle convoy with our strike team, and you just begin to see the flood zone, and the debris far and wide across a very large river valley,” Brooks said. “And you see toilet seats 25 feet up in a tree hanging from branches. Immediately, you just feel how chaotic, how scary, it was. What that disaster must have been like as it was unfolding. A bunch of families were disrupted here, and you go in and you see their lives; their homes that were sitting here along what was normally a flowing, simple, peaceful river, and you see that they were immediately destroyed.”
Brooks was on-site with Team Rubicon co-founder Jake Wood, a Marine Corps veteran who is now serving as the organization’s executive chairman of the board. Wood believes that Brooks has the moxie to lead the organization in a future filled with larger, impactful weather events.
Jake Wood, center, and Jim Brooks, right, meets with Greyshirts about ongoing Team Rubicon operations. A surge of volunteers impacted by the Texas floods joined forces with Team Rubicon to support their communities.
“I’m excited for Jim,” Wood said. “You know, we’re 15 years into this organization, and the one thing that we can’t afford to be is complacent. This organization has been founded with a bias for action. I think we’ve always operated with that urgency … leaning into those moments. I think that’s more important now than ever. Disasters are increasing in frequency and cost. We’re sitting here in the midst of one of the worst flooding disasters in the history of the country, and this is going to continue to happen. So, this organization has to continue to scale, has to continue to innovate. We have to continue to expand the capabilities that we can bring into communities, the types of missions that we can meet in the future. Jim Brooks brings this incredible ground as an executive who has operated at scale within large, complex enterprises. He has demonstrated the ability to innovate, and I think he’s just going to shepherd us into this next version of Team Rubicon, which is going to be bigger and more badass.”
Team Rubicon Greyshirts clean dirt and debris from the inside of a home after devastating flooding in Texas.
Team Rubicon started in 2010 in re-sponse to the 7.0 earthquake that dev-astated Haiti. Wood saw a critical need for help and responded with a proactive team of eight to Port-au-Prince three days later. His small team provided care and support for thousands of survivors and changed the world for humanitarian aid. They trailblazed beyond the normal world of disaster response. The name for Team Rubicon comes from the boldness of Julius Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon River in Italy, passing the point of no return.
Team Rubicon has pressed forward to lead from the front for hundreds of operations, including global crises. They have responded to support relief for numerous hurricanes, snowstorms, small tornadoes and flooding. Their board of advisors has included many high-profile leaders such as General David Petraeus, General Stanley McChrystal, General James T. Conway, Andy Bessette, Jeff Dailey and Jeff Smith. The team is now over 180,000-plus strong.
From Desert Storm to Team Rubicon
Team Rubicon Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Byard joined the Marine Corps in the delayed entry program at 17 years old and was in boot camp the Monday after graduating from high school, a memorable experience given what was going on at the time.
“We were awakened in mid-August by a drill instructor and told Iraq had invaded Kuwait,” Byard said. “ ‘All the 0300s step forward,’ said the DI. Half of the platoon stepped forward. The DI told them, ‘You’re all going to die in a chemical gas attack. Get back in the rack.’ ”
Byard said he was shocked, adding that he had convinced his mom to sign for him to enlist, assuring her that he would be fine.
But the situation had now changed for Byard, and he deployed for Desert Storm. After he returned, he was put on a Marine Expeditionary Unit to the Mediterranean and was meritoriously promoted on ship. For his last year and a half, he was stationed in Parris Island, S.C., and was the basic weapons instructor for all of the infantry weapons.
At the end of his initial four-year enlistment, he wanted to “stay in, move from infantry to light armored infantry, [but] they had no more boat spaces,” so he decided to get out and attend college.
His initial involvement with Team Rubicon was as a FEMA appointee; he joined the nonprofit permanently in February of 2020 after having dinner with fellow Marine Team Rubicon executive David Burke.
“I saw an opportunity with a lot lined up,” Byard said. “The mission is awesome: help people.”
The organization’s strong culture resonated with him, as did the Team Rubicon Marine Corps roots. He said it gave him “the ability to still do what [he loves] doing … the field-level disaster response. It is the chaos and teamwork.”
Byard said he had a moment of reflection during Hurricane Laura in 2020, while working in the heat of southern Louisiana. His team was placing a blue tarp on the roof, and he stood there, thinking.
“I got emotional as it dawned on me, over my career, I probably ordered a million blue tarps through my work with the state of Alabama,” Byard said. “It dawned on me that I had never put a blue tarp on a roof. It was my first time doing that during a disaster. It brought a sense of personal satisfaction and told me this is where I needed to be.”
His purposeful experiences continued with Team Rubicon. One of his learning points was going from the government to a “for impact” organization.
“When you move into providing impact, you don’t manage volunteers,” he said. “You lead and inspire volunteers. Any leader needs to have the adaptability gene. In our business, whether government or for impact, people look at emergency management, disaster response or humanitarian work. It’s all people’s work. You’re helping people that have been devastated. It is a chaotic environment. If you’re a people person, that’s a constant improvise, overcome and adapt. Squarely rooted in the Marine Corps.”
Byard loved his time in the Corps, meeting lifelong friends from 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, whom he still talks to today. The Corps continues to influence his leadership style and success, and he bases his foundational approach on his Corps leadership experiences.
“Operationally, from the Marine Corps, I view our operations as getting Greyshirts to the need. Then get out of there. Don’t be the 3,000-mile screwdriver.”
It’s basic Marine Corps small unit leadership, he said, empowering his people to lead and do the right thing.
“Our job is resources, give them the tools, get the Greyshirts to the need and they will figure out how to overcome and adapt. Our job is a resource provider.”
Team Rubicon has developed a quick reaction force. If a storm hits and if they have the right trained Greyshirts with equipment, they don’t necessarily go through their normal planning process, said Byard. “Speed to need, and … we need to be there when the need is there.” Byard hopes to have a Greyshirt leader in every county and parish in the country.
LtCol Joel Searls, USMCR
To support Team Rubicon in their disaster relief efforts, visit https://team
rubiconusa.org/
Featured Image (Top): Team Rubicon Greyshirts at a flood zone while responding to the Texas Hill Country floods. (Photo courtesy of Team Rubicon)
Author’s 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.
Author’s note: By the time I left active duty in 2013, I knew the name “Abbate.” Sergeant Matthew Abbate posthumously received the Navy Cross in August of 2012, almost two years after his heroic actions while deployed with “Kilo” Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, in Sangin, Afghanistan. Abbate evolved into a living legend before he was killed in combat. His posthumous medal further propelled his stature within the history of his storied infantry battalion and cemented his place in the Marine Corps’ history of the war in Afghanistan. When I was asked to develop a story idea fitting under the umbrella of the global war on terror for Leatherneck, Abbate immediately stood out in my mind as a preeminent example from that generation; one of the best sons our nation had to offer. I knew the name and had read the Navy Cross citation but failed to grasp his importance to the Marines who served alongside him or the traits that made him purely “Abbate,” inevitably propelling him to the greatness he achieved and limited only by his untimely death.
Matthew Abbate deserves a place in our history, standing prominently alongside others such as Smedley, Chesty, Daly and Basilone. The Marines who knew him understand this best and can offer the rest of us a glimpse as to why. What follows may, hopefully, provide this insight. Thank you to Britt Sully and Jake Ruiz, both veteran Marine sergeants; Sergeant First Class John Browning, USA (Browning previously was a Marine sergeant); Gunnery Sergeant Chris Woidt, USMC (Ret); Staff Sergeant Ryan Salinas, USMC (Ret); Lieutenant Colonel Tom Schueman, USMC; and the other warriors interviewed for this story. Thank you for allowing me to laugh through the good times you shared with Matt and grieve with you through his death. If anyone can show us who Matt really was, it’s you guys.
The Boot
Britt Sully: Let me try to start at the beginning. When I graduated the school of infantry, all I wanted was to go Recon, but Recon was full, so they sent me to 3/5. I thought that was a death sentence. This was 2007. When I showed up, the battalion was still in Iraq, so we sat around for like a month waiting for them to get back. I viewed everyone around me as stupid and lazy; all these corporals serving as our temporary seniors that yelled at us and lightly hazed us.The battalion finally got back from Iraq. We unloaded all their seabags for them into their rooms and began our first experience dealing with salty lance corporals and drunk corporals fresh from deployment, further cementing for me, I have to get the f—k out of here.
A few days later, it was a Thursday evening, I was out in the barracks hallway cleaning the deck with a scuzz brush; just playing more stupid games for drunk 20-year-olds. While I’m outside cleaning the stairs, I see rounding around the corner of the barracks this 6-foot-2, handsome, square-jawed, tan-skinned man in boots and utes wearing a loaded Vietnam-era Alice pack. Long, glorious, thick black hair—WAY too long for a PFC to dream of having—and he’s running with a sledgehammer at break-neck speed. All these other Marines are standing around cheering him along as he’s just smiling and laughing holding up the sledgehammer above his head. I stopped cleaning and asked my senior, “Uh, Lance Corporal, who is that?” He snaps back, “That’s Matt Abbate and you don’t even f—king rate to look at him, now get back to cleaning!” Everyone else is just drinking and yelling at privates while this dude has a clearly heavy backpack and a sledgehammer and is sprinting towards First Sergeant’s Hill on a Thursday night. In that moment, I said to myself, “Whoever that guy is, whatever that guy is doing, wherever he is going, I want to follow him.”
Sgt Matthew Abbate at Twentynine Palms, Calif., during predeployment training.
At this point, Matt had been in for maybe two years. After he enlisted, he graduated boot camp as company honor man, making meritorious lance corporal, then finished the school of infantry as honor grad with a gung ho award. His character, demeanor and enthusiasm were just so genuine and magnetic that instructors were all talking about him, to the point that the Recon cadre got wind of who he was and poached him for Basic Recon Course. He goes to day one of MART, Marines Awaiting Recon Training, and is told to show up in green on green at 0530 for their initial PFT. He somehow f—ks it up and showed up in boots and utes. They were all told if they didn’t run a first class PFT, they would be immediately dropped. They tell Abbate, “You showed up in the wrong uniform, we don’t care. You still need to get a first class PFT.” Boom, Matt knocks out a 300 PFT in boots and utes. They made him run it a second time just to see if he could. Matt ran a second 300 PFT.
After a few weeks, while out on liberty, Matt met a girl from Tijuana and disappeared. He showed up after a week AWOL. At this point, usually if a guy shows up after a week, that’s like grounds for getting kicked out, but because he was impossible not to love, the instructors just NJP’d him, busted him down in rank and dropped him from the program. He showed back up to 3/5 as a PFC.
Ryan Salinas: Abbate wasn’t in my platoon initially, but everybody in Lima Company kinda knew that kid when he arrived as a boot. He was just super motivated, running around crazy. You tell him to go do something, it was like 100 miles per hour, no quit, no questions asked.
I first met him in Yuma at WTI while we were setting up cammie netting out at tent city. At one point, a group of us looked over and saw all these boots just standing around. We walk over there like, “What the f—k are you doing?” and we see one kid just getting after it by himself, swinging a sledgehammer and e-tool and whatever else he had. While the other guys started yelling at the other boots for letting this guy do all the work by himself, I went up to him and was like, “Hey, what the f—k are you doing?” He says, “Corporal, I’m gonna get this tent set up.” I told him he needed to get all these other guys just standing around to help him, and he just said, “I don’t got time for that bulls—t.” He kept working, meanwhile, it’s like 100 degrees, he’s pale white, and I noticed he had stopped sweating. I told him to go get some water, but he’s like, “No, no, I’m good.” Finally, I had to force him to go sit down in the shade. He was super upset he didn’t get the job finished. He wasn’t even in my platoon, I just saw it and was like, “What the hell is wrong with this kid?” So, I sat down and talked to him about understanding your limits and learning how to delegate within your peer group.
Chris Woidt: We came back from Iraq the first time in August of ’06. That’s when we got Matt in Lima Company. We knew then that we were already going back to Fallujah again. By that point, 3/5 had already done three previous OIF deployments. We still had guys around who were OIF 1 vets from ’03, OIF 2 vets from Operation Phantom Fury in ’04, then obviously all of us from the ’06 deployment, and we knew we were going back in ’07-’08. Initially, I was a squad leader and Matt was one of the junior Marines in the platoon. During our workup for the deployment, it became clear that Matt was pretty much a physical specimen. He always wanted more, which makes sense why he ended up coming into the sniper community.
Matt was a SAW gunner starting off. Prior to the deployment, we were at Twentynine Palms during the workup doing a shoot house with non-lethal Simunition rounds. With each scenario, they randomly changed the setup of the house. You’d bust into the room, and it may be full of enemy in an all-out gunfight, or it may be just a family. Your adrenaline is pumping, and it’s trying to teach escalation of force through these shoot, no shoot scenarios. Well, there was one scenario where there was just one woman sitting on a couch reading a book. She’s wearing a paintball mask and everything, and Abbate charges into the house blazing and just drills her like four times. Obviously, the instructors were like, “What are you doing?? She didn’t have a gun!” You could see Abbate was very self-critical, but he had a good sense of humor. During the debrief, when an instructor asked him why he “killed” a woman reading a book, Abbate held out both hands with palms up and smiled wide with those big, white teeth, and made a joke: “Because knowledge is power.”
Our deployment to Iraq was definitely kinetic, but there was a lot of political pressure to downplay the issues. There were numerous suicide bombers and casualties occurring around Fallujah, but the combat was waning. It was frustrating because there were a lot of handcuffs with the escalation of force and rules of engagement. Matt ended up getting meritoriously promoted to corporal during the deployment, so by the time we came back he was one of my peers.
After he was promoted, Matt was made a vehicle commander. We were primarily doing mounted patrols throughout the southern half of Fallujah. Matt would get really frustrated … from the mundane patrols and the lack of aggressive stance. That was just kind of a hard time too because the way we had fought the Iraq war and what had been drilled into his mind was now different. We were trying to do a lot more of civil affairs-type stuff. Matt had a lot of frustration because he wanted to do more. There were definitely times where we could have shot some people and done some stuff, but the reins were being pulled very hard because they were trying to bring down the number of firefights with the enemy to show a de-escalation in violence. We had pounded into his head and everyone else’s head the company’s experience in Fallujah over the previous deployments. We went back again very much with the expectation that we were going to take casualties. We were going to get in gunfights and kill people. But then we got there and transitioned from hot and heavy into more stability and security operations.
The Brotherhood
Chris: When we got back from Iraq, I don’t know if it was intentional, but they put all the 3/5 guys on the same street in base housing. All the Lima Company guys were neighbors living around a cul-de-sac. Matt was living in the barracks, but naturally whenever we’d do barbecues and hang out in the cul-de-sac, he would come over. One night I was in my house and I’m upstairs asleep. I heard noises downstairs, so I got up. I didn’t have a gun in base housing, so I grabbed a knife. I get down the stairs, and I can hear somebody right around the corner. I jump out ready to stab somebody, and there’s Matt standing in the kitchen with a bowl of Mac n cheese from the fridge, shoveling it into his mouth and laughing his ass off.
Matt was somebody who was welcoming, immediately part of your family, almost to his detriment. So many guys talk very highly of Matt because he died, but it almost doesn’t show his true personality. He was absolutely a flawed character, but his flaws really made us love him more. To the guys who really knew him, the tattoos, the long hair, the jokes, the bar fights, those were all part of the things that we loved about him. He had a really interesting childhood. We would really only get glimpses and pieces of it. There were definitely time periods where it wasn’t smooth. There were times he spoke about where he was sleeping on a beach in Hawaii where some other homeless dudes taught him how to catch eel and cook it over a fire. He worked as a waiter on a cruise ship one summer and had been to Thailand. He just had a big hunger to see the world, push the boundaries, and do big things, so coming into the Marine Corps made perfect sense, especially with the wars going on. Matt was the quintessential “break glass in case of war” type Marine. He joined for that, and that’s what he wanted to do.
Ryan: While we were in Iraq, we had a buddy who had a Harley back in the States and he got me and Matt interested. We started doing a bunch of research, looking up different bikes whenever we could get internet. As soon as we got back to California, the first thing we did was buy bikes, and all we did was ride.
Armando Hurtado, left, Ryan Salinas, center, and Matthew Abbate, then a lance corporal, in Iraq during their 2007 deployment with Kilo Co, 3rd Bn, 5th Marines.
We were in my garage at my house in the cul de sac one day and he brought his bike over. We were changing the oil or whatever on my bike and he decided to do some work on his bike too. Well, there’s this metal derby cover over the clutch that he decided to pull off. I walk inside the house to grab some drinks for us and as I’m walking back around the side of the house, all of the sudden, I see this shiny metal disk go skipping down the driveway and stick in the grass in the neighbor’s yard across the street. I ran into the garage … he’s like, “Go look at that f—king derby cover!” So, I go grab it and I’m like, “Well yeah, it’s all scratched now.” He’s like, “No, turn it over bro.” So I turn it over and it says, “Made in China.” I look at Matt and he yells, “How the f—k are you gonna have a Harley and it says made in … f—king China?! Get in the truck! We’re going to buy an American-made … derby cover!” We drove all over southern California to every damn bike shop just to find one … derby cover that was made in the U.S.A. so he could put it on his bike. I mean, he was absolutely pissed off that this thing was made in China. He was just like the patriotic, steak-eating, red-blooded American. I can still see his face right now the way he looked at me when he found that out.
The Beast
Britt: My first experience personally meeting Matt was a few days after I saw him running out of the barracks. I was a PFC, he was a corporal. As a young PFC, speaking to a corporal meant like parade rest, don’t look him in the eyes, especially in the infantry. I did not expect to be spoken to like a human by anyone who had been in the Marine Corps more than 40 seconds longer than I had. I met Matt on the basketball courts with our gear list to begin sniper indoc. Matt was just like, “What’s up, bro? Are you excited? You ready to do this?” I was just speechless, like, “Uh, why don’t you hate me?” He just gave me a slap on the shoulder and said, “Let’s f—king go!” He was always in front of the rest of the pack, finishing everything ahead of everyone else, then looping back to make sure the last guy made it in.
Jake Ruiz: I met Matt during scout sniper indoc. I was a junior Marine. They actually gave Matt time away from squad leader’s course to do the indoc. My first impression was just how much of a beast he was. He was just destroying all of us on the physical events. I was like, “Who is this guy?” I didn’t really get to know him until a couple weeks later when me, Britt and Matt all joined the sniper platoon working up for the MEU, but we all got close quickly. He graduated honor grad from squad leader’s course, even though he missed part of it for the sniper indoc. His ability to learn military skills in general was second to none. That’s one thing that gets lost in all the stories about Matt. Everyone talks about how much of a beast he was. I mean the dude was huge. 6 foot 2, 220 pounds, strong as an ox; everyone talks about that, but they don’t talk about how smart he was. His intelligence related to military skills blew me away.
Matt started getting tattoos while we were gone on the MEU, and he didn’t stop until we left for Afghanistan. So, over the course of maybe a year and a half, he got two full sleeves. At the time, it was that weird policy on tattoos; couldn’t be visible or had to be spaced a certain way or whatever, but Matt never really got in trouble for anything. He was just untouchable. Everybody in the battalion knew who Abbate was, from the sergeant major down to every PFC. Over the course of the MEU, everybody in the MEU knew who he was. He was that guy who would talk to you once and you’d think, “Man, this guy is my best friend!” Matt liked his hair, he liked his tattoos, he was high risk on libo, but that’s just part of what you get when you have a man like Matt. You’re not gonna get one without the other.
While we were gone, Matt tried to lateral move back to Recon, but something kept getting messed up with his package and it never worked out.We were all pretty downtrodden being on the MEU. Everybody just wanted to go combat. We got back in September 2009. Right before Christmas leave, we found out 3/5 was going to Afghanistan. Matt could not have moved faster to get the paperwork done and reenlist. I had to extend my contract to stay with the battalion for the deployment. We were all like, “OK, send us to sniper school and let’s get this done.” We deployed on the MEU with the sniper platoon, but we were not yet school trained. I lucked out, and I got to go with Matt.
While we were getting ready to go to sniper school, Matt pushed us super hard everywhere we went. He had to work out every day, it didn’t matter what we did that day. We’re doing all this deployment workup training during the day, then we get back to the barracks and Matt is dragging me out of my bunk to the pull-up bar and dragging his 53-pound kettlebell with him. We’d be driving all over base getting our medical paperwork or whatever else all signed off so we could go to sniper school, he’d see a pull-up bar and make me pull over. Looking back, that’s just how he was, who he was. He never missed an opportunity to make himself better. By the time we went to sniper school, I knew Matt really well; I knew what kind of performer he was. But under the microscope in a school like that, he elevated his already high performance and outshone everybody. It was wild watching him perform at that level. He finished sniper school number one in every skill except for stalking. Stalking is extremely hard. It’s a very, very patient skill, and Matt was terrible at it. It was his kryptonite.
Sgt Matthew Abbate sighting in on an enemy target in Sangin, Afghanistan, during 3rd Bn, 5th Marines’ 2010 deployment.
Britt: During our workup for Afghanistan, Matt was given meritorious sergeant. In the sniper platoon, he only wanted to be called Matt, he never wanted to be called sergeant, because he truly believed that you didn’t follow people because of their rank. You follow people because you trust their decision making, maturity, experience and character. He went to scout sniper team leader’s course, finishing high shooter and honor grad. He eventually became our team leader, working with John Browning, our assistant team leader, in charge of the 10 snipers of “Banshee Three” attached to Kilo Company.
The Artist
John Browning: I had done three previous deployments, two in Iraq, but 2010 was my first time in Afghanistan. Iraqi insurgents were more just thugs with guns; they were pretty easy to dominate, at least around Ramadi and Habbaniyah where I was. The Taliban were much better fighters, much more dangerous. They were there to fight. They did a lot of support by fire with machine guns, just like we do. As the sniper team, we took advantage of that. We’d hunt in places where we thought they might set up; opportunistic-type stuff. An infantry squad would go out on a pre-planned patrol route, and we’d have already been there all night. When the Taliban engaged the squad, we were there to shoot them.
Chris: When Matt got to Afghanistan, he finally had gotten into the free-fire zone of a highly kinetic area. Sangin was the canvas, and he was the artist. We knew him as a junior Marine, up and coming, but making dumb boot mistakes and those kinds of things. By the time he made it to Afghanistan—a sergeant, a sniper team leader, on his third deployment—he was highly developed. He’d mastered the art.
Jake: Our sniper team arrived to Afghanistan at the end of September 2010. We were forward staged in Sangin, operating out of Patrol Base Fires. Matt and John got there before the rest of us and were doing left-seat-right-seat patrols with the sniper team we were relieving. They got into a TIC [Troops in Contact] and killed some guys before we even got there. From that point forward, Matt was absolutely relentless. He wanted to do nothing but go out, find Taliban and shoot them. Once we all got there and started operating, he was personally going out two or three times a day, to the point where John would have to be like, “Dude, you need to take a break.” Matt just didn’t want to ever slow down. It was almost like he took it as a personal challenge that he had to keep people safe. It’s like he just knew that he was better that anybody else and he needed to be out there.
At that point in the deployment, we were extremely active. We were going out, either on our own as snipers or in small teams with the squads, two or three times a day. It was just so much combat. Those first couple months, it felt like you didn’t go outside the wire without getting into a firefight or somebody hitting an IED, or both. The days really ran together. It just felt like one continuous firefight and mass casualty incident.
Very early on, Matt wanted to go out super early one day. He got us all up probably 3 or 4 in the morning, we do our pre-combat checks and leave the wire under night vision. Matt wanted to set up near an area where the squads had been getting hit from when they left the patrol base. We made it a couple hundred meters outside the wire. Matt was running point behind the engineer with the metal detector. We hit an IED, but it low-order detonated, so a small portion of the homemade explosives inside detonates, but most if it just kind of gets thrown out. I was four or five people behind Matt. When we hit this thing, it scared the s—t out of me. I thought Matt was gone, thought the engineer was gone; what the hell are we going to do now? All the sudden, I just see Matt pop up and ask if everybody was alright. We made our way back to the patrol base, and I was just terrified. We get back and realize that Matt and the engineer are coated head to toe in the explosive material. They looked like they were covered in glitter from the aluminum powder in the explosives.
Britt: Matt just laughed it off and told us it looked like he was at a rave. He went right back out on patrol when the sun came up.
Jake: Later that day, the EOD techs went out to investigate and dismantle the IED. Well, they found it was a daisy-chained IED, and the secondary explosive on the daisy chain was so big that, had it gone off, it would have killed our entire team. I want to say that was unique, but it wasn’t for Sangin. It was just like that everywhere; the IEDs and the level of danger. To be honest, it was scary realizing how vulnerable we really were and how little we could mitigate that. I remember telling Matt, “Dude, I don’t know how are we gonna do this?” He was just like, “Bro, it’s our job.” That’s when it really clicked for me that Matt was just a different breed.
Britt: Matt was always so willing to go out where there was 100% probability there was going to be a gunfight. He would put himself there, and he would aggressively maneuver. He got his first patrol and first kill in before the rest of us touched down. For most people, when there’s machine guns and rockets going off, it’s intuitive to seek cover. But Abbate would just maneuver. He’d trudge off through the mud with his tree trunk quads in the direction of where he thought he could smoke people, like a Belgian Malinois unaware of what bullets are. Honestly, Matt doing something like action-movie heroic was just a day-to-day occurrence. When we heard about what he did on Oct. 14, it was really just more of Matt continually doing his thing; more of Matt just being Matt. To us, the real significance of that day was that we took a lot of casualties.
The Hero
Jake: On the morning of Oct. 14, 2010, we had gone out and done our own thing, and the patrol had been uneventful. We were just kind of kicked back relaxing when we heard a firefight start, and it sounded pretty heavy. After a while without breaking contact, the squad requested QRF. Matt jumped up and threw his gear on and was like, “Come on, let’s go!” So, four of us kitted up and jumped in with a squad getting ready to push outside the wire. The idea was that we were going to set up a blocking position and either draw the contact away from the other squad or at least provide them some covering fire as they withdrew back to the patrol base. At some point, the Taliban realized we were out there and broke contact, so the other squad was able to start making their way back to the base. The squad leader we were with decided to head back as well.
There was a huge open farming field that we bounded across from one irrigation canal to another on the opposite side. Generally, in recently planted fields like that we weren’t too worried about IEDs, so me and another guy just sprinted across and got to the canal. Some of the Marines in the squad made it right after us, and the SAW gunner immediately detonated an IED along the canal. I was probably 15 feet away and my bell was rung. After that, all hell broke loose. It felt like the sky opened up, and we were under fire. By that point, then entire squad was moving. The squad leader got shot in the leg as he reached the canal and fell down right next to me. A bunch of the rest of the guys tried to take shelter in this mud hut that was just to our left. We knew better, but that machine-gun fire was just so intense that I think it just pushed them in there, like an involuntary reaction to seek cover. They moved in, and one of the guys immediately hits an IED inside. The corpsman from the squad knew the Marine was down inside the compound, so he went inside and stepped on another IED. All the while, we’re taking heavy machine-gun fire.
By this time, Matt was in the canal with me. I was trying to pull the SAW gunner out of the water. I was so disoriented. One of the guys helped me get him up on the bank and that’s when I realized that he was gone. I assessed the squad leader and was trying to get a tourniquet on his leg. Meanwhile, Matt is realizing, “Oh s—t, I’m it. I’m the only one here who can do this.”
Matt jumped up with the minesweeper and made his way into the mud hut. Funny thing is, Matt didn’t even know how to use the thing. So, looking back, you realize he was just doing that to make other people feel better. In reality, he was clearing that compound with his feet. He cleared it and one of the other snipers started treating the casualties inside.
I was on the radio calling for a medevac. The whole time, Matt was super composed, getting people on task. Calm is contagious, and that is what he was; he was the calm. We finally started to make some headway, and the machine-gun fire died off a little bit. I was shook up. This was the first mass casualty I’ve been in. The first dead Marine I’ve dealt with. It was pretty overwhelming. Had Matt not been Matt, I don’t know that I would have composed myself.
Author’s note: According to other sources and eyewitness accounts of Abbate’s actions on Oct. 14, Abbate ordered the remaining Marines to freeze following the three IED blasts that decimated the patrol. Ignoring his own order, Abbate swept the ground for IEDs all the way to the structure where multiple bombs already exploded, then arranged the remaining Marines in a defensive posture. When the sounds of medevac choppers echoed overhead, Taliban fighters resumed machine-gun fire from the opposite side of the open field that would serve as the landing zone. Abbate charged across the open, unswept field, initially on his own, driving the Taliban away in a hail of gunfire. He then single-handedly swept the entire landing zone with his feet for IEDs to ensure it was safe for the helicopters to land.
Jake: We got told the Brits were coming in for medevac, so I popped smoke to mark our location. The bird came in out of nowhere, flying low to avoid RPGs. It circled the LZ then hit the deck so hard I could feel it through the ground. Some dudes ran out the back with guns and started laying down rounds, while some others ran out with stretchers. I was trying to get the SAW gunner to the bank of the canal and onto a stretcher. He was bigger than me, and I was just struggling. I grabbed … his hand to pull him up, and I felt his hand come apart inside his glove. It was the most surreal thing, and I just froze, standing there in the open. Matt came up and put his hand on my shoulder and just said, “I got this.” And he did it. He got the kid up on the stretcher.
The bird lifted off with the casualties, and we bounded back all the way until we made it inside the wire. All of us were absolutely smoked; just that huge adrenaline dump and a rush of emotion. I was crying. Matt came up and put his arm around me and said, “You feel that?” I said, “Yeah, yeah I feel that.” He said, “That’s why we’re gonna kill more.” That was his mentality. He wasn’t going to let them get away with hurting the Marines. Within the hour, I went back to hooch, and I fell asleep. It was early, probably like 5 or 6 in the afternoon. I didn’t wake up until like 9 the next morning. Matt was already back out on another patrol. He let me and the other snipers sleep. It was just his way of looking out for us. He knew we needed a break, but he wasn’t going to take a break.
U.S. Marines, veterans, and family members of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment (3/5), hike up First Sergeants Hill while attending a memorial ceremony for the Battle of Sangin on Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., April 29, 2016. During the Battle of Sangin in 2010, 3/5 sustained heavy casualties in what is considered the bloodiest battle ground of Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps Combat Camera photo by Lance Cpl. Sergio RamirezRomero/ Released)
The Symbol
Jake: Throughout the deployment, Matt was really big on symbols. We had a wall where we carved stick figures for all the enemy we killed or even buildings we destroyed in air strikes. Matt encouraged it because he wanted people to know what we were doing. He wanted us to know that we were making a difference, and whenever we would leave, he wanted them to know that we made a difference. The gunfighting commandments and rules of war were his own creation. To me, they were reflective of his personality.
Matt was a really over the top guy. His favorite movies were ’80s and ’90s action flicks. He just thought they were awesome. When he showed us the gunfighting commandments, he thought it was hilarious, but he also thought it was badass. I think for Matt it was a way to make light but also be serious.
John: Matt came up with this thing called, “slack” in his bandana. Matt loved bandanas. His first gunfighting commandment was, “Thou shall never leave the wire without a bandana containing at least 4 inches of slack.” He’d always say it in his surfer voice, and it was funny as hell. The slack was the loose ends of the bandana dangling like a ponytail. We’d be getting ready to go out and he’d be like, “Ok everybody, get your slack” as he’s tying on a bandana before he put his helmet on. I still do it to this day when I ride my motorcycle.
Britt: The gunfighting commandments were just Matt’s mentality towards wearing the uniform that were unspoken but lived. Not necessarily the words themselves, but the attitude he took towards everything. He so much loved wearing camouflage, sweating and carrying guns with the potential of blasting holes in people, and he lived that. He could have written the gunfighting commandments a million different ways, but it all would have said the same thing; look cool, feel cool, protect your homies and kill the people trying to kill you. In the least eloquent way, that’s just who he was.
Jake: His rules of war I think were based off something he read in a book, but he put his own spin on it, but it hit home for all of us. Someone’s got to walk point, that was just reality, and some of us weren’t going to go home. I think what separated Matt from the rest of us was that he had already accepted that before we even got there. John, too, already knew. He had significant combat experience and was blown up by an IED in Iraq. He knew the consequences of what we were going to deal with and was OK with it. I guess the wild part for Matt is that he was prepared for the reality but had not yet experienced anything like it. By the time we left Afghanistan, we all could go out, and we knew what we were looking for, we knew what the contact would be like, we knew we could step on an IED, but that fear was kind of gone. Matt was like that from day one. I think his gunfighting commandments and rules of war were just helping the rest of us get accommodated.
Courtesy of Patrol Base Abbate
The One in Ten Million
Britt: On Dec. 2, 2010, me and Jake had just come back from a two-man sniper operation. We went out at dawn and came back four or five hours later with nothing really happening. I’d been back inside the wire for maybe 30 minutes cleaning my gear and refilling my water. We heard a gunfight start up in the distance. We heard the radio traffic, and it sounded like Matt and the rest of the guys out there totally had the initiative, but I geared back up just in case they needed a QRF. The guys saw some Taliban go inside a building. On the radio, we heard jets get called in for air support. We watched both birds go overhead, and we watched both bombs drop. We had made a habit of calling in the first bird to drop a short delay 500-pound bomb so that it would penetrate inside the building and blow it up. The second bird would follow up with an air burst above the same target to kill anyone who survived the first drop and was trying to flee.
Maybe 30 seconds after the second bomb dropped, we hear that there is an urgent surgical wounded. Abbate threw his gun back up on the berm and started scanning for somebody to shoot after the first bomb. Just the geometry of chance unluckily caught him in the neck with a piece of metal from the second bomb. We didn’t know that then, we just heard Abbate’s kill number come across the radio. But, Abbate was larger than life. I’m thinking, “Matt will be fine. He’s Abbate. Nothing can touch him.”
Jake: Within a few minutes of the medevac bird taking off, we all received notification that we were “River City,” which means that we’ve got somebody dead and all communications with home were cut off to prevent anyone from communicating with the Marine’s family. My heart sank; just gut wrenching. I was trying to reach our Kilo Company HQ to confirm what we just heard, because I just couldn’t believe it. I ran up to the patrol base’s comm shack and got on the radio. I said, “Kilo main, this is Banshee, confirm your last traffic.” Our forward air controller, a great guy, came back and was just like, “I’m so sorry, Banshee.”
Britt: It felt totally unreal to all of us. Everyone felt very mortal in Sangin, but nobody thought you could touch Matt. He was invincible. We all just felt like, “If Abbate can get killed out here, there is no way I’m going to survive this.” His death reverberated through the entire battalion.
Author’s Note: 3/5 remained in Sangin until April 2011. The battalion suffered 25 killed in action and more than 200 wounded. Throughout the entire 20-year war in Afghanistan, 3/5 suffered the worst casualty rate of any Marine battalion.
Jake: Our deployment to Sangin 100% shaped everything about the remainder of my time in the Marine Corps and still does to this day. Matt’s relentless nature in everything he did, his relentless strife to be the best and outperform his best pushed me to be a better performer and made me push my Marines to outperform their best.Matt never had an ounce of quit and never left anything on the table. As a Marine, you can’t have any quit because, ultimately, no matter what you do, the enemy always has a vote.
Marines with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, salute during the playing of taps during a memorial ceremony, April 29. Moments before, the Marines fired a 21-gun salute in honor of the 25 fallen warriors of the battalion.
Britt: Be as excited and proud to wear the uniform and do the job that you were the day you went to MEPS. When you didn’t know any better, when you didn’t know how stupid the games could be, when you didn’t know how lame the regulations are, and all the things it takes to get to wear the uniform and do the job; just show up every day excited to wear that uniform. Matt was just excited to get to be a Marine. To take off his uniform drenched in sweat and dirt, sore from trudging up hills carrying a machine gun. That was a good day to Matt.
It’s tough to call him anything close to an example of a window into what the Marine Corps was like during our era because Abbate was truly one in 10 million. I don’t know how many Marines served in the GWOT, but in that 20 years, there are only a few other dudes that had the impact on the people around him and the larger-than-life impact in the day to day. His exemplary character, attitude and performance in everything he did had so much gravity. Everyone who served with him on a day-to-day basis knew this guy was what you think of when you think ‘real Marine.’ When I say ‘real Marine,’ I don’t mean textbook recruiting poster, handsome, barrel-chested, shaved face dude. I mean absolute f—king killer, that’s a libo risk, that takes care of his dudes and leads from the front.
Jake: Matt taught me that you have to love your subordinates, whether you like them or not. He took every opportunity to train hard. He was the epitome of a Marine. He set the standard that I strive to reach, both through my time in the Marines and my current career in law enforcement. The lessons that I learned by watching Matt have shaped my entire adult life. I count myself very fortunate to have known him.
Author’s note: Matt Abbate was 26 years old at the time of his death. He is survived by his wife, Stacie Rigall, his son, Carson Abbate, his mother, father and three siblings.
A U.S. Marine Corps carry team transfers the remains of Marine Sgt. Matthew T. Abbate of Honolulu, Hawaii., at Dover Air Force Base, Del., Dec. 4, 2010. Abbate was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. (U.S. Air Force photo by Jason Minto)Major Gen. Ronald L. Bailey, commanding general, 1st Marine Division, presents the Navy Cross to Sgt. Matthew T. Abbate’s mother during a Navy Cross award ceremony aboard Camp Pendleton, Calif., Aug. 10. Abbate was posthumously awarded the medal for the actions he took on Oct. 14, 2010 in Sangin, Afghanistan during his deployment as a scout sniper with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. Abbate was killed in action in Helmand Province later that year.Courtesy of Patrol Base Abbate
Featured Image (Top of page): Sniper Team “Banshee Three” at Patrol Base Fires, Sangin, Afghanistan, during their 2010 deployment with 3rd Bn, 5th Marines. Sgt Matthew Abbate, wearing a tan bandana, is holding the left side of the flag. Abbate’s story was shared with Leatherneck by several Marines including Sgt Britt Sully, standing far left, Sgt Jake Ruiz, holding the right side of the flag, and then-Sgt John Browning, kneeling, front right. Etched into the wall behind them is the sniper team’s running tally of confirmed kills during their deployment.
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 winner of the Robert Debs Heinl Jr. award for Marine Corps History. He lives in Richmond with his wife and three children.
The Iraq war didn’t go as planned for Jerod Murphy, but it started out the way any Marine might have hoped. He was there at the very beginning. He deployed in 2003 as the maintenance chief of 3rd Platoon (Reinforced), Company A, 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion (AABn).
Being the only active-duty member of the unit’s Inspector-Instructor (I&I) staff assigned to 3rd Platoon, Murphy felt especially responsible for the reservists who were alongside him. The amtrackers staged in Kuwait with thousands of Marines and other U.S. servicemembers massed for invasion. On March 20, the Marines finally cranked up their tracks and pushed across the border into Iraq.
Murphy’s war lasted six days. His platoon’s amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs) rolled through Nasiriyah laden with infantry, and by the 26th, battled insurgents in Al-Shatrah. Murphy stood in a cargo hatch, fighting partially exposed above the roofline of the vehicle when a bullet shattered his arm. The injury required evacuation back to the States, where Murphy begrudgingly convalesced and assumed a new role supporting the war on the homefront.
His job looked much like a World War II-style “war bond tour” with travel and public speaking. Local news agencies touted Murphy as the first Mississippian wounded in Iraq. He obediently smiled, waved and shook hands. No one seemed to care he wasn’t from Mississippi. Murphy adopted the role as the primary point of contact with the families of Marines still deployed. He earned their trust and admiration despite the stories he fabricated to convince families their loved ones were safe overseas.
Fast forward two years, Murphy’s morale reached an all-time low. The intervening time improved little about his situation. His arm refused to properly heal. His hand worked but felt minimal sensation even after a major surgery on his ulnar nerve. He pushed himself to get back into fighting shape, but regular running caused shin splints. Shin splints evolved into stress fractures.
When the unit activated again for deployment, the officers in charge refused to let Murphy come along. For the second time in as many years, the disgruntled staff sergeant would spend a combat deployment trapped at platoon headquarters in Gulfport, Miss. Seventy amtrackers from the battalion returned to Iraq in March 2005. Given his experience with the families, Murphy led the battalion’s Casualty Assistance Program, acting as the link between the Marines in combat and their families. His duties included the heartrending task of notifying spouses, siblings, mothers and fathers when their Marine was injured or killed. Tragically, he kept busy.
The unit deployed in support of a reserve infantry battalion: 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines. Anyone familiar with the Iraq war remembers this deployment, where 3/25 suffered staggering and historic losses. The Marines from 4th AABn ferrying the grunts around the battlefield were not immune.
On Aug. 1, Staff Sergeant Shannon Sweeney arrived at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Gulfport. An armorer by trade, Sweeney had recently wrapped up several years as a recruiter in Montgomery, Ala. Her new orders placed her on I&I duty with Murphy, serving as the chief armorer for the Marines working on the naval base. Two days after she came on deck, Aug. 3, 2005, tragedy struck in Iraq. One of the platoon’s AAVs detonated a roadside bomb near Haditha, killing 15 of the 16 men inside. The incident remains the deadliest attack of the war. Three amtrackers died in the explosion. A fourth, the driver, survived after the explosion ejected him through his hatch, landing in the road a few dozen feet away.
Word of the disaster raced back to Gulfport. Murphy enlisted Sweeney and several others to aid in his casualty assistance duties. Murphy knew each of the amtrackers killed or wounded, one of whom he had personally recruited to join the unit. A shockwave jolted the entire community as the Marines traveled from home to home through Mississippi and Louisiana speaking to families. Numerous others reached out to Murphy as their one and only trusted link to their son or brother still in combat. No stories about Iraq could be fabricated now to make them feel better. Everyone stood on edge, dreading every phone call or knock on the door.
One week later, another potential disaster brewed beyond the horizon. A tropical storm took shape over the Atlantic, barreling past the Lesser Antilles toward the East Coast of the United States. The storm increased to a Category 2 hurricane on an uncertain path. Murphy paused the work coordinating funerals to stand up a quick reaction team in the event the storm made landfall.
Gulfport, Miss., September 6, 2005 — Destroyed houses in Gulfport, Miss. Hurricane Katrina caused extensive damage all along the Mississippi gulf coast. FEMA/Mark Wolfe
“I volunteered for the react team when I got to the unit several years earlier,” Murphy remembered today. “As one of the only amtrackers on the permanent I&I staff, I just felt like I was one of the only ones who could be available on a sustained basis. SOPs existed on how the team should operate, but they were written a long time prior and there had never been an actual incident that required the deployment of Marine Corps assets. Every time we stood this team up for whatever hurricane was coming through, we took it serious initially, but then we kind of realized that we basically just went down to the ramp with the tracks and played cards for a day or two. Nothing happened, then we went home. That happened probably four or five times while I was there.”
With the unit deployed, a skeleton crew remained behind in Gulfport. Even fewer of the Marines left were licensed to drive an AAV or had even been inside of one. Assembling a technically qualified team would be impossible. Murphy tapped Sweeney to join him. The fact that she was brand new to the unit and an armorer, completely unfamiliar with AAVs, meant little. The fact that she was a female, at the time still barred from service in combat arms, including AAVs, meant even less. She was a Marine, and a competent staff noncommissioned officer. Murphy would teach her whatever she needed to know. Within a day or two, the hurricane swerved back out to sea and dissipated, avoiding the continent entirely. The reaction team stood down. Murphy and Sweeney rejoined the others in the casualty assistance office.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, AAVs were the only vehicles capable of traversing the devastated and submerged landscape of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast region. Recognizing this fact, the Marine team in Gulfport set out into the storm on the night of Aug. 29. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Sweeney)
Work with the families continued. Sweeney stayed so busy that after more than three weeks in Gulfport, she had not found the opportunity to enter the armory she was sent to administer. None of the Marines paid much attention on Aug. 25 when another hurricane made landfall more than 600 miles away on the east coast of Florida. Barely a Category 1, computer models varied on the path it might take. The storm tore across the peninsula into the Gulf of Mexico and intensified over the warm waters. The hurricane grew into a Category 5 monster with sustained winds of up to 175 miles per hour, one of the strongest recorded hurricanes ever to enter the Gulf. Models shifted and aligned. Everything pointed to a second landfall in Louisiana. President George W. Bush declared a state of emergency along the Gulf Coast. The mayor of New Orleans ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, stating, “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared.” By Aug. 28, every Marine and Sailor stationed in Gulfport knew the hurricane by name: Katrina. Murphy dropped all other duties to form another reaction team.
He needed six total, three Marines apiece to fill out two amtrac crews. Sweeney joined up just as she had earlier in the month. Like Murphy, another Marine staff sergeant remained at the base healing after his leg was broken in a motorcycle accident. Like Sweeney, he had zero AAV experience, but as a communications Marine, he could work the radios. Two brand new privates first class had just graduated from their military occupational specialty schools and checked into the platoon. One was a mechanic and the other, by sheer luck, was an AAV crewman who was licensed to drive. With five down and one to go, Murphy racked his brain. The Marine detachment at the base was spread so thin that there was not a single additional leatherneck available. Finally, he called his neighbor, a U.S. Navy Seabee assigned to Gulfport. Murphy discovered the Sailor was ordered to remain behind on a working party after his family evacuated. Murphy visited the base commander and negotiated his neighbor’s release, embellishing the Sailor’s AAV experience. He had, after all, brought his kids to climb over the vehicles a time or two, which made him more experienced than most others left.
On the second day of their rescue mission, Aug. 30, 2005, the AAVs of Murphy’s team weave their way through Pass Christian, Miss. Pass Christian endured the worst of Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge, maxing out at nearly 28 feet high. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Sweeney)
Katrina slammed into Louisiana on Aug. 29. Murphy staged the team’s two AAVs inside the structure that housed the base’s hurricane command post. He attended all the briefings. None of the Seabees seemed to understand the capability the Marines and their amphibious machines could offer. Meanwhile, the storm raged.
“I am from Ohio; the biggest thing I’d ever seen was a snowstorm,” Sweeney mused today. “The wind started picking up. We could see the commissary from where we were. The cars in the parking lot got rocked. Windows were busted out. Eventually, the roof was blown off. That’s when I knew this was for real. We were going to have to go to work.”
Murphy argued the case for deploying his team. All the Marines felt obligated to go out into the storm and help in the way that only they could. Murphy especially, having lived and worked in the area for nearly five years, felt compelled to assist his community. With power lines coming down, buildings collapsing, wind howling and water rising, the AAVs remained the only vehicle still able to negotiate the area. The base CO flatly refused. No one was leaving the command post. Hours ticked by into the evening as the eye of the hurricane passed over the Mississippi coastline. Finally, an official call for help arrived.
“I don’t remember if our cell phone coverage was dead yet, but the CO had some kind of contact with the police department in Biloxi, which was the city about 15 miles to our east,” Murphy said. “The messages we were getting from Biloxi were like, ‘hey, we’ve got people hanging out in trees over here and we can’t get to them.’ I overheard all of this and approached the CO while he was figuring out how we could respond or if we could respond at all. I told him, ‘Sir, I’ll pick my team up and we can go right now.’ Finally, he gave us permission to go. His condition, though, was that no one else was leaving the command post and literally gave us the keys to the base gate. We were on our own and we took off.”
The team exited the base headed east along Pass Road, a main thoroughfare into Biloxi. Winds up to 100 miles per hour pummeled the 30-ton machines as they crawled through an unrecognizable debris field. Rain battered Murphy’s face as he peeked through a crack in his hatch, driving into the dark. The AAVs splashed through tides fluctuating up to 8 feet across the already flooded urban landscape.
“It was the middle of the night, the winds were high, the waves were coming in,” Sweeney remembered. “It was for real like a movie. It was just crazy to go out there and see what water and wind can do to property.”
They finally reached the Biloxi police department headquarters, where officers came on board. They directed Murphy several blocks farther east into areas of the city totally inaccessible before the Marines arrived. Murphy weaved into the area. Suddenly, despite the winds and rain, the overpowering reek of natural gas smacked him in the face. He halted in the road, imagining all the sparks his tracked vehicles made while traveling on a paved surface. Through the storm ahead, he could see people, stuck and waiting for someone to save them.
“When you’re in Iraq doing a convoy or something, you get that serious pucker factor,” said Murphy. “That’s how this was. But at the same time, we could physically see people in despair so it’s not like we were ever going to stop doing whatever we were going to do. We couldn’t get over there on foot, or else we were going to wind up in the trees with everybody else. So, what do we do? All of my decisions were based on some-what-informed guesses that, thank God, happened to work out.”
Murphy ordered the police out of his AAV into the other vehicle behind him. Sweeney and Murphy’s neighbor volunteered to remain with him in the lead vehicle as he drove alone over the remains of houses toward the victims. All three buttoned up inside, praying that nothing would ignite the gas. They rescued victims one or two at a time until they arrived outside a Vietnamese Buddhist temple. The people who met him spoke no English, but Murphy quick-ly surmised that a large group had gathered inside. He filled the amtrac to capacity and returned to the other vehicle staged at the police station. Once the civilians offloaded into the care of first responders at the station, the AAV crew immediately turned around heading back into the area.
For the next several hours, Murphy drove trip after trip with Sweeney and his Seabee neighbor, evacuating the Buddhist temple. Once completed, they moved on to other areas farther east searching for anyone else stranded in the storm.
“With the wind, we were worried about getting smashed in the face by something, so we kept our comm helmets on just in case,” said Murphy. “But we were very serious about clearing everything. We came across this freaking reptile museum thing. I knew it had snakes and stuff in there. I f—king hate snakes. I hate them! But I had to go in there. I’m wading through water up to my nipples imagining the worst-case scenario. Not only do I have to go looking for people in this snake house, the damn things could be floating right up to my face! I went in there, but I was NOT happy about it. But I also knew that we had to go make sure, and I wasn’t going to force anybody else to do it.”
Throughout the night, the two Marine amtracs remained the only rescue vehicles operating in the entire area. They encountered their first body outside a casino. Mercifully, the living they encountered far outnumbered the dead. By the end of the night, Murphy’s team searched all the worst affected areas from Biloxi Bay all the way back to Gulfport, rescuing nearly 150 civilians. The two AAVs pulled back through the gate at the Seabee base well after midnight.
The team crashed for a few hours of well-deserved rest. Murphy rose with the sun to attend the next briefing from the base commander. By the morning of Aug. 30, Katrina pushed north of Gulfport, a pristine blue sky left in her wake. The trail of extraordinary ruination attested to her warpath. Through the night, more calls for assistance poured in. To the west, leaders from Pass Christian sounded the alarm over citizens trapped, the majority of whom resided in a waterfront senior living facility. Murphy’s team saddled up.
On day two of the rescue mission, Shannon Sweeney sits on top of an AAV on the beach in Pass Christian, Miss. Jerod Murphy sits in the driver’s seat of the AAV in the background.
With the water greatly receded and the storm abated, the amtracs covered ground more quickly. Still, the rubble-strewn streets severely hindered progress. Future analysis of the storm would later reveal an unfortunate distinction for Pass Christian. The small town endured the worst part of Katrina’s storm surge, maxing out nearly 28 feet high. As a result, almost every structure lay in complete devastation. Cars and boats and pieces of buildings filled every street and yard. Power lines tangled the mess together, with sewage overflowing to contaminate the water. The Marines found numerous civilians in Pass Christian, not trapped, but having already returned to their homes only to find them vanished overnight. The team passed out case after case of water bottles to them all, now destitute and dehydrated.
The local chiefs of fire and police came onboard to help the amtracs navigate to the senior living facility. The complex stood in a marshy area on Henderson Point at the mouth of the Bay of St. Louis. According to the locals, the entire first floor was completely destroyed, and the facility had not been evacuated before the storm hit. Even in AAVs, the Marines couldn’t reach the site. Murphy explored multiple paths into the area, but an opening refused to yield.
“I was looking at the map and realized we were going to have to go out into the open water. That was our only way to get there,” Murphy said. “I know that’s what these AAVs are designed for, but I didn’t have time to do a pre-water op check to make sure they would actually float. And even if we found something, what’s that going to change? So, we just made sure there were hull plugs in the bottom and that the bilge pumps worked, then we took off.”
The AAVs pushed through debris-filled water around Henderson Point. The wreckage of the St. Louis Bay Bridge loomed ahead. Two days earlier, the bridge linked the 2-mile gap across the mouth of the bay. Now, huge spans of concrete angled out of the water against regularly spaced pillars like a row of fallen dominoes. The amtracs conducted an amphibious landing up the sandy beach in front of the facility and stopped outside the front door. The Marines spent the remainder of the morning evacuating residents of the home and searching the marsh around it for any other victims.
As the rescue mission in Pass Christian wound down, Murphy received a call from the command post. The CO needed a radio retransmission site established to support his communications network. He selected the roof of the U.S. government-sponsored Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport as the ideal spot. The tracks rolled up to the building in the late afternoon. While the Marines set up antennas and comm equipment on the roof, Murphy checked in with the retirement home staff and residents.
Throughout his time in Gulfport, Murphy remained in close contact with the facility, visiting routinely to meet the veterans who lived there. He learned from the staff that through the night, the first floor flooded, and residents were evacuated to the higher floors. Through the chaotic process, conducted in dark-ness while the hurricane raged, two residents fell down the stairs sustaining critical injuries. After the comm gear was installed, Murphy directed his team to load the injured victims on stretchers into the tracks, along with several others suffering from heat exhaustion. The Marines evacuated the casualties to a nearby hospital. Bewildered staff watched the amphibious monsters roll right up to the awning designated for ambulance entrance to the emergency room.
Jerod Murphy drives an AAV through the open water around Henderson Point in order to reach a senior living facility in Pass Christian, Miss. The ruins of the St. Louis Bay Bridge can be seen in the background.
“The best part of that day was when we were offloading those guys,” remembered Murphy. “One of them, an old World War II Marine looked at me and said, ‘Man, I always wanted to ride in one of those things, so thank you!’ ”
The team returned once more to the command post. By the end of day two, they rescued more than 70 additional victims, their total now well over 200 in barely more than 24 hours. Word of their staggering feat failed to impress or failed to reach beyond the city of Gulfport, however. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) arrived on scene, took control of the disaster response, and shut down all Department of Defense rescue efforts.
Murphy loaded the team up again the following day and drove the AAVs down Interstate 10 into Louisiana to where FEMA organized their command. With news reports of looters on the rise and police being shot in New Orleans, Sweeney opened her armory, finally seeing it for the first time, and issued sidearms to each member of the team before they departed. Now several days into the hurricane response, the urgent rescue efforts transitioned into a methodical recovery. FEMA wielded strict control and accounting over every search and recovery asset. They assigned the Marines to link up with an urban search- and-rescue team out of Virginia to search areas along the coast in western Mississippi, through Waveland and Bay St. Louis. The tracks got them into the area, but the searching had to be done on foot.
“We were wading through mud and filth up to our waist with sticks trying to figure out if we were stepping on bodies in the mud beneath us,” Murphy said. “It was pretty gross. We did that for hours. I remember getting down to the shore where a row of trees extended all the way to the beach. There was a line of trash across the top of every single tree where the waterline had risen. We had been out in some high water and saw it for ourselves, but seeing that was like, holy cow, I couldn’t believe it.”
“I think the hardest part for me was seeing people coming back and trying to find what would have been their property, but there was nothing there,” added Sweeney. “Stuff was everywhere; a door frame hanging from a tree, an exhumed casket washed up somewhere. People were trying to sift through all of that, and we were trying to help them get to it as best we could.”
After a few days of searching, Murphy learned that additional 4th AABn assets were finally involved in the effort. Apparently, word of their exploits and capabilities got around and FEMA called for additional AAVs. The battalion’s Company B loaded numerous tracks onto trailers at their home base in Jacksonville, Fla., and trucked into New Orleans. With more DOD personnel on scene, Murphy requested to stand down his exhausted team. They hardly showered or slept in more than 96 hours. They had yet to check on their own homes and loved ones. The battalion commander told Murphy to send his team home to take care of their families. Their job was finished.
Jerod Murphy drives an AAV through the open water around Henderson Point in order to reach a senior living facility in Pass Christian, Miss. The ruins of the St. Louis Bay Bridge can be seen in the background.
Murphy drove home to his family in North Carolina. The visit was extremely short-lived. His job had only just begun. Before Katrina hit, he and Sweeney worked tirelessly to visit families and calm their fears, worried sick over the Marines in Iraq. Now, fortunes abruptly reversed. Messages poured into Gulfport from the Marines overseas, unable to contact their families. Halfway around the world, they saw the pictures and knew Katrina was bad. They feared the worst for their loved ones scattered across the impacted area. Murphy and Sweeney took on the task of visiting them all once again.
“The second we stood down, our focus shifted to driving to every single one of those 70 reservists’ families,” said Murphy. “We had to let the boys know their families were OK. That took a long time. We took chainsaws with us and things like that and did whatever we could to reach them. Thank God, no big issues with any families. We felt it was super important to get that information back to them after the losses they suffered at the beginning of the month.”
The Gulf Coast’s recovery after Katrina would take many years to return to a version of normalcy. Through the remainder of 2005, the region remained in a state of shock and desolation. Nothing about life endured unaffected, but life continued on. That fall, officers over the region named Sweeney as the lead coordinator of the Toys for Tots campaign based out of Gulfport. Always a tremendous undertaking, even under normal circumstances, how could toys be collected and distributed through such a ravaged area?
“The short story is that we just did it,” Sweeney reflected. “I’ll tell you one thing, as screwed up as this United States can be, we can really come together.”
Tractor trailers full of toys offloaded in Gulfport every day from across the nation. If they ran short, Sweeney drove an hour north to the Toys R Us in Hattiesburg to boost their stock. The Marines returned from Iraq in October and became Sweeney’s elves in the operation. Numerous nonprofit organizations set up stations from Pass Christian to Biloxi, passing out toys and provisions.
“The Toys for Tots Foundation gave me $50,000 to host a Christmas party,” Sweeney said. “I had no idea how or where they wanted me to pull that off. Our unit had some ‘good ol’ boy’ networks, and we found an indoor skate rink in Biloxi that didn’t really get damaged, so I threw a party in there. Schools were back in session, meeting in trailers. I printed off a ton of tickets at the office and handed them out to all the trailers. We brought in a ton of toys and a Marine dressed as Santa. Everyone got Subway, a Coke and toys. Throughout the whole campaign, we handed out over 90,000 toys and books. We didn’t turn anyone away and everyone was grateful.”
In December 2005, each member of the reaction team received the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal. The Corps also announced that all Marines involved in disaster relief efforts after Katrina would rate the Humanitarian Service Medal and the Armed Forces Service Medal. Sweeney was honored with a more prestigious recognition the following summer. For the combination of her rescue efforts with the reaction team and her critical role in the successful Toys for Tots campaign benefiting the devastated area, Sweeney received the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service. She accepted the award presented by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Founda-tion in Washington, D.C., alongside four other recipients, one medal presented to a nominee from each branch of service. Sweeney retired in 2019 after 30 years of service. She achieved the rank of master gunnery sergeant, the first female in her MOS to earn this highest rank.
For her role on the reaction team in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and for her role leading the 2005 Toys for Tots campaign benefitting the devastated region, then-SSgt Shannon Sweeney received the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Standing left of center, Sweeney received the award along with one recipient from each branch of service at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Murphy was selected for warrant officer in late 2005. He moved to Quantico, Va., to attend The Basic School in February 2006. While there, he too learned that others had nominated him for a higher personal decoration. In a ceremony in front of his classmates, an officer pre-sented Murphy with the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest noncombat decoration awarded for heroism that a Marine or Sailor can receive. He later learned that no one within his 4th AABn chain of command outside of Gulfport even knew his team was operating until after the second day. The officer who penned his award citation confided that he was instructed to either write up Murphy’s initiative for a medal or write up his freelancing for an Article 32 investigation. Murphy eventually retired from the Marine Corps in 2020 as a chief warrant officer 4.
Today, 20 years later, the actions of Murphy’s team in the aftermath of Hur-ricane Katrina remain a preeminent, and perhaps unparalleled example of Marines on the homefront being exactly who the American public expects us to be. The 33rd Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Michael Hagee, personally called attention to the Marines who responded to natural disasters in 2005 in his Marine Corps birthday message that November.
“This past year has been one of con-tinuous combat operations overseas and distinguished service here at home … In Iraq and Afghanistan, Marine courage and mastery of complex and chaotic environments have truly made a difference in the lives of millions. Marine compas-sion and flexibility provided humanitarian assistance to thousands in the wake of the Southeast Asian tsunami, and here at home, Marines with AAVs, helicopters, and sometimes with their bare hands saved hundreds of our own fellow Americans in the wake of Hur-ricanes Katrina and Rita. Across the full spectrum of operations, you have show-cased that Marines create stability in an unstable world and have reinforced our Corps’ reputation for setting the standard of excellence.”
“There was no game plan for what we did at all,” Sweeney reflected. “We just had to go out as a team and do what we had to do to help the folks of Mississippi along that 26-mile stretch of Gulf Coast. Witnessing something like that, you start to view things differently. You cherish things more. You care for what you have. Over the years, the higher in rank I got, I always tried to make sure that my Marines and their families were taken care of. We are all part of the puzzle and have to be ready.”
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. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children.
Featured Image (Top): Marine AAVs conduct an amphibious landing in Pass Christian, Miss., to rescue civilians stranded at a senior living facility on the shore at the mouth of Bay of St. Louis. The building proved completely inaccessible by land, even for AAVs, requiring the Marines to utilize the vehicle’s unique amphibious capability. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Sweeney)
It was all but over in 100 hours. Saddam Hussein, in his bunker, still babbled something about his army’s might, but few were listening. America and its allies had decapitated him from his army so quickly that the head in Baghdad didn’t want to realize it had been severed.
Pilots who strafed and bombed vehicles fleeing via the road west of Kuwait City called it the “Highway of Death.” In this photo taken in March 1991, remnants of the Iraqi army, most with loot stolen from Kuwait, died in their vehicles as American and coalition aircraft awaited their turn to unleash their ordnance. (Photo courtesy of BGen Granville Amos)
Heaps of Iraqi corpses were being interred in mass graves (estimates of Iraqi casualties range from 85,000 to 100,000) throughout the desert littered with 3,700 tanks, 1,875 armored vehicles and 2,140 artillery pieces burned or abandoned. Groups of Iraq’s best roamed the desert, dazed, hungry, thirsty, humble and pathetic, looking for someone, any-one, to surrender to. Allied estimates say that as many as 150,000 prisoners nearly overwhelmed allied holding areas and flooded military medical facilities to have their wounds treated. Still others, who deserted the officers who had failed them, headed north to home, having had enough of Saddam’s military adventures.
They had fought eight years of war with Iran and gained nothing. They had faced the Americans and their allies and, under six weeks of constant air bombardment (approximately 102,000 allied sorties), capped by four days of lightning-quick war, lost everything, including their pride and honor.
The military architect of what has a high probability of becoming the most studied battle of modern times was Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who also drew up the basic operational order for the ground war in Europe that never came. It called for feints, envelopments, bold tactics, deception and modern equipment operated by professional, thinking warriors. In the Persian Gulf, GEN Schwarzkopf modified the plan to call for shock troops to charge head-on into the maw of heavily fortified enemy defenses, while his heavy armor made a “Hail Mary” sweep around. It called for Marines.
Marines bristled with more firepower than they would need for the invasion of Kuwait. Gun crews had run countless drills prior to breaching Iraqi lines at the Saudi border.
In what newsmen have facetiously called the “mother of all briefings,” given by GEN Schwarzkopf in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 27, the commander of Operation Desert Storm forces praised all of his units, but particularly the Marines who, in a matter of hours, not only breached the enemy defenses, but also blew halfway through Kuwait in the process.
“I can’t say enough about the two Marine divisions,” said the general about the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions who worked in tandem for the first time in history. “If I use words like ‘brilliant,’ it would really be an under-description of the absolute superb job that they did in breaching the so-called impenetrable barrier. It was a classic, absolutely classic military breaching of a very, very tough minefield, barbed wire, fire trenches-type barrier. They went through the first barrier like it was water. They went across into the second barrier line, even though they were under artillery fire at the same time. They continued to open up the breach. And then they brought both divisions streaming through that breach. Absolutely superb operation, a textbook, and I think it’ll be studied for many, many years to come as the way to do it.”
Later, when a reporter asked if the defenses the Marines went through were perhaps overrated in the first place, GEN Schwarzkopf shot back, “Have you ever been in a minefield?” The stunned pundit answered that he had not.
A Marine M1A1 Abrams tank equipped with a mine-clearing plow pushes into Kuwait past an abandoned, shrapnel-riddled truck.
“All there’s got to be is one mine, and that’s intense,” the general scolded. “There were plenty of mines out there, there was plenty of barbed wire, there were fire trenches, most of which we set off ahead of time, but there are still some that are out there. … There were a lot of booby traps … not a fun place to be. I got to tell you, probably one of the toughest things that anyone ever has to do is go up there and walk into something like that and through it and consider that while you’re going through it and clearing it, at the same time, you are probably under fire by enemy artillery. That’s all I can say.”
It was enough.
Marines, with Kuwaiti and Saudi forces, had been in their traditional forefront role on Feb. 24 as more than 200,000 allied troops made a blitzkrieg into Iraq and Kuwait after President George H.W. Bush’s deadline of high noon passed, having been arrogantly ignored by Saddam Hussein and his followers.
It was another in a series of gross miscalculations by the man who many Marines have dubbed as the “Bozo of Baghdad.” In this case, it effectively ended any chance of an 11th-hour settlement and spelled the end of Saddam’s prized, fourth-largest army in the world. President Bush said, in effect, that the time for lame speeches was over and that talking from now on would come from the business end of allied howitzers.
What may have been, according to many military experts, the best planned and most perfectly executed massive assault in history caused detractors of Americans and their allies to retreat to the drawing boards. Analysts say the Soviet military, who heavily equipped, supplied and trained the Iraqis, will certainly have to rethink their methods and re-examine their weaponry. The doomsayers such as one congressman, who in late February confidently predicted 30,000 to 40,000 allied casualties, have been silenced for now, like Iraqi gun positions along the Saudi border. As with the start of the air war on Jan. 16, it immediately became apparent that the ground assault was nothing short of a total success.
Marines go over the top of a sand berm into Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm, Feb. 24, 1991
The Marines had made a predawn assault at 4 a.m. on Feb. 24. Lieutenant General Walter Boomer, Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force, said that 30 minutes after the invasion started, Marines had overrun the mine-fields, barbed wire and other obstacles of Saddam’s highly touted “walls of death.” In less than six hours, members of the First and Second Marine Divisions with the Tiger Brigade of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Armored Division had cleared eight lanes through the minefields, sliced through the Iraqi defenses and waded through a 35-mile sea of surrendering Iraqi soldiers.
Marine combat correspondent Staff Sergeant Ken Pettigrew was with the assault as the 2ndMarDiv moved, caravan fashion, into Kuwait and reported his experience:
“Moving delicately through the narrow breaching area (wide enough for one vehicle), the 65 tracked and wheeled vehicles passed through a minefield, well-marked with signs and strands of barbed wire.
“Line charges had been used by engi-neers to clear the way. Ugly plumes of black smoke billowed from burning oil rigs; the flames of these wells were an unpleasant yellow. Acrid and perhaps toxic fumes dirtied noses, choked the lungs and squeezed the temples. The dirty sky looked like someone had put carbon paper over it, giving everything a dull, ugly appearance. Low-flying birds skimmed along the road, perhaps attracted by the MRE (meals, ready to eat) trail left behind the convoy.
“The vehicles were 10 to 200 meters from each other, depending on the terrain and hazards. Just north of the border was a burnt, abandoned commercial vehicle, perhaps a casualty of the country’s civilian exodus. Several hundred Iraqi soldiers were spotted walking in formation. They were the first prisoners and among them were a general and a colonel.
“The morale of the Marines was high. They wanted to liberate this tiny country and then head back to Camp Lejeune.”
It was Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick” policy, updated with high mobility, air, armor and other modern-day weaponry and tactics up against a mustachioed gangster, pseudo-tactician playing World War I trench warfare in his version of World War II’s Maginot Line.
“As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist,” sneered GEN Schwarzkopf at his briefing, “he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he’s a great military man.”
Iraqi POWs who surrendered to Marines of Task Force Shepherd are kept warm and under guard while their weapons and personal documents are inspected.
Saddam’s oath to make the allies swim in their own blood and of making the earth burn beneath their feet was only talk. As the ground war started, the bully of Baghdad abandoned the Palestine Liberation Organization and others who had befriended him, as well as his own troops, while his lackeys over the “Mother of Battles” radio reassured Arabs that his army was winning the jihad (holy war). His forces knew better. They surrendered in waves that almost overwhelmed the allies. In many instances, they were gunned down or beheaded by their own officers or execution squads. The military leadership, unable to face the onslaught and before fleeing north without their troops, took to torching nearly 600 Kuwaiti oil wells which oil-fire expert Paul Neal “Red” Adair estimated would take more than two years to snuff out. They then set out to rape, pillage and murder residents of the capital, Kuwait City, before escaping and reportedly hiding behind thousands of Kuwaiti male hostages.
“The mother of battles has turned into one mother of a corner for Saddam Hussein,” said one television commentator. Indeed. Allied forces stopped count-ing Iraqi prisoners when in two days their numbers exceeded 26,000, according to Marine Brigadier General Richard I. Neal, Deputy Director of Operations, U.S. Central Command, in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The number was estimated to be more than 35,000 the next day. There were so many that American soldiers joked that Iraqi soldiers needed to take a ticket number to surrender.
“There were a very, very large number of dead in these units, a very large number of dead,” explained Schwarzkopf. “We even found them when we went into the units ourselves and found them in the trenches. There were very heavy desertions. At one point, we had reports of desertion rates of more than 30 percent of the units that were along the front. As you know, we had quite a large number of POWs [prisoners of war] that came across, and so I think it’s a combination of desertions, people that were killed, people that were captured and some other people who are just flat still running.”
Thick black smoke fills the sky as oil wells burn out of control in the al-Wafrah Forest, set ablaze by retreating Iraqi forces. The toxic plumes posed serious health risks, causing respiratory issues for many Marines involved in the liberation of Kuwait. (Photo by TSgt Perry Heimer, USAF)
“They look like little ants in a row, coming from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich somebody left on the ground,” said Captain John Sizemore, a pilot who watched the trail of prisoners from above the desert. Most were conscripts of the Iraqi Popular Army. In one case, Marines came upon a soldier who, dressed in Bermuda shorts and wearing a Chicago Bears T-shirt, said to them in English any American would understand, “Gee, guys, where the hell have you been?” It turned out he’d been an Iraqi student in Chicago, Ill., who’d gone to Baghdad to see his grandmother, only to be pressed into service in the Iraqi army.
A Marine had his high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicle stuck in the sand and saw an Iraqi tank rolling toward him. Thinking he was going to die, he watched as an enemy tank crewman jumped out, hooked the Humvee to the tank, towed it from the rut and then, with the rest of his crew, politely surrendered to a very relieved young man.
Those few who chose to fight were simply outgunned. Marine M1 Abrams and M60 tanks, tracked landing vehicles, light armored vehicles (LAVs), Humvees mounted with tube launched, optically tracked, wire command link, guided missiles (TOWs), AH-IW Sea Cobra helicopter gunships, OV-10 Bronco spotter aircraft and AV-SB Harrier, A-6 Intruder and F-18 Hornet attack jets shot across the desert with power and speed that stunned and devastated the Iraqis. Those Iraqis who did fight mounted a battle formation of 80 tanks only to have three-quarters of them pulverized. Cluster bombs blew 50-foot craters, and incoming 155 mm and 8-inch artillery shells created a vacuum noise as they fell, sending the crescendo of impact and shock waves across the desert floor. “Hellfire” missiles slammed home in blinding blasts and sent jagged parts of Soviet-made T-55 and T-62 tanks flying like so many pieces of shrapnel in every direction. Those few Iraqis who didn’t join the ranks of prisoners or run from the battle died.
Marines load AGM-88A high-speed anti-radiation missiles under the wings of an F/A-18A Hornet of VMFA-451 during Operation Desert Storm. Allied forces flew an estimated 102,000 sorties during six weeks of constant air bombardment.
“If we had another 12 hours of daylight, most of the forces inside Kuwait would have given up,” said another Marine at the end of the first day. One Marine jumped from his truck deep in Kuwait and shouted, laughing, “Oh man, I love this. Isn’t this great? I’m gonna re-enlist!” It did seem too easy. Most found it hard not to share the Marine’s exuberance; however, many cautiously waited for the proverbial “other shoe to fall.” It never did. The advance through eastern Kuwait was so far ahead of schedule that approximately 18,000 Marines offshore with the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade seemingly had to settle for feints which kept several Iraqi divisions guess-ing where and when the amphibious assault would come.
GEN Schwarzkopf had never intended for them to land unless required later. “It became very apparent to us early on that the Iraqis were quite concerned about an amphibious operation across the shores to liberate Kuwait, this [pointing] being Kuwait City. They put a very, very heavy barrier of infantry along here [the coast] and they proceeded to build an extensive barrier that went all the way across the border, down and around, and up the side of Kuwait.”
Amphibious ships such as USS Nassau (LHA-4), loaded with Marines, waited offshore. They launched helicopters in assault formation without Marines to fool the Iraqis. The ruse worked.
“We continued heavy operations out in the sea because we wanted the Iraqis to continue to believe that we were going to conduct a massive amphibious operation in this area. And I think many of you [the media] recall the number of amphibious rehearsals we had, to include ‘Imminent Thunder’ that was written about quite extensively for many reasons,” GEN Schwarzkopf noted. The U.S. media, some of whom had willingly prostituted themselves as a propaganda vehicle in Baghdad, could hardly cry foul when they found that an American general had led them to believe a landing was inevitable. During the assault into Kuwait, several dozen Marine CH-53 and CH-46 helicopters from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit flew in mock assault formation from their ships in the Gulf, confusing the Iraqis. In reality, there was literally little room for another major force on the battlefield. Between Kuwait and southern Iraq, the total combined forces of the allied coalition had the Iraqi military surrounded in an open desert the size of Texas.
Schwarzkopf went on. “Very early [January 16], we took on the Iraqi air force. We knew that [Saddam] had very limited reconnaissance means. And therefore, when we took out his air force, for all intents and purposes, we took out his ability to see what we were doing.
“Once we had taken out his eyes, we did what could best be described as the ‘Hail Mary’ play in football. We did a massive movement of troops all the way out to the west, to the extreme west, because at that time we knew he was still fixed in his area [southern Iraq and Kuwait] with the vast majority of his forces, and once the air campaign started, he would be incapable of moving out to counter this move, even if he knew we made it.”
By the end of the second day the U.S. Army, with French and British troops, had swept far west in an arc that reached its apex less than 150 miles from Baghdad. Kuwait City was abandoned by the Iraqis and left in the hands of the Kuwaiti resistance. South of the city, Marines were fighting an armored battle near the international airport.
It was there that the Iraqis sent 100 tanks including 50 of their top-of-the-line Soviet-made T-72s up against the aging, Marine M60 tanks. The battle lasted all day and into the night, and Iraqi tank survivors recalled swearing at their Soviet tank sights which in the dust and heat of battle proved useless. The battleships USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and USS Missouri (BB-63) fired their 16-inch guns, sending 2,000-pound Volkswagen-sized shells into the air-port. Hangars, terminals and tanks disintegrated, nearly vaporized. Marine tankers picked off the rest of the tanks whose crews were, according to Marine commanders, “literally jumping out of the tanks.” Marine and Army snipers dropped the rest.
Though it is the afternoon, the battlefield looks like midnight as an M60A1 Marine tank with Task Force Papa Bear advances through thick smoke. The sun is completely blocked by the black clouds rising from burning oil wells.
The plain around Kuwait City was a graveyard for Iraqi armor, “a field of burning tanks,” according to LtGen Boomer. Outside an oil field, the men of the 1stMarDiv cut off Iraqis who had just set fire to several wellheads. Against a backdrop of orange fires, black soot, burning vehicles and sand turning to glass, the Iraqis counterattacked. It was, figuratively speaking, a firefight in hell. “We fired on two gathering points, and it wasn’t 30 minutes before we scattered them like rabbits out of the bush,” said Major General J.M. “Mike” Myatt, commander of the 1stMarDiv. “The Cobras and LAVs had a field day.” The “hunter-killer” package of the Marine air/ground team continued to search out and destroy Iraqi equipment before it could be moved out of the area. In other action, a Marine commander reported that when Iraqi forces began attacking his troops, a wave of surrendering Iraqis attempted to surrender ahead of the firing. The Iraqis fired their Soviet-made “Frog” missiles, which fell short, killing their own troops. Meanwhile, 10 miles north of the airport at the abandoned U.S. Embassy, a scout force of Marines from 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company and Army Special Forces soldiers entered the compound. One servicemember, who refused to be identified, did what American fighting men have traditionally loved to do and raised the flag of his country on a make-shift staff. A few yards away, apparently unnoticed, the American flag left by U.S. Ambassador Nathaniel Howell, who stubbornly held out for more than four months before leaving in December, still flew over the compound and was still there when Edward “Skip” Gnehm, America’s new ambassador to a liberated Kuwait, arrived Feb. 28.
Marines waited in fighting holes for word to move up. Once the word came, they moved so quickly that in less than 100 hours, the war was over. On Feb. 27, Marine forces surrounded Kuwait City. They paused to allow the Arab forces, led by the Kuwaitis, the honor of liberating their city. The initial success had been nothing less than astounding. Not a single tank or armored vehicle had been lost. However, in the 72 hours since taking the offensive, five Marines had been killed and 48 wounded.
It is no secret that the allies expected their losses to be higher. With Iraqi air virtually eliminated at the start of the air war, the Iraqi army was pounded mercilessly for weeks, supplies were destroyed and, most importantly, Iraq’s command and control communications were severely degraded. Blind, without spotter ability, unable to come into the open and unable to regroup, the army was depleted by lack of food, water, fuel, supplies, intelligence and information. Eight years of war with Iran had tired them more than it had hardened them.
“You can have the best equipment in the world, you can have the largest numbers in the world,” said GEN Schwarzkopf, “but, if you’re not dedicated to your cause, if you don’t have the will to fight, then, you are not going to have a very good army. … Many people were deserting, and I think you’ve heard this, that the Iraqis brought down execution squads whose job was to shoot people.”
“I’ve got to tell you what: The soldier doesn’t fight very hard for a leader who is going to shoot him on his own whim. That’s not what military leadership is all about. I attribute a great deal of failure of the Iraqi army to fight to their own leadership. They committed them to a cause that they didn’t believe in. They were all saying that they didn’t want to be there. They didn’t want to fight their fellow Arab. They were lied to. They were deceived. Then after they got there [Kuwait], they had leadership that were so uncaring for them that they didn’t properly feed them, give them water and, in the end, they kept them there only at the point of a gun.”
Only Saddam’s Republican Guard made any attempt to stand, and the all-powerful armor of the United States Army, with its French and British counterparts, had thundered across southern Iraq, sealing them off. They rolled so fast that Saddam’s promise to use chem-ical weapons remained as empty as his capacity for statesmanship. The U.S. Army and its allies, itching for haggling for a ceasefire as if in some Baghdad bazaar. His efforts fell on allied ears deafened by his previous lies and rhetoric.
His words could not be heard in Kuwait City where Arab forces and a jubilant population exploded in delirious joy that marked the end of seven brutal months of Iraqi occupation. Kuwaitis gleefully paraded a jackass, saying, “This is Saddam Hussein! This is Saddam Hussein!”
Kuwaiti soldiers, choked with emotion, sang their national anthem as they raised the green, white, red and black colors of their country. “Thank you! Thank you!” they screamed, waving almost as many red, white and blue American flags when Marines later entered the city.
A reunion took place between a Kuwaiti resistance fighter and his brother, a U.S. Marine who joined when Iraq invaded, when the Marine arrived in his hometown as part of the lead Marine units.
LtGen Boomer said, “It was a once in a lifetime experience. There are some things worth fighting for. When you see them regain their freedom and their joy at seeing them [the Iraqis] leave, it is quite a feeling. I’m glad we could be part of returning it to them.”
But there were also persistent rumors of atrocities and war crimes by the Iraqis who, many claimed, shot, tortured and raped their victims. Though some stories were later discounted, there was evidence of enough brutality to anger and dampen the spirits of victorious Kuwaitis, their Arab allies and other coalition forces. Reports of atrocities in the later stages of the war were, in part, reasons for GEN Schwarzkopf’s eagerness to see the Marines in Kuwait City.
“We’ve heard they took up to 40,000 [Kuwaiti hostages, but estimates have since downgraded the number to nearly 20,000],” he explained, “but that pales to insignificance compared to the absolutely unspeakable atrocities that occurred in Kuwait in the last week. They are not part of the same human race, the people that did that, the rest of us are. I’ve got to pray that’s the case.”
While it was high technology and sophisticated equipment that played a big part in this war, it still came down to individuals, skilled and trained in the professional military arts, to make it all work successfully.
GEN Schwarzkopf explained, “It is not a Nintendo game. It is a tough battlefield where people are risking their lives at all times … and we ought to be very, very proud of them. I would tell you that casualties of that order of magnitude … is almost miraculous as far as the light number of casualties. It will never be miraculous for the families of those people, but it is miraculous.”
And finally, the general credited his boss for providing the military with its most important weapon: trust and con-fidence. “I’m very thankful for the fact that the President of the United States has allowed the United States military and the coalition military to fight this war exactly as it should have been fought. And the President in every case has taken our guidance and our recommendations to heart and has acted superbly as the Commander in Chief of the United States.”
Featured Image (Top): Artillerymen of the 2ndMarDiv send the first rounds into Kuwait from their M198 155 mm howitzer, launching the offensive to free Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.
In the fall of 1972, First Lieutenant Henry N. Pilger was 24 years old, a newly minted Marine Corps aviator, husband and first-time father.
Known as ‘Captain Easy’ on the campus of the U.S. Naval Academy just a few years earlier, the handsome and athletic lieutenant from Syracuse, N.Y., was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., with Marine Light Helicopter Squadron 167 when he got the call to participate in NATO Exercise Strong Express in Norway.
1stLt Pilger was a standout athlete and midshipman at the Academy and was serving as the helicopter’s copilot on Sept. 23, 1972, the day of the crash.
Strong Express was a huge NATO exercise designed to show the alliance’s strength during the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. But as the otherwise successful exercise was nearing completion, tragedy struck on the mountainous Norwegian island of Grytoya, north of the Arctic Circle.
On Sept. 23, Pilger, the copilot, and four other Marines died when the UH-1N helicopter they were flying in crashed. They were en route to pick up Marines from the mountainside. On the flight with Pilger were HML-167 squadron mates First Lieutenant Gerald Merklinger, pilot, and crew chief Lance Corporal Pete Rodriguez. Also on board the aircraft were Captain Raymond Wilhelm “Bill” Reisner, a communications officer, and Major James Skinner, a pilot who was assigned to the headquarters element of the provisional Marine Aircraft Group for the exercise. (Executive Editor’s note: Skinner was posthumously promoted to lieutenant colonel.)
Due to the secretive nature of the exercise, the accident appeared to be the end of the story for the relatives of those who perished. Unsure of what exactly happened, Pilger’s wife and other victims’ relatives went on with their lives as best they could.
“As I heard it, my mother was so pleased he was chosen for that mission as opposed to Vietnam because no one died in NATO,” said Pilger’s daughter Abby Boretto, who was just 15 months old when her father died.
But 22 years after the accident, Pilger’s Naval Academy class ring with a beautiful blue stone and his name inscribed on the inside of the ring appeared one day in Boretto’s mailbox in Connecticut. The ring was virtually unscathed, yet it was riddled with emotion, so much so that her mother, Deborah, wanted nothing to do with it.
The Naval Academy class ring of 1stLt Henry Pilger was found in the mountains of Grytoya, Norway, 22 years after he perished in a helicopter crash during a NATO exercise.
But Boretto kept it, packing it up each time she moved to a new house. In a way, Boretto felt like it was a sign. Two years before the surprise package, she was swimming in Hawaii and lost a replica of her dad’s ring given to her by her mother. She never gave up hope of finding it, even though it was likely somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
“I was swimming in the ocean, and it flew right off my finger and right into the ocean,” Boretto said. “It was a gut punch. … I was sick about it. [But] I made this strange proclamation that the ring would come back to me. … Sure enough, here comes this ring in this package.”
Boretto eventually got married and raised her children in San Diego. When Boretto turned 50 in 2021, with her children grown, she had the time to investigate the mystery of her father’s class ring. So one day, she brought out the ring and the note from the ring finder Hans Krogstad and began her search to get to know her father and how he died.
“I always knew this was a spectacular story … but all that I had was this miraculous gift, the ring, returning home to me after this large amount of time,” Boretto said. “It had been 21 years up on that mountain. This ring lasted through all of those elements, all of those years. So that is all that I had, this ghostly connection. … So, what is the rest of the story?”
In 1994, Hans Krogstad was an obstetrician living in a tiny Norwegian town called Harstad, just a stone’s throw from Grytoya. He often would hunt birds on the island. One clear September day, shotgun in hand, he stumbled upon what he thought was debris from a nearby airfield.
When he looked closer, he found the remains of a glove and a gold ring, set with a beautiful blue stone, lying on the rocky landscape. He scooped it up for further examination and saw Pilger’s name scripted on the inside of the ring and that it was from the U.S. Naval Academy.
As the brother of a military officer and an aspiring military pilot—his vision prevented him from flying helicopters—Krogstad was hopeful that the ring could be reunited with the rightful owner. With the Internet in its infancy, he called his friend at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo to see if he could assist him. Eventually, a Navy attaché who graduated from the Naval Academy was able to send the ring across the Atlantic Ocean.
Not knowing whether it reached Pilger’s family, Krogstad went on with his life but never forgot about the trinket he had found. Before giving it to the attaché, he had a coworker take a picture of the ring. A few years after mailing off the ring, the widespread use of GPS allowed him to accurately determine the coordinates of his discovery.
Fast forward more than 20 years later and Krogstad happened to run into his former colleague in a local shop. He asked whether he still had the images he took in 1994 so he could digitize them. Within a week, he had the photos, further fueling his interest in finding the family.
A series of phone calls with various government employees ultimately resulted in Krogstad finding out that not only had the family received the ring, but Pilger had a daughter who was looking to reunite with the person who found it.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Boretto had already found out what happened to her dad thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests (the documents were now declassified) and assistance from a Marine who was there that day. Sergeant Rocky Shaw was serving in the NATO exercise in the same unit that Skinner was assigned to [H&MS-31] when he first heard about the crash. Serving on board USS Inchon (LPH-12), which was anchored 40 miles from the island, Shaw knew a helicopter had gone missing that day and remained curious about what exactly happened. Eventually he found Boretto on Facebook in 2021—coincidentally, while she was visiting her dad’s old stomping grounds in Syracuse to find out more about what he was like as a child. Soon Boretto and Shaw began sharing crash reports, with Shaw helping to fill in the gaps about the mission.
On the day he died, Pilger (below) and four other Marines flew a helicopter from USS Inchon (LPH-12) to the island of Grytoya to pick up Marines conducting exercises in the rocky, mountainous terrain.
Boretto and Shaw began to track down descendants of the others who died in the crash. As they connected with the Marines’ relatives, the idea for a documentary was now buzzing inside Boretto’s head, but she had no idea how to make one. One day, her aunt told her about a similar ring recovery documentary about World War II. She immediately contacted the grandson of the featured WW II veteran and, within 24 hours, was on the phone with him about creating her own project.
At the same time, Aleksander Viksund, a friend of Krogstad’s and former second lieutenant in the Norwegian Army, had recently read about the crash in a story by a local journalist and thought it was a good idea to memorialize the Marines who died that day.
So Viksund assembled a team of local residents to make a plaque and mount it on the rock-strewn crash site, which lies more than 2,600 feet above sea level. The plaque contains the victims’ names, the preliminary message report of the accident and a helicopter engraved over the words “Have Guns – Will Travel”—the HML-167 slogan.
“For Dr. Krogstad and me, it was important to do the five Marines this honor,” Viksund wrote to Leatherneck in an email. “We both grew up in the Cold War days and think that the effort of our allies is not to be taken lightly. It is a big deal for most of us living here up in the high north that young men and women from our allies are willing to serve in our country to help us keep the bullies in the East at bay.”
“He said, ‘This is part of the history of the island,’” Krogstad said. “ ‘They lost their lives preserving the peace of Norway.’ And I said, ‘That is a good idea.’ ”
In 2022, Boretto, a handful of crash victim relatives and several Marines past and present came to Norway for the unveiling of the memorial. Boretto saw Krogstad in-person for the first time that day on the mountainside, experiencing a rush of excitement from meeting the man who preserved her father’s memory for her.
Henry Pilger’s only child, Abby Boretto, visited Norway in 2022 to meet Hans Krogstad, a Norwegian physician who found and returned Pilger’s ring to the family in 1994.
“I thought going into it, I would be really emotional, but that wasn’t the feeling at all,” Boretto said. “I was super invigorated. … I felt like it was a release; I finally had met my father for the first time.”
For Krogstad, meeting Boretto was the culmination of curiosity and a bit of old-fashioned luck, or what some would describe as fate.
“It’s a strange story,” Krogstad said. “If I hadn’t had met my medic, who took a photograph of the ring, it [the story] probably would have ended there.”
Boretto’s documentary “The Ring and the Mountain” was eventually unveiled in January of 2024 on board the USS Midway Museum, located on the San Diego shoreline. The event was held on what would have been Pilger’s 76th birthday. According to pilot Wilhelm Reisner’s sister Nancy Paxton, she could not look at a photo of her brother without getting emotional until her trip to San Diego for the documentary debut. While it was not cathartic in every sense, the trip did help her deal with her brother’s death a little better.
Manuel Rodriguez, younger brother of crew chief LCpl Pete Rodriguez, also attended the event. Upon learning of the details of his brother’s death while defending freedom overseas, Manuel started to look at him as a hero. In fact, he fought—albeit unsuccessfully—to get a nearby elementary school named after his sibling.
Health issues prevented Skinner’s daughter Linda Wood from attending the memorial ceremony in California. However, the work done to unite the families of the deceased and to highlight the Marines has left “her heart full.”
“There are no words to say how proud I am and grateful for everybody that stepped up to do these stories and remember these five Marines,” Wood said. “And not just my dad, but on behalf of so many. There are hundreds of thousands of families that have gone through the same loss. These men and women, they put their lives on the line. They are so dedicated.”
Viksund said his Norwegian community has made “friends for life” thanks to the efforts from folks like Boretto, Shaw and Colonel Slick Katz, USMC (Ret), who serves on the USMC/Combat Helicopter and Tiltrotor Association board of directors and assisted in the search for the victims’ relatives. Katz served with HML-167 during the Vietnam War and presented a plaque and letters of appreciation from the squadron at the memorial’s dedication.
“We were amazed at how thankful the family members were of our efforts, and how much the efforts were appreciated by the U.S. Marines,” Viksund wrote. “We are very happy that this meant so much for the families, the USMC and the squadron HML-167.”
For those interested in the documentary, visit https://youtu.be/-hAXqTpZuIo.
To learn more about the Marines who died on Sept. 23, 1972, please see the story “Grytoya Marines” in the September 2025 issue of Leatherneck Magazine.
Author’s bio:Kipp Hanley is the deputy editor for Leatherneck and a resident of Woodbridge, Va. The award-winning journalist has covered a variety of topics in his writing career including the military, government, education, business and sports.
The date, April 30, 1967. The place, a few miles northwest of Khe Sanh. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 3rd Marine Division are preparing to assault Hill 881 and dislodge the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces emplaced in fortified bunkers on the hill. With 105 mm artillery at their backs and the new M16 rifles in hand, it seems like nothing can stand in their way as they attempt to take the hill.
Within just a few short hours, however, nothing is going according to plan. Because the defenders on the hill are more numerous and far better dug in than anticipated, the air strikes and artillery bombardment preceding the assault have had little practical effect. To make matters worse, Marines have been experiencing serious problems with their high-tech M16 rifles—critical malfunctions are causing them to seize up in the heat of combat. It seems nearly inconceivable that the U.S. military would issue fatally flawed equipment, but the Battle of Hill 881 and several other conflicts during the Vietnam War serve as grim reminders that it did indeed happen.
So, why were soldiers and Marines using rifles that often malfunctioned in battle? To understand how and why this happened, we need to travel more than a decade back in time and thousands of miles away to a small office complex in Hollywood, Calif.
Fairchild Airplane and Engine Company created its ArmaLite division in 1954 to design and produce firearms. As a subsidiary of a major aerospace contractor in the 1950s, ArmaLite’s designs were unconventional and highly innovative. Where a rifle was traditionally constructed out of a milled or pressed sheet steel receiver mated to a steel barrel in a wood or metal stock, ArmaLite’s AR-1, AR-5, and AR-7 rifles made heavy use of space-age materials like aluminum and fiberglass.
In the mid-1950s, ArmaLite engineer Eugene Stoner designed a revolutionary new military rifle he hoped would replace the venerable M1 Garand. Stoner’s rifle, designated “AR-10,” was a radical departure from conventional designs. Its barrel, operating components, and stock were all arranged in a straight line, trans-ferring recoil directly back into the shooter’s shoulder and minimizing muzzle rise on full-auto. With its aluminum receiver, fiberglass furniture, and composite barrel, the AR-10 was a full pound or more lighter than any of its more mainstream competitors. Unfortunately, military trials showed that the AR-10 was perhaps too far ahead of its time, and without years of refinement behind it, the rifle suffered a number of teething troubles which couldn’t be corrected quickly enough to prevent its disqualification from the trials. The U.S. Army would ultimately go on to adopt the T44E4 prototype, essentially just an improved M1, as the M14 rifle.
PFC Tommy Gribble displays his M16 rifle, which was hit by a round from an enemy AK-47 on Sept. 6, 1968. The round pierced Gribble’s forearm, passing between both bones, then smashed through the Marine’s rifle stock. Gribble, assigned to Co I, 3rd Bn, 5th Marines, was walking point during a patrol in Vietnam when the round hit.
But all was not lost for Eugene Stoner and ArmaLite. The Department of Defense was investigating a small-caliber, high-velocity rifle cartridge concept based on research and testing from the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in the early 1950s, and they wanted ArmaLite to help develop the new ammunition and a lightweight rifle to fire it. While Stoner worked on the design for the pro-jectile itself, ArmaLite engineers L. James “Jim” Sullivan and Robert Fremont worked with Remington on the design for the case. What they came up with was a more powerful version of the .222 Remington capable of propelling a 55-grain full-metal jacket projectile at an astounding 3,250 feet per second from a 20-inch barrel.
To go with this new so-called “.222 Remington Special” or “.223 Remington” ammunition, Sullivan and Fremont created a new rifle based on the AR-10. It used the same operating principle and retained many of the same desirable features as its predecessor, but testing showed that the new prototype was capable of superior accuracy and reliability. They called it the AR-15.
The first AR-15 was an impressive weapon for its time. It was demonstrated to have better reliability and accuracy than the M14 while being nearly two pounds lighter. The new .223 ammunition was much lighter and produced less recoil than 7.62 NATO, allowing infantrymen to carry twice as many rounds and fire accurately in both semi-automatic and fully automatic modes. A 1959 test by the Army showed that a squad of five to seven men armed with AR-15s was just as effective as an 11-man squad armed with M14s.
Despite its lighter weight and lower recoil, the new high-velocity ammunition produced devastating wounds in soft targets. Whereas conventional rifle bullets had the potential to pass through their targets and leave behind small wound tracks, high-velocity projectiles had a tendency to fragment shortly after impact. Jim Sullivan would later recount an informal test at a shooting range between a conventional 7.62 NATO rifle and an .223-caliber AR-15 wherein the ArmaLite employees shot at jerrycans filled with water. The full-power rifle punched a hole straight through a can—the bullet went in one side and out the other, leaving nothing behind but a pair of holes. The AR-15, firing ammunition nominally half as powerful, caused a can to explode from the sudden shock. Battlefield reports later confirmed the lethality of this effect on enemy combatants.
The AR-15 showed great promise as a combat rifle, but it couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Army and Marine Corps had just adopted the M14 after 12 years of development and amid a great deal of controversy; they weren’t about to go out and order hundreds of thousands of AR-15s. Furthermore, top generals were extremely conservative about small arms designs, and the AR-15 was easily the most innovative and unconventional rifle of its time. By this time, ArmaLite was on the verge of bankruptcy. Years of work on the AR-10 project without a major contract to show for it had left the company in deep financial trouble, and the Army passing on the AR-15 was the final nail in the coffin. ArmaLite was finally forced to sell the rights to the AR-15 to a larger and more established arms manufacturer. Colt quickly snapped up the new design and began shopping it around to militaries around the world, as well as creating its own version lacking the fully automatic functionality for the civilian market.
The initiating event that led to the AR-15’s popularity in military service for the past half-century and counting was not an elaborate multi-year military R&D program, but a backyard barbecue party.
July 1960. Richard Boutelle, former president of Fairchild (ArmaLite’s parent company) is hosting an Independence Day party in his backyard. Among the high-powered friends on the guest list are Colt representative Robert Macdonald and legendary Air Force General Curtis LeMay. Eager to show off the capabilities of the AR-15, they offer to let Gen LeMay test the new rifle on some watermelons. A few magazines and a lot of pulp later, LeMay is so impressed by the rifle that he immediately places an order for 80,000. At that time, Air Force security personnel were still using the M2 Carbine. A variant of the M1 carbine, it was popular with troops when it was adopted during the Second World War, but by the early 1960s the design was beginning to show its age. The airmen still using it appreciated its light weight, but the carbine lost much of its lethality and accuracy beyond about 100 yards.
Congress delayed LeMay’s order, but other top officials soon came to realize why he was so enamored with the new rifle. After another brief round of trials, the AR-15 entered service with the United States Air Force and United States Army special forces. It would see its first combat use by American advisors in a bush war that was just beginning to heat up in the small, relatively unknown country of Vietnam.
The United States Army and the Marine Corps went into the Vietnam War using the M14. According to conventional American military doctrine of the time, infantry combat would take place at long range, therefore accuracy was king. The M14 worked well with this theory, firing the powerful 7.62×51 mm NATO round with an effective range farther than most people can identify a man-sized target. However, the jungles of Vietnam were suited to a very different kind of combat, a kind of combat with which the NVA and Viet Cong insurgents were intimately familiar. The thick brush and rugged terrain reduced visibility and obscured targets from view even at relatively close range, forcing combatants much closer together and making conventional long-range marksmanship all but impossible at times.
In an effort to simplify logistics, U.S. military officials had intended the M14 to replace most of the small arms in the inventory. However, the rifle was too light and too powerful for fully automatic fire to be useful, yet too long and heavy for effective use in close-quarters combat. NVA soldiers, by contrast, were using Soviet-designed rifles supplied by communist China, namely the AKM—an improved variant of the AK-47. Lighter and much more compact than the M14, it fired the 7.62×39 mm Soviet cartridge. Sacrificing effective range to achieve lower recoil, the AKM could be fired in bursts with reasonable accuracy. These traits suited the AKM perfectly for poorly trained soldiers fighting in the jungle, allowing them to overwhelm even seasoned American combat vet-erans through sheer volume of fire. Furthermore, the M14 suffered from an unexpected problem of its own—in humid conditions, its wooden stock would swell and place uneven pressure on the barrel, causing the rifle’s point of impact to shift dramatically.
Marines during Operation Desert Storm deployed with M16A2 rifles and M60E3 machine guns.
The AR-15 could not have come at a better time for the United States military. Initial testing suggested that it surpassed the M14 in accuracy, reliability, and projected combat effectiveness, so the only thing left to do was bring it into service with the Army and Marine Corps. Yet another round of military trials resulted in the AR-15’s official adoption as the M16 rifle in 1964. Con-tracts were signed, hands were shaken, and Colt began converting its civilian tooling for the military variant. Within a few years, the first M16s began to show up in the hands of U.S. military advisors and special forces operatives in theater.
Initial combat reports were positive. Its light weight and high volume of fire suited it well to the dense jungle environment of Vietnam, and the enemy quickly learned to fear the so-called “black rifle.” According to co-designer Jim Sullivan, enemy combatants wounded in the arm or leg by the new M16 would often die from blood loss due to the fragmentation effect of the projectile. One of the M16’s first trials by fire was at the Battle of Ia Drang in November 1965. Elements of the U.S. Army 5th and 7th Cavalry, numbering approximately 1,000 men total, were able to repel nearly three times their number in hardened veterans from the NVA.
When Marines were first issued the M16, its lethal reputation preceded it. But what they didn’t know was that it would soon develop a reputation for a very different kind of lethality.
All of this brings us back to the Battle of Hill 881. Some combat reliability prob-lems with the M16 had begun to show, but the Marines of 3rdMarDiv didn’t know about any of this. They found out as soon as their rifles began jamming in combat. The rifles ran extremely dirty, causing the delicate mechanics inside to seize up at the most inopportune times. Furthermore, spent casings would often get stuck in the chamber with no way to knock them out except by disassembling the rifle while under fire or by shoving a cleaning rod down the barrel. And the rifles weren’t issued with cleaning kits.
PFC Ricardo King, 3rd Bn, 1st Marines, cleans his early-pattern M16 aboard the helicopter assault ship USS Valley Forge (LPH-8) along the coast of Vietnam, Dec. 19, 1967. Early M16s required careful maintenance to withstand the humid jungle environment of Vietnam.
The so-called Hill Fights ended in a strategic American victory. The North Vietnamese were pushed out and the U.S. Marines were able to secure the area around Khe Sanh. But the question remained: what had happened to the rifles? What went wrong? This revolutionary new piece of technology that had promised to give American fighting men a decisive advantage now appeared to have cost many men their lives. The answer lies in a place almost no-one would immediately think to look—the military acquisitions system.
Recall that the M16 had been designed around the 5.56×45 mm M193 cartridge designed by ArmaLite and Remington. It was loaded with thin sticks of so-called “Improved Military Rifle” gunpowder, specifically IMR 4475, supplied by Du Pont Chemical. In Army testing, the am-munition yielded an average muzzle velocity around 3,150 feet per second—blisteringly fast, but about 100 feet per second lower than the specified velocity. In order to remedy this perceived problem, the Army had Remington switch to a different type of gunpowder, known as WC846, supplied by Olin Mathieson. The pressures and velocities looked just fine on paper, but like with many things, the devil is in the details. The new powder came in the form of small grains, coated in a special chemical blend to improve shelf life. The only problem was that the Army, thinking the powders to be interchangeable, didn’t test the rifles with the new ammunition. The new powder placed additional strain on the M16’s gas operating mechanism, and the protective coating left chalky deposits inside the rifle’s delicate internals. A seemingly simple change to the ammunition was able to multiply the rifle’s failure rate by six without anyone noticing.
The Marines of the 2/3 and 3/3 didn’t know any of this. What they did know was that their fancy new rifles, which had been billed as “self-cleaning,” ran so dirty that they often stopped working—sometimes after only a few rounds. Without training on how to clean the rifles and no cleaning kits to do so anyway, the chalky residue clogging up the rifles became a deadly problem.
Marines of C/1/3 move out on an early morning patrol in Vietnam, 1969. (Photo by Cpl Philip R. Boehme, USMC)
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the humid jungle environment of Vietnam created microscopic deposits of rust inside the barrels and chambers of the M16 rifles. Once the invisible rust pitting in the chamber of a rifle was severe enough, cases would begin sticking inside without any way to remove them.
When the M16’s numerous problems began to surface, Congress had a field day. A committee, led by Congressman Robert Ichord of Missouri, set out to identify the causes and solve the problems to get American soldiers and Marines a weapon that wouldn’t get them killed. The corrosion problem was the easiest to fix. All barrels and bolt carrier groups rolling off the production line at Colt would be coated in a thin layer of chromium metal, preventing the underlying steel from rusting. The fouling issue, however, was a little bit more difficult. Du Pont had long since stopped manufacturing IMR 4475, and the military desperately needed large supplies of ammunition as soon as possible. Contrary to the Ichord committee’s recommendation to immediately switch back to the old powder, the new powder was reformulated slightly and the rifle’s recoil buffer system redesigned to accommodate it. The most controversial change of all was the addition of the for-ward assist. This button on the side of the receiver was designed to engage with scalloped cuts on the side of the bolt carrier to allow it to be forced into battery. Eugene Stoner and the other ArmaLite engineers who had designed the system were vehemently opposed to this change—testing showed that failures to feed were only worsened by forcing the action closed. Nevertheless, these changes were incorporated by Colt onto the next pattern of M16 rifle, the M16A1.
The reliability problems all but disappeared when the M16A1 entered service, but the damage to the rifle’s reputation was done. Hardliners continued to deride the futuristic-looking rifle with its small-caliber ammunition and plastic furniture contract-made by Mattel. But most of all, what the M16 showed the world was that the assault rifle paradigm was the way of the future. When the Warsaw Pact began issuing select-fire intermediate-caliber rifles like the AKM, military strategists in the West had derided it as a “peasant’s weapon,” designed to maximize the combat effectiveness of a poorly trained conscript army. What the M16 proved was that even the best-trained fighting forces in the world could take advantage of the lighter weight and higher volume of fire provided by this revolutionary new weapon.
Recruit Jared C. Seeland, Plt 3229, “Kilo” Co, 3rd Recruit Training Bn reloads his M16A4 Service Rifle in the standing position at Edson Range, Weapons and Field Training Bn, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., Nov. 24, 2014. (Photo by Cpl Jericho Crutcher, USMC)
In the 1970s, NATO member countries began developing their own 5.56 mm rifles and tinkering with the ammunition to optimize it. The Belgian SS109 cartridge, based on the earlier American M193 but with improved penetration on hard targets, was adopted by most of NATO as stan-dard. When the Marine Corps requested an improved version of their rifle in response, Colt modified the M16A1 slightly to create the M16A2, which entered service in the early 1980s.
With the A2 variant, the M16 had finally fully matured. It used a different barrel for better accuracy and compatibility with a wider variety of ammunition types. The sights were made more adjustable, improving the individual rifleman’s ability to hit targets at long range. Even though most infantry combat thus far during the 20th century had taken place at 300 meters or less, a rifleman armed with an M16A2 could reliably hit man-sized targets out to at least twice that.
The M16’s final evolution in Marine Corps service was the M16A4. Taking a cue from the civilian aftermarket, the M16A4 is essentially just an M16A2 with enhanced modularity. The rear sight and carry handle assembly was made re-mov-able so an optical sighting system could be mounted, dramatically increasing the rifle’s combat effectiveness. The currently issued Trijicon TA31 RCO can mount to this rail with two thumb screws, a far cry from the intricate machining required to mount optics on previous service rifles.
The round plastic handguards were replaced by long segments of MIL-STD-1913 rail, where Marines could attach a variety of accessories to fit almost any kind of mission. Even after the Army switched to the shorter M4A1 carbine, the Marine Corps continued using the M16A4 until a few years ago. With its longer barrel, the M16 is able to reliably hit targets, well past the effective range of the M4. While the M27 IAR has already replaced the M16A4 in frontline infantry units, hundreds of thousands of M16 rifles are still in Marine Corps inventory and will continue to see use for many years to come.
Editor’s note: This article is the first in a serious of features detailing the small arms U.S. Marines have used since 1775. What were your experiences like with your issue weapons? Do you have a favorite one you would like to see featured next? Let us know at [email protected].
Author’s bio: Sam Lichtman is a college student and licensed pilot. He works part-time as a salesman and armorer at a gun store in Stafford, Va., and occasionally contributes content to Leatherneck. He also has a weekly segment on Gun Owners Radio.
Featured Photo (Top): A Marine armed with an M16A1 checks in with his command post via field radio during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, Oct. 25, 1983.
45-200 rounds per minute effective, 12-15 rounds per minute sustained
Muzzle Velocity: 3,150 feet per second
Range: 460 m effective
Description
Designed in the late 1950s by ArmaLite, a division of Fairchild Engine and Airplane Company, the M16 was a cutting-edge rifle for its time; its aluminum receivers and polymer furniture make it extremely lightweight, especially as compared to contemporary military arms. With its shoulder stock positioned in line with the barrel and bolt carrier, the M16’s soft recoil impulse is directed straight back into the shooter’s shoulder, minimizing the muzzle’s tendency to rise during rapid fire. The M16 has good ergonomics, with all its primary controls conveniently located to allow the shooter to manipulate them without removing his or her firing hand from the pistol grip.
The M16’s self-loading action is powered by gas tapped from a port under the combination gas block/front sight tower and vented back into the bolt carrier through a thin stainless steel gas tube positioned just above the barrel. The gas expands and cools inside the bolt carrier, contained by three gas rings on the bolt stem, driving the bolt carrier back, which in turn unlocks the bolt and cocks the hammer. After the spent casing is extracted and ejected, the buffer spring located in the stock pushes the bolt carrier group forward again, picking up a new round from the top of the magazine, pushing it into the chamber and returning the bolt to battery.
Although gas is vented from the barrel into the receiver, the M16 is unlike “true” direct-impingement rifles in that the gas does not act directly on the bolt carrier. The bolt carrier’s internal expansion chamber acts much like the piston in an M14 rifle or M60 machine gun, giving rise to the technical term “internal piston” for this unique operating mechanism.
A military M16 is different from a civilian AR-15 principally in the design of its fire control group. When the fire selector is in the “AUTO” position, the action of the bolt carrier returning forward pushes on the automatic sear, which releases the hammer to fire the rifle again. This process repeats continuously, as long as the trigger is depressed.
Development and Service History
The AR-15/M16 platform’s military service began in the early 1960s, when the Air Force placed what was expected to be a one-time order of 8,500 rifles to replace its security forces airmen’s aging and obsolete M2 carbines. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara also authorized a small purchase of AR-15s for field testing with Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group. Due to promising results in combat, chronic production delays with the M14 and increasing tensions in Vietnam, the AR-15 was put into full trials and quickly adopted as the M16.
Weighing some 2 pounds less than the M14 and with a 5-inch-shorter overall length, the M16 was much more maneuverable in the tight confines of Vietnam’s jungles. Its lighter ammunition and substantially softer recoil allowed infantrymen to send more rounds downrange, better equipping them to repulse ambushes and win firefights. Early M16s, however, suffered from corrosion and poor reliability in the jungle environment, leading to a public scandal and Congressional investigation. The XM16E1 and M16A1 implemented features including a fully chrome-lined barrel and chamber, an improved buffer to reduce bolt carrier velocity, and a forward assist, which allows a shooter to force the bolt into battery when the chamber is fouled. After its early deficiencies were corrected, the M16 proved to be a highly effective weapon and became one of the most widely used military rifles in the world. The M16A1 was the Army and Marine Corps’ standard long arm until the M16A2’s adoption in 1982 and persisted in limited service for years thereafter.
For Colonel Stuart W. Glenn, it’s an opportunity to test his skills in military strategy at the Commandant’s Cup Wargaming Tournament finals. For Lance Corporal Omariyon Wright, it’s a chance to “stay in the know… [about] all the modern-day technology, weapons, vehicles” and other equipment coming soon to the fleet. For Marines of all ranks, Modern Day Marine is a highlight of the year, providing the premier venue for learning about the state of the Corps and gaining an inside perspective on its areas of growth.
Throughout the three-day expo, speakers delivered professional military education briefings at stages like this one, the Marine Zone, scattered throughout the show floor. Topics ranged from leadership to laser weapons and everything in between. Here, Capt Joseph Sporleder and some of his fellow students at the Expeditionary Warfare School present on the future of electronic warfare in the Marine Corps.
“The future of warfare is right now, so seeing what we have, current capabilities and what future developments we’re currently making is pretty cool,” said Sergeant Bryan Arteaga Celeiro, an air traffic control Marine who attended the 2025 expo, which is cohosted by the Marine Corps Association and the Marine Corps League.
Of special note at this year’s show was the preponderance of products aimed at training and education. From virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets to recoil-simulating dummy rifles, Marines at the expo were given ample opportunity to try out high-tech training systems designed to help improve mission-critical skills in a variety of military occupational specialties. With the 39th Commandant’s Planning Guidance directing the Marine Corps to “fully integrate constructive and virtual training into [its] exercises… [to] train with the full complement of [its] new capabilities,” Leatherneck paid special attention to companies exhibiting training systems, including some that are already in service.
A major area of focus this year was training systems, such as this one for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
InVeris Training Solutions
Some of the crowd favorites at this year’s Modern Day Marine were the firearm training systems (FATS®) exhibited by InVeris Training Solutions. Throughout the expo, a near-constant stream of Marines and civilians passed through InVeris’ booth and fired off tens of thousands of simulated rounds at virtual targets and computer-generated hostiles.
Most Marines and soldiers are already familiar with the company’s FATS 100MIL as the Indoor Simulated Marksmanship Trainer (ISMT) and Engagement Skills Trainer (EST), respectively. It uses a projector and screen to create a virtual shooting range for up to five shooters (or up to 15 with three systems linked together) to practice with replica pistols, rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers and various crew-served weapons. Virtual ranges can be configured with a variety of static and moving targets and simulate the effects of environmental conditions on ballistics, applying the correct amount of drop and wind drift depending on distance.
While the ISMT (above) is good for practicing basic marksmanship, the FATS AR (below) creates a fully three-dimensional virtual environment to train Marines for urban combat. Through an augmented reality headset, Sgt Carlos Castro sees computer-generated enemy combatants as vividly as if they were in the room with him. (Photos by Sam Lichtman)
The FATS AR takes virtual firearms training into the third dimension, using a lightweight augmented reality (AR) headset to transform any indoor environment up to 10,000 square feet in size into a simulated shoot house for up to four users at once. Enemy combatants and civilians behave realistically, either using AI or a human operator monitoring the situation from outside. After clearing the shoot house, shooters can walk back through and watch a playback of themselves in real time to analyze their own performance.
Every “firearm” compatible with InVeris’ training simulators has nearly identical weight, balance and controls to the live-fire model from which it is rebuilt, and even simulates about 60 percent of a realistic recoil impulse using a gas blowback system feeding from a compressed air capsule in the magazine. The weapon can be programmed to hold a preset number of “rounds” per magazine and lock the bolt or slide back on empty, just like a real firearm. Magazines are recharged between sessions using a large scuba-type tank holding enough compressed air for about 45,000 shots, allowing shooters to practice all day for literal pennies on the dollar.
This isn’t just a high-tech version of an arcade game, though—a suite of onboard electronics wirelessly linked to a control computer offers highly sophisticated analytics to assist each shooter in correcting bad habits that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. After a shooting stage is completed, the software shows the operator how long it took for each shooter to begin firing, engage each target and transition between targets, with a line showing the point of aim throughout. Are you slapping the trigger, holding your firing hand too low on the grip or jerking the rifle under recoil? InVeris’ software can help your instructor show you exactly where you need to improve your shooting.
In addition to aiding basic marksman-ship practice without the need for a real range or live ammunition, InVeris’ virtual firearm trainers provide a safety benefit, as they allow novice shooters to practice handling their service weapons with no risk of negligent discharge. The safety benefits also extend to personnel in com-bat arms MOS’s; whereas firing a live mortar produces the type of concussive blasts that have been linked to traumatic brain injury, simulated shots are perfectly safe.
InVeris does not claim that their FATS can completely replace live-fire marksmanship training, but military and law enforcement organizations around the world have already recognized the value in these simulations. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps use the FATS 100MIL virtual range, as mentioned above; the Air Force and Coast Guard use the FATS AR, and the U.S. Marshals Service has evaluated it.
Ultimate Training Munitions
Virtual firearms training with sim-ulated recoil is certainly impressive technology, but for force-on-force training, a different solution is needed. As its name suggests, Ultimate Training Munitions (UTM) offers a line of nonlethal ammunition and conversion kits that allow existing firearms to use it.
Conceptually similar to Simunitions, UTM’s solution consists of drop-in re-placement bolt carrier groups for rifles, submachine guns and machine guns, and replacement slide assemblies for pistols. Special magazines which are identical in size to standard ones but are physically incapable of loading UTM ammunition and vice versa are also used. Even if a live round were to be force fed into a UTM weapon or the other way around, the primers are in different locations, preventing a potentially catastrophic accident.
The UTM bullet contains a spherical plunger which continues moving forward when the projectile impacts a target, spraying out a small amount of marking paint more reliably than paintball-type projectiles. A firearm training system is useless if it does not offer adequate accuracy, so the UTM bullet includes a driving band—like on an artillery shell—which allows the rifling in the host firearm’s barrel to stabilize the projectile just like an ordinary bullet. The company claims better than 2-inch groups at 27 yards with 5.56 rifles such as the M4 and M27, entirely adequate for close-quarters battle-type scenarios.
To enable force-on-force training with its marking ammunition, UTM also offers a variety of protective gear, such as face masks compatible with helmets and communications devices. Because the projectiles travel at a modest 300 to 375 feet per second, face protection and padding around sensitive body areas are the only specialized equipment needed to prevent serious injury to someone shot with UTM rounds. Because of the lack of penetrating power, a military unit or law enforcement agency using UTM equipment can use the aptly named Portable Training Facility system to quickly construct a shoot house using metal poles and tarpaulin-like walls and doors.
For realistic training outside force-on-force scenarios, UTM conversion kits also work with “battlefield blanks,” which create realistic noise and recoil without firing a projectile, and “silent blanks,” which still cycle UTM actions without creating any potentially dangerous muzzle blast.
Although a UTM-converted firearm is even less powerful than a paintball gun, its blowback action generates a realistic recoil impulse and cyclic rate of fire, enhancing training. Firing a converted HK MR556 (similar to the M27 IAR) inside UTM’s plexiglass enclosure at the expo was a highly immersive experience: the recoil, the action noise, the sound of spent casings bouncing off the floor and even the smell of burnt powder all mimicked the sensations associated with a live firearm and real ammunition. Al-though hearing protection was not required, the sound of the gunshots was similar to that of a real gunshot heard through hearing protection.
Due to its greater complexity to manufacture, UTM ammunition is more expensive than standard lethal ammunition, but like InVeris’ FATS, its purpose is not to replace live-fire marksmanship train-ing. Instead, UTM firearms and ammuni-tion allow military and law enforcement personnel to “train how they fight,” prac-ticing close combat as realistically as possible so as to maximize performance on the actual battlefield. Air Force Security Forces, Coast Guard, Army and SOCOM (including MARSOC) per-sonnel have already been training with UTM kits; the Marine Corps has a program of record for it as well, meaning UTM may soon become widespread in infantry units.
Cole Engineering Services’ Stinger Training System
Given the enormous cost of each missile, a LAAD Marine might not have many opportunities to fire one outside combat. The Stinger training system promises to address the resulting training gap, allowing its users to practice firing any number of simulated shots in force-on-force exercises for a negligible marginal cost. (Photo by Amanda Higgs)
At its large booth along the show floor’s main thoroughfare, By Light Professional IT Services showed off its child companies’ vehicle and small arms trainers. Cole Engineering Services displayed its modular training systems for the FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile and crew-served mortars, all built around an electronics package dubbed the “cyclops.” Cole’s Stinger training system consists of a dummy gripstock and launch tube, the former of which has a socket for the “cyclops.” Once the “cyclops” has established a wireless connection to a computer or smartphone, the user operates the launcher exactly as he or she would a live one, while the electronics log analytics in real time throughout the firing cycle. The entire system can be used by itself or connected to a computer network that automatically adjudicates “hits” and “misses” for force-on-force exercises, which is how the Army has utilized the Stinger trainer so far. For training with mortars and other heavy weapons, the “cyclops” can be swapped over to other dummy launchers, its onboard software automatically adjusting to the different behavior of each weapon.
The Army already uses Cole Engineering Services’ Stinger trainer, and the company is eager to obtain a Marine Corps contract. Due to the considerable cost of Stinger missiles and the disposable battery coolant units they consume, Low Altitude Air Defense (LAAD) gunners ordinarily have little opportunity for practice, potentially inhibiting combat effectiveness. Given the proliferation of small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) on the modern battlefield, an electronic training system such as this one could be more valuable than ever in remedying that training gap and ensuring LAAD gunners are already proficient before they ever fire live missiles.
MVRsimulation’s Deployable Joint Fires Trainer
The high-tech training systems on display at this year’s Modern Day Marine were by no means limited to small arms. MVRsimulation demonstrated its mixed-reality Deployable Joint Fires Trainer (DJFT), which the Air Force and III MEF already use to train joint terminal attack controllers (JTACs) and forward observ-ers (FOs). First fielded three years ago, the DJFT consists of three portable work-stations with peripherals designed to emulate the real equipment, such as radios and laser designators, that JTACs and FOs use. The physical hardware is visible inside the computer-generated environment projected in the virtual reality headset, allowing the user to interact with it seamlessly. This blending of the real and virtual worlds creates an almost uncanny level of immersion.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has shown the value of small, inexpensive UAS in modern warfare. MVRsimulations demonstrated its DJFT at Modern Day Marine with an off-the-shelf handheld gaming device as a controller for an FPV drone. Other controllers emulate radio equipment and laser designators, allowing users to train with a wide variety of hardware.
The three stations are configured for an observer, an instructor and a role player, the latter of whom uses a hands-on throttle-and-stick controller to fly aircraft in the simulation. All three users interact with each other through a virtual recreation of real-life locations, run on MVRsimulations’ Virtual Reality Scene Generator engine or the Modern Air Combat Environment produced by Battlespace Simulations. The computers inside each station are built with the same components one might find in a high-end professional workstation or gaming computer and run Windows 10, ensuring compatibility with other hardware and software. Each machine is light enough to be carried by two people in its packed state and has a unified onboard power supply, needing only one wall outlet for the entire station instead of one for each component inside.
Forterra’s AutoDrive and Allen Control Systems’ Bullfrog
The past few years have seen an explosion in unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) development. Companies such as Pratt Miller and Oshkosh Defense have developed small UGVs with adequate mobility to keep up with a Marine rifle squad as it moves over rough terrain, providing integrated logistics and fire support at the small unit level. All that capability comes at a cost, however. Every infantryman designated to control a UGV is a Marine not using his or her rifle, which could pose a problem in combat. Clearly, before UGVs are widely fielded in the Marine Corps, a solution is needed to eliminate the task of leading vehicles around like pack animals.
To that end, Forterra (formerly Robotic Research Autonomous Industries) spe-cializes in UGV autonomy. Their flagship product, AutoDrive®, is a retrofit package consisting of a 50-pound ruggedized computer “brain” connected to a sensor suite, capable of autonomously driving an otherwise manned or remotely con-trolled ground vehicle. The brain is more durable than a human driver, and all the sensitive electronics inside are shielded against electromagnetic interference to prevent disruptions to the mission. Although an AutoDrive-equipped vehicle can be controlled wirelessly by a remote operator anywhere in the world, its onboard software allows it to intelligently navigate to a designated location using the best available route while recognizing and avoiding environmental hazards.
This unmanned ground vehicle is equipped with an M240 machine gun, allowing it to provide fire support to a Marine rifle squad as well as carrying supplies over rough terrain. AutoDrive’s intelligent autonomy allows the vehicle to function either independently or under remote control, depending on the availability of a remote operator.Allen Control Systems builds variants of its Bullfrog autonomous weapon station for the M240, M2, M134 minigun and M230 30 mm autocannon
For UGVs operating at the squad level, this level of autonomy is crucial. An AutoDrive-equipped vehicle can trans-port extra supplies and ammunition, evacuate wounded Marines, patrol a perimeter or provide fire support to a squad in contact with the enemy, allowing Marines to focus on the mission instead of a controller. With autonomous vehicles providing organic logistical and fire support at the squad level without the need for additional vehicle crews, an infantry unit can bring more supplies and heavier weapons into battle.
To enable autonomous UGVs to fight alongside Marines in the field, Forterra is working with Allen Control Systems to provide remote weapons stations. The latter company’s Bullfrog system is essentially a small robotic turret designed to operate an unmodified M240B machine gun. Bullfrog uses an infrared camera, artificial intelligence-based targeting software and an onboard ballistic calculator to autonomously identify targets, aim the weapon and adjust its fire. The system is accurate enough to ensure a first-round hit on a standing man-sized target at up to 800 meters, with its range limited only by weather conditions and the inherent precision of the weapon and ammunition. With its superior reaction time over a human gunner combined with a traverse rate of 400 degrees per second and the ability to fire directly overhead, the Bullfrog is ideal for engaging small, fast-moving enemy UAS. Its software currently requires authorization from a human supervisor before it pulls the trigger, but a human operator is not technically necessary for the system to function.
AutoDrive and Bullfrog can interface with existing command, control and communications (C3) networks to share information about the battlespace with friendly units. Even onboard the same vehicle, a Bullfrog turret can instruct the AutoDrive “brain” to search for new targets, for example.
Forterra has demonstrated AutoDrive units on a wide variety of vehicles, ranging from small UGVs to joint light tactical vehicles (JLTVs) and even High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. The company is also pushing for wider adoption on commercial vehicles, such as forklifts and trucks, to remove human operators and therefore increase safety at industrial sites such as ports.
BAE Systems’ Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV)
The ACV was indisputably one of the stars of this year’s show. It has replaced the 1972 vintage AAV7 platform as the Marine Corps’ frontline armored personnel carrier, offering improved safety and mobility as well as a host of other modern features. This ACV-L variant is designed to transport cargo in logistics-contested environments.
The centerpiece of the show was BAE Systems’ amphibious combat vehicle (ACV), the Marine Corps’ replacement for its geriatric assault amphibious vehicle (AAV) fleet. Given its crucial role in the Corps’ mission of expeditionary war-fare, the ACV program has had a high pro-file, especially after a series of rollover accidents in 2022 and 2023. To address the resulting concerns, the Marine Corps has updated its training for vehicle crews to emphasize the new vehicle’s different handling characteristics from the legacy AAV.
The ACV’s most obvious external difference from its predecessor is its wheeled motive system. The debate between wheels and tracks has raged fiercely for decades, but generally speaking, wheels offer greater speed, whereas tracks spread a vehicle’s weight more evenly to provide better mobility over soft ground. With its centralized tire in-flation system, though, the ACV can dynamically reduce the air pressure in its own tires for operation on soft beach sand, for example. Unlike the tracked AAV, which becomes effectively immobile if a track separates or becomes dislodged, an ACV can still move under its own power with up to two of its eight wheels damaged. One additional benefit the wheeled motive system offers is increased comfort for the vehicle’s occupants. Far from a mere convenience feature, this reduces fatigue on the crew and passengers, improving their combat effectiveness.
Safety is a major area of emphasis in the ACV’s design. Although the vehicle has a somewhat high center of gravity, this is a by-product of its use of a V-shaped hull, which offers much greater protection from mines and improvised explosive devices than legacy vehicles’ flat-bottomed hulls. In the event of a rollover, individual seats with har-nesses protect the occupants from injury much better than the primitive bench seats found in the AAV. Although the use of individual seats reduces passenger capacity in relative terms, the standard ACV-P variant can still transport a full squad of Marines in safety and relative comfort.
BAE Systems offers the ACV in four variants. The ACV-P is the standard armored personnel carrier configuration, transporting 13 combat-loaded Marines and armed with a .50-caliber machine gun in a remote weapon station. This variant is by far the most numerous, with more than 300 examples already in Marine Corps service. For direct fire support against fortified positions and light armored vehicles, the ACV-30 gives up five seats in the passenger compartment to replace the machine gun with a 30 mm autocannon turret. Thirty units have been delivered so far, with up to 150 more on order. The ACV-R variant is an armored recovery vehicle mounting a crane and winch to tow disabled vehicles and pro-vide mobile maintenance support; so far, three examples have been produced for testing. The ACV-C is a dedicated com-mand platform, further reducing passen-ger capacity to seven and replacing the remote weapon station with a mounted M240 to free up space for C3 equipment.According to BAE, the ACV’s 690-horse-power engine gives all variants equal or superior mobility and range on both land and water as compared to the AAV.
At this year’s Modern Day Marine, BAE Systems showcased the ACV platform’s modularity with a test chassis in a logistics configuration, its passenger compartment and remote weapon system replaced with a cargo area and a crane similar to that on the ACV-R. This variant is not one the Marine Corps has specif-ically requested, but BAE hopes to dem-onstrate its utility in providing logistical support in contested environments. The crane can hoist up to 4,000 pounds, al-lowing it to lift a power pack (engine and transmission) to aid in repair and main-tenance of other ACVs in the field. The payload bay can store 500 cubic feet and up to 1,000 pounds of cargo, such as fuel containers, spare tires and ammunition; its roof can be opened to allow for direct loading and unloading with the crane.
Designed for frontline combat, the ACV-P and ACV-30 feature the so-called Integrated Combat System (ICS), a sophisticated battle computer that provides increased situational awareness and can help aim the remote weapon stations. Using touchscreen interfaces or physical controls, an ACV crew can work together with the ICS to efficiently locate and destroy a threat before it has a chance to shoot back. The ICS’s semi-autonomous nature allows it to track small, fast-moving targets that would otherwise be difficult for a human gunner to hit. With airburst or proximity-fuze munitions, remote weapon stations on ACVs have been demonstrated shooting down small UAS moving at up to 18 miles per hour. Similar systems have already seen combat use in Ukraine, with at least one recorded shootdown of a cruise missile.
XR Training
To support the ACV program, the Ma-rine Corps put out requests for simulation hardware and software to help ACV drivers and gunners build proficiency outside the vehicle. In February 2024, XR Training was awarded a contract to produce their aptly named Driver Train-ing System (DTS), a custom solu-tion developed specifically to meet the Marine Corps’ needs. So far, XR Training has delivered 81 such systems to Marine installations around the world and is presently working with the Corps to introduce the Gunnery Training System, which is very similar in form and function.
Each DTS unit consists of a seat, a set of hand and foot controls mimicking those of a real ACV and an augmented reality headset, all connected to a laptop computer running the simulation software. The use of augmented reality instead of monitors offers superior immersion; unlike with fully physical or fully virtual solutions, the user can see the physical controls he or she is manipulating inside the simulated environment projected by the headset. The controls and seat are connected to a common chassis, which can articulate like an amusement park ride to simulate the feeling of acceleration and travel over uneven terrain.
Although the Marine Corps has only adopted the Driver Training System, XR Training also offers a complementary Gunnery Training System, which can network with the former to allow two crewmembers to train together.
These features combine to create a level of immersion that not only improves the quality of the training, but can even make that training enjoyable. For a generation of Marines raised with video games, the ACV-DTS is essentially a high-tech driving simulator that helps them hone the skills they use every day in 18-series MOS’s. XR Training offered Marines at the expo the chance to trial the system.
After a session on the DTS, MDM attendee Sergeant Chayce Quaranta was quick to point out the value of such realistic simulated training. “I think it’s a good training tool,” he said. “It’s immersive and seems inexpensive.” In his opinion, the system’s video-game-like nature promises to increase its value as a training aid. “With Marines getting excited about that, they’re more likely to learn.”
While Quaranta maneuvered the simulated ACV through a combat zone, Sgt Bryce Jones manned the Gunnery Training System and engaged targets with the vehicle’s remote weapon station. “This does a really good job of showing how hard it is to stay on target in a moving vehicle on rough terrain,” observed Jones, a former crew-served weapons instructor. “Every MOS, I think, should have some level of simulated training.”
Another major area of consideration in the DTS design is modularity. As well as enabling the use of commercial off-the-shelf components to save cost and make maintenance easier, this design paradigm makes the system easy to reconfigure to simulate other types of vehicles should the need arise. Additionally, the entire unit can be fully disassembled in less than half an hour and transported in two Pelican-style cases.
MDM: Hands-On Educational Experience
As in every year, attendees at Modern Day Marine 2025 were treated to the opportunity to see future technology and try it out for themselves. From the Objective 1 Wargaming Convention area to the numerous vehicle and small arms simulators set up for demonstration, Marine visitors were encouraged to participate in the expo. “I expected to get hands-on, but not this hands-on,” said LCpl Michael Walsh after using a JLTV simulator.
One major draw at every Modern Day Marine expo since 2023 has been the Objective 1 Wargaming Convention, where designers demonstrate educational war games and teams compete for the Commandant’s Cup. Professional wargaming for educational and analytical purposes has seen a resurgence in recent years in the Marine Corps and other services, with the General Robert B. Neller Center for Wargaming and Analysis on MCB Quantico now open.
In addition to the acres of high-tech gear, Modern Day Marine hosts numerous professional military education briefings running nearly constantly over its three-day duration. These help place all the fancy gadgets on the show floor into their proper context as essential tools for pres-ent and future warfighters. The expo is a valuable experience “if you’re just looking for a glimpse of how much tech is out there and how the military can actually use it,” according to Master Gunny Sergeant Felipe Lopez, a defense logistics manager at CD&I, “but also you get a glimpse of what the Marine Corps actually provides to the nation—what the Marine Corps is capable of doing and just [how] being equipped with the right gear set makes us that much more lethal.”
Between the near-constant briefings and demonstrations at half a dozen presentation areas and the thousands of corporate, government and nonprofit ex-hibitors, there is always something to see or do at Modern Day Marine, and it only improves with each year. Every Marine attendee interviewed for this article had something positive to say about this year’s expo, but Sgt James Sellers, an air traffic control communications technician, put it the best: “Come to Modern Day Marine!”
Author’s bio: Sam Lichtman is a free-lance writer and editor who specializes in small arms technology and military history. He has a weekly segment on Gun Owners Radio. He is a licensed pilot who lives in Virginia.
Featured Image (Top): Modern Day Marine offers an opportunity to see and learn about new military hardware designed for the battlefields of the future. Built by Pratt Miller Defense, a subsidiary of Oshkosh, this unmanned ground vehicle (above) was just one of the several unmanned systems on display at the expo.
First Lieutenant Harris Himes stabbed holes around the side of an empty C-ration can. He ignited a heat tab inside and warmed his breakfast over the flame. The alien aroma of beans and weenies flared his hunger pangs, gratefully supplanting the reek of diesel fumes thickening the air. Two of his tanks idled on the road nearby. Himes commanded the 1st Platoon of “Bravo” Company, 3rd Tank Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, with five tanks under his charge. Infantrymen bustled about the area preparing for the mission at hand. Each had begun their day long before dawn. Now, a tired sun stirred on the eastern hills, reluctantly ascending over the battle-scarred landscape of Khe Sanh Combat Base.
An M48A3 Patton tank in Vietnam: 1stLt Harris Himes’ platoon operated five of these armored giants. Note the TC’s cupola attached above the rest of the turret, with the TC standing exposed in his hatch. A ring of rectangular vision blocks surrounds the bottom of the cupola, offering limited visibility from inside. Also, note the factory-installed machine gun inside the cupola has been removed and replaced with a “sky-mounted” gun on the exterior. (Courtesy of the USMC Vietnam Tankers Association)
Corporal Fred Kellogg waited impatiently outside the supply hooch, holding his M3 submachine gun. A line of grunts formed ahead. The sergeant in charge doled out bullets like a munificent millionaire dispensing Halloween candy from the portico of his mansion. When his turn arrived, Kellogg approached with his antiquated weapon extended, an empty bucket desperate for a treat.
“Good morning, Sergeant. I really need some new magazines for this grease gun. The springs are all worn out. They won’t hardly feed anymore.”
The sergeant glared at Kellogg. This was not the first time the tanker had come whining about his worthless weapon.
“Corporal, if the Marine Corps wanted you to have new magazines, it would have given you new magazines! Now get the hell out of my tent!”
A litany of profanity hounded Kellogg back to his tank and trailed off below the rumbling diesel engine. Kellogg climbed aboard and dropped into the tank commander’s (TC’s) hatch, tossing the grease gun aside with a slew of opinions about the supply sergeant. He ignored the looks from the rest of his crew as he prepared to roll out.
Marine engineers repair a bridge along Route 9 near Khe Sanh. In April 1968, Operation Pegasus successfully relieved the beleaguered combat base and reopened Route 9 for traffic. (Courtesy of the USMC Vietnam Tankers Association)
Kellogg positioned his tank, call sign B-12, on point leading out the Khe Sanh gate. Cpl Adrian “Buzz” Conklin com-manded B-13 in line behind him. The remainder of Himes’ platoon staged behind in a separate supply convoy. The two lead tanks would accompany an advance party of grunts from Fox Com-pany, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, sweeping ahead in search of mines laid overnight or an enemy ambush lying in wait. Today, of all days, that prospect felt surely to become reality.
It was May 19, 1968, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday. Intelligence reports streamed in over the preceding week. The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) around Khe Sanh seemed hell-bent on blocking the road out of the base and perhaps, after months of siege warfare, finally overrunning the American encampment as a gift for their leader.
The infamous siege of Khe Sanh was already over in the eyes of the world. The combat base and surrounding hill outposts had held. The NVA had failed. Much of the air support so critical to sustaining life through the siege was diverted. Virtually all the media attention shifted elsewhere. To the Marines who remained, however, a steady dose of enemy rockets and mortars belied the prevailing attitude.
Just the month prior, American commanders organized Operation Pegasus for the overland relief of Khe Sanh. Ma-rines and 1st Cavalry Division sol-diers struck out westward from their base at Ca Lu, while the defenders of Khe Sanh surged from their fighting positions in a coordinated effort. By mid-April, engi-neers cleared or rebuilt the impassable stretches of the main supply route be-tween the two combat bases, called Route 9.
Even after the official conclusion of Pegasus, Route 9 remained a tenuous 16-kilometer gauntlet. Himes’ platoon spearheaded the armored relief of Khe Sanh, arriving at the combat base at the beginning of May. Within days, the tank-ers battled through an ambush along Route 9 while escorting the platoon they relieved back to their home base in dire need of repairs. Himes’ mission now was to protect convoys moving along the treacherous route.
Himes issued assignments to his Marines the night before the May 19 supply run, placing Kellogg and Conklin with the mine sweep and two additional tanks with the main column that would depart once the advance party returned. Nearly his entire platoon held a role in the day’s mission. Himes served not only as the lieutenant in charge of the tankers, but one of the most experienced. He arrived in Vietnam in July 1967. That August, Himes was seriously wounded while com-manding a tank in combat and was evacuated to a hospital ship. He returned with his arm still in a sling to finish his tour. Much of his platoon rotated home at the end of the year and a fresh batch joined in January 1968. Several newcomers, like Kellogg, arrived as green lance corporals but were promoted and assigned as TCs in short order. Their limited combat exper-ience notwithstanding, Himes trusted their instincts and judgment.
Kellogg tested B-12’s internal comms. Charles Lehman sat to his left as loader, servicing the tank’s main gun and coaxial-mounted .30-caliber machine gun. Carlos Trinidad sat in front of Kellogg as the gunner and Stanley Williams occupied his own compartment forward as the driver. Kellogg loaded bullets into his faulty grease gun magazines. He placed the weapon in the rack behind his seat with the tank’s cache of hand grenades. He counted 19, an unusually high number. Since the M48A3 Patton tank possessed a 90 mm main gun, tankers rarely found the need to pop out of their hatch and toss a grenade.
Kellogg inspected the .50-cal. machine gun mounted inside his cupola. The space was so cramped that nothing more than a 50-round belt of ammo would fit preloaded into the weapon. Worse, some engineer back in the States decided to save space by mounting the gun on its side, oriented to fire in a way it was not designed. Tankers cursed the weapon and its tendency to jam even before the paltry 50 rounds fed through. The gun’s most valuable purpose served as an additional block of metal in front of the TC’s face. This “additional armor” saved Himes’ life when he was evacuated the previous fall, shielding him from a direct hit by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG).
Courtesy of the USMC History Division
Lehman extracted a 90 mm canister round from a honeycomb storage rack and shoved it into the main gun’s breach. Experience thus far proved these tank-sized shotgun shells most effective at disrupting an enemy ambush. Fox Company Marines moved ahead with their mine sweepers. Kellogg waited for them to exit the wire. He turned back, surveying Conklin’s tank and the rest of the convoy readying behind him. Himes stood in the road, breakfast in hand. He flashed a smile and thumbs up. Kellogg returned the gesture as the tank throttled up and rolled out.
It was 7 a.m. Innocent morning rays illuminated a pristine blue sky, clear and fresh before the midday heat. Preceding months of conflict left the area barren. Ghoulish trees cast gangly shadows across exposed red earth. Emaciated shrubbery punctuated irregular patterns of bomb craters in every direction. The road out of Khe Sanh led directly through this no man’s land, linking up with Route 9 in the surrounding hills. Uncle Ho’s expected birthday violence hung heavy over the column. How far would the convoy make it this time before the NVA attacked? The Marines pressed on, their incipient sense of disaster kindling.
The grunts worked their mine sweepers back and forth. Less than half a mile outside the gate, Kellogg’s radio crackled to life.
“Charles is in the area.”
Every Marine knew “Charlie,” the commonly held term for enemy, but “Charles?” What was the radio operator trying to say? An AK-47 opened up from a hedgerow in prompt explanation. Less than 100 feet away, concealed NVA sprang the ambush. Kellogg dropped into his seat. A ring of vision blocks sur-rounded the bottom of his cupola offering limited visibility outside. Grunts in the kill zone hit the deck, cut down by enemy fire or taking cover. Kellogg shouted through the intercom to Williams.
“Let’s go! Kick it in the ass and get us up front!”
The 50-ton machine surged forward. Bullets ricocheted off the armor as Kellogg directed Trinidad onto the bushes. The canister round boomed, devastating everything in its swath. Kellogg toggled a switch, changing the trigger controls from the main gun to the coaxial-mounted machine gun. Trinidad unleashed .30-cal. rounds as Lehman removed the spent 90 mm brass and inserted another main gun round.
Marine tanks support infantry clearing a stretch of Route 9 near Khe Sanh. (Courtesy of the USMC Vietnam Tankers Association)
Kellogg triggered his .50-cal., spraying five-round bursts along the hedgerow. Maliciously on cue, the machine gun jammed. His efforts to correct the prob-lem proved futile in the constricted cupola. Mayhem enveloped the tank. Dozens of NVA soldiers attacked from bushes and bomb craters at point-blank range. Kellogg directed Trinidad as he fired another round through the main gun, while simultaneously guiding Williams around the Marines exposed outside. How could they possibly fire, or even move, without killing one of their own?
“Traverse right.”
The thought breached Kellogg’s internal monologue without prompting, an overwhelming premonition without explanation. He obeyed. He clutched the TC override controls, arresting command from Trinidad, and spun the turret right as fast as it would move. When the main gun stood out at a 90-degree angle, the tank rocked violently as an RPG detonated on the turret. Kellogg’s intuition saved the tank. The well-aimed shot hit squarely on the gun shield, the thickest point of armor.
Smoke cleared from the vision blocks. Trinidad’s frantic voice screamed through the headset.
“I see them! I see them! I see them!”
The enemy RPG team stood in the open, taking aim once again. The tank’s gun pointed directly at them, loaded with a high explosive round. Kellogg estimated the range; they looked too close. Internal safeties prevented rounds from detonating before they reached a specified distance from the tank. Kellogg instantly decided he had to fire first. He squeezed the trigger on his override controls. The round blasted into the dirt at the RPG team’s feet, reaching bare-minimum range to explode. The enemy soldiers vaporized into pink mist.
Back inside the combat base, Himes wrapped up his morning routine brushing his teeth. His blouse clung to his sweaty back as he bent and spat out the toothpaste. To live in Vietnam was to endure habitual humidity. The sun had yet to perch on its high, oppressive throne. Staccato small arms echoed in the distance. The quickening tempo bade each Marine within earshot swivel and stare. Finally, the unmistakable crescendo of a tank’s main gun tolled. Barely half an hour passed since the mine sweep departed. Lance Corporal Jack Butcher sprinted up as the battle reverberated with a fever pitch.
1stLt Harris Himes, shortly after arriving at Khe Sanh in early May 1968, is pointing to the spot where an RPG detonated on the turret next to his cupola during an ambush along Route 9. Just days after arriving at Khe Sanh, the tankers battled through an attack while escorting the platoon they relieved back to Ca Lu, their tanks in desperate need of repairs (Courtesy of Harris Himes).
“Lieutenant! One-Two and One-Three have really gotten into something! I was monitoring the radios, and it sounds like it has really hit the fan!”
Himes ran with Butcher back to his tank, B-15, and climbed into the cupola. He ordered Cpl Rene Cerda, B-15’s TC, to collect his crew and crank up the engine. Himes grabbed a helmet. The battle played out through his headset in excited spurts.
“… over to your right …”
Machine-gun fire smothered the words.
“… a whole load of ‘em in the bushes … ”
A 90 mm roared.
“Bravo One-Two, this is Bravo One, over,” Himes chimed in on the net. Heavy breathing followed a long pause.
“Bravo One … this is One-Two … over.”
Kellogg’s reply sounded more animated than ever.
“One-Two, what’s going on out there?”
“Looks like we woke somethin’ up. Started out small, just a couple of shots after the grunts … ”
Static interrupted the words.
“ … then we got into the show and all hell broke loose.”
“One-Two, you’re breaking up. How are you doing?”
“OK so far. Busy.”
“Roger, keep at it. Keep me informed when you can.”
“Roger, One-Two out.”
Himes raised Conklin’s tank.
“Bravo One-Three, this is Bravo One, over.”
“One, this is One-Three,” Conklin replied. “SITREP the same. Lotsa enemy scramblin’, over.”
“Roger. Do it to ’em. Let me know. Out.”
Himes stood on the TC seat, half exposed above the cupola. Cpl Cerda waited further instruction.
“Rene, get over to the comm shack and try to raise someone from regiment,” Himes ordered. “We need permission to get out there and help Fred and Buzz right now!”
Himes dropped back inside the turret with the radio. Another quarter hour ticked by, the battle raging within earshot dreadfully narrated through his headset. Cerda had still not returned. Himes ordered his platoon sergeant to get the remaining tanks ready to roll, then took off for the comm shack. He found Cerda exasperated, radio in hand.
“They’re still looking for someone, Lieutenant. Nothing yet. Not sure regiment even knows what’s happening out there.”
“Stay with it.”
Himes walked back towards B-15. His remaining tanks occupied the road. Infantrymen staged in silent company listening to the chaotic show. What the hell was taking so long?
B-12’s main gun thundered once again, spraying canister fire through a row of bushes. Kellogg squinted through the vision blocks searching for additional targets. Miraculously, numerous Marines outside survived the onslaught thus far. To avoid running them over, Kellogg knew, would be the greater miracle. A lone grunt flashed into the scene framed by his vision block. Haggard, bleeding, and armed with nothing but his Ka-Bar fighting knife, the Marine charged head-long into a bomb crater full of NVA. He stabbed and slashed in a frenzy of gory violence until the tank turned block-ing Kellogg’s view, the grisly scene jettisoned in its wake. A bush rotated into the pic-ture. As if on cue, a World War II-vintage “potato masher” stick grenade arched up and away from the bush, landing in front of the tank near a scattering group of Marines with the fuze still burning.
“Drive over it!” Kellogg shouted.
Williams stopped the tank on top of the grenade, smothering the blast between the road wheels. The tank pushed forward unfazed to the bush where an NVA soldier ducked away into a spider hole. Straddling the hole, Williams threw the tank into a neutral steer, one tread moving forward while the opposite moved backward, rotating the machine in place. The treads dug into the earth, snagging the enemy soldier and crushing his hiding place. Williams shifted both treads forward, dragging the doomed enemy out of his hole and through the tread’s rear sprocket.
Enemy fire increased from B-12’s opposite flank where B-13 sat motionless on the battlefield. Through the drifting smoke, Kellogg noted his sister tank’s main gun blast deflector canted at an odd angle, damaged by an enemy RPG or mortar. Firing the main gun in this condition could mean catastrophic failure for the Marines inside the turret. Kellogg raised Conklin on the radio.
Marine tanks support a convoy along Route 9. The varying terrain enabled enemy ambushes at numerous points along the road. (USMC)
“Bravo One-Three, this is One-Two, over.”
No response. He tried several more times. Conklin finally responded.
“One-Two, this is One-Three.”
“One-Three, your main gun looks like it was hit and may be out of trunnion.”
“Roger, well I’ve been shot, and I’m not stickin’ my head to take a look!”
Unknown to Kellogg, Conklin somehow had been shot in the face, a wound that would result in the loss of one eye. B-13 sat defenseless against the renewed wave of NVA. Kellogg keyed his internal comms.
“Get us over there behind Buzz!”
Williams wheeled around to the other side of B-13, placing B-12 between Conklin and the bulk of enemy fire. Grunts hugged the dirt, pinned down across the front. A radioman directed B-12 toward a group of enemy attacking from bomb craters less than 50 feet away. At that close range, Trinidad could not depress the turret low enough to bring his guns to bear. With his .50-cal. out of commission and his turret-mounted guns useless, Kellogg resorted to the only weapons he had left.
He ordered Williams to hold course along a line of enemy-held craters, then snatched his grease gun and a handful of grenades from the rack behind him. Kellogg stood, half exposed above the cupola. The muffled sounds of gunfire inside the turret erupted into a deafening roar. Bullets zipped and cracked and pinged all around the tank. Kellogg flipped his grease gun upside down and opened fire. He prayed his unconventional firing technique might enlist the force of gravity to aid his faulty magazines feeding the bullets into the weapon. The tank approached the nearest crater. Kellogg pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it into the hole. He ducked as the explosion killed or stunned the sheltering NVA sol-diers. Kellogg resumed firing his grease gun upside down at near point- blank range. The next several bomb craters dotted the earth in an approaching batch. Kellogg steered Williams along-side, then tossed a grenade apiece into the holes until each fell silent.
Several stubborn enemy targeted Kellogg from a small crater in the tank’s path. Kellogg returned fire until the tank drove immediately alongside. He leaned out and dropped a grenade down into the hole. As the bomb exploded, Williams performed another neutral steer, crushing and grinding the dead and dying NVA beneath them.
Kellogg expended all 19 grenades wiping out enemy-held craters. His heart threatened to pound through his sternum as he collapsed back inside the tank. Some-how, despite the terrible toll the Marines exacted, NVA fire only in-creased. More than two hours had passed since they left the combat base. How much longer could they possibly survive?
Shell casings piled up inside B-12, further constricting the cramped turret. Trinidad sighted in another target. Lehman slammed in another high explo-sive round. Kellogg waited to observe the destruction his team efficiently wrought. A violent yellow flash suddenly blinded him. A terrific impact struck like a major leaguer’s bat to the chest. Kellogg folded on the turret floor. As he lay in utter silence, his memory inexplicably recalled a story from his youth of a relative who stopped breathing for several minutes in the hospital before doctors brought her back to life. Resurrected with the relative were the wonderful, luminous descriptions of the heaven that she wit-nessed while suspended between this life and the next. The sun-bathed glory she described had always impressed Kellogg. Now, he lay freezing, drowning and staring into a barren, black abyss.
“Oh, hell, I’ve gone to the wrong place.”
Cerda gathered his tankers in the road next to B-15. He lost track of how long Himes had been gone. When regiment finally located someone with authority, they denied the lieutenant’s request to support B-12 and B-13. Cerda never witnessed Himes lose his bearing, but this morning Himes was livid. After multiple requests, delays and denials, Himes stormed off to address the reg-imental office in person.
“The lieutenant said as soon as we get permission to go out, he’s riding in our tank as TC,” Cerda told his crew. “I’m going out with him. That means one of you has to stay behind.”
No one volunteered. Cerda made the Marines draw straws. Jack Butcher, his loader, came up short. Cerda assumed his spot inside the turret while LCpl John Cox took his place as B-15’s gunner and LCpl Clayton Larabell dropped into the driver’s seat.
Himes finally returned with orders. B-15 and B-14 were tasked to reinforce the beleaguered mine sweep along with the remainder of Fox Company. Himes instructed grunts to board his vehicles. The sun, now teeming with radiant fury, broiled the infantrymen crowding on top of the tanks and baked the crews hemmed inside. Cerda inspected his ammo racks and weapons. Sweat dripped from his nose as he leaned forward and rolled both pants legs to his knees. He stood in the open hatch above his head. Himes stood to his right in the TC hatch shouting orders into his headset and gesturing to the grunts swarming the road. A dozen Marines surrounded the turret, holding on wherever they could. A dozen more clung to B-14 behind them like barnacles to a ship’s bottom. The remainder piled into a 6×6 cargo truck or spread out on foot.
B-15 lumbered forward. Before lower-ing into his hatch, Cerda noticed a flak jacket tucked into the rack on the outside of the turret. Somehow, at some point, Butcher commandeered an army-style vest, more snuggly fitting and a superior construction to Marine-issued flaks. Cerda normally shunned the extra weight in the crowded interior but snatched the jacket and fastened it over his torso before wriggling down into his position. Just before 10 a.m., the two tanks and depleted infantry company surged out the gate.
The RPG penetrated B-12 through the side of the turret, detonating inside with the crew. Kellogg absorbed the brunt of the blast. He lay in a pile of shell casings drowning in his own blood. Trinidad slumped in his seat, alive but incapacitated. Lehman remained the only crewmember inside the turret able to fight. Ignoring his wounds, he struggled into a position around Trinidad and took over the trigger, laying down suppressive fire. He glanced at Kellogg. Surely, the TC was dead. When the gun ran dry, Lehman moved back to reload.
“One-Two, One-Three, this is Bravo One, over,” Himes hailed on the radio.
“This is One-Three,” Conklin replied.
“One-Two,” Lehman called in Kellogg’s stead as he fed a belt of ammo into the gun.
“Get back to base. We’ll take it from here. Well done.”
B-15 and B-14 halted near their fel-low stricken tanks. Grunts leaped from their sides and streamed out of the truck behind them. Himes ordered B-15 into the assault and commenced firing as soon as the grunts were clear. B-14, commanded by Cpl Pat Baddgor, followed into the fray.
Lehman poked his head through the loader’s hatch. Bullets cracked by and bounced off the steel around him. A blazing fire in the exterior cargo rack seared his face. The acrid smoke drove him back inside, hacking up black phlegm.
“Williams, the cavalry has arrived! Get us out of here!”
With his periscopes cracked, Williams operated the tank virtually blind. He threw the tank in reverse, backing away from the battle. The tank pitched suddenly forward, tossing Lehman across the turret. Without stopping, the tank abruptly pitched backward before level-ing out. Lehman stood in his hatch. The frame of a 6×6 truck lay ahead of B-12 in the road, hastily left in the tank’s path as the grunts poured into the battle, now flattened like a rolling pin. Lehman stooped inside the tank and gulped a breath of fresh air. He stood exposed, once more guiding Williams in reverse all the way back to Khe Sanh’s gate.
Now nearly three hours into the battle, the NVA escalated their effort in even greater proportion than the Marines. Enemy soldiers materialized seemingly everywhere. They dashed into the fight with polished parade uniforms wrapped in plastic and stowed in their backpacks, ready to don for their anticipated victory parade. They fought with fanaticism, as though Ho Chi Minh himself watched from a nearby hilltop impatiently waiting to collect his promised birthday present. Mortars and recoilless rocket fire rained down.
Within minutes of reaching the battlefield, Himes looked helplessly on as a mortar exploded in a group of Fox Company Marines, knocking out several officers and senior enlisted leaders. The company commander was quickly shot and killed. While Cerda, Cox and Larabell maneuvered the tank and poured continuous fire from the main gun, Himes remained exposed, hanging out the TC hatch and screaming to leaderless elements of grunts, directing them toward the enemy.
Cerda lost all sense of time as he loaded round after round into the main gun. Spent casings piled so high so quickly inside the turret that the hot brass burned his bare calves and singed the hair on his shins. A rapid succession of bullets thudding unsuppressed off metal above him stole his attention. His hatch stood wide open, leaving Cerda vulnerable.
“Would you look at that!” Himes shouted, as much to himself as to anyone else. “Those Marines are fighting hand-to-hand!”
Desperate for a glimpse, Cerda jumped up. The world outside brimmed in savage chaos. Marines and NVA soldiers collided in craters with buttstrokes and bayonets ordaining the victor of each individual struggle. Cerda returned to his seat after fewer than 30 seconds. Less than 30 seconds later, an RPG round detonated on the hatch still open above him. The concussion slammed him down to the turret floor. Shrapnel stitched across his back, absorbed by the flak jacket. His ears rang, his eyes watered uncontrollably, and his nose bled. He wiped his face until his vision cleared then lurched upward and secured the door.
Napalm explodes on NVA positions during the battle on May 19, 1968. Marine pilots dropped their ordnance danger-close to Marines, finally breaking the enemy’s will to fight. (Courtesy of Peter D. Hoban)
B-15 fought on unhinged. Cerda maintained a relentless pace, feeding ammo to the insatiable guns while Cox tore the enemy apart. Ricocheting bullets pinged off the exterior armor in a neverending cacophony. The sharper thuds of ricocheting RPGs signaled more imminent danger. Several times, shell casings piled so high they blocked Cerda’s access to additional rounds and interfered with the rotation of the turret. Cerda opened his hatch long enough to shot put the empty shells through the opening.
Himes rotated in his cupola calling out targets. He pivoted just in time to witness an enemy RPG team staring down the sights directly at him. Before Himes could react, the NVA soldiers exploded into pieces. B-14, situated on Himes’ flank, spotted the enemy and the tank’s gunner, Cpl Rick Oswood, obliterated them with a high explosive round.
“One-Five, this is One-Four,” Baddgor called. “You’ve got Charlie climbing on your tank!”
Himes peered through his vision blocks. Several NVA soldiers mobbed the vehicle, scaling the rear away from the main gun.
The crew inside B-14 loaded a canister round while the turret rotated. Oswood locked B-15 in his sights and pulled the trigger. More than 1,200 steel pellets erupted at close range. The shrapnel ripped the radio antennas from the outside of B-15 and destroyed everything left in the exterior racks. The unfortunate, brave NVA soldiers who mounted the tank fell to the ground in mangled heaps of flesh.
B-12 reached Khe Sanh with the fire still burning in its cargo rack. Marines extracted each member of the wounded crew. They placed Kellogg on a stretcher awaiting immediate medical evacuation. Doctors assigned a Navy corpsman to remain by Kellogg’s side to keep him alive. NVA mortars exploded around the landing zone, forcing helicopters away. The corpsman and a battalion surgeon plugged the worst of Kellogg’s bleeding holes and started four IVs, one in each arm and leg, replenishing the tanker’s system with a barrage of fluids. A monstrous sense of helplessness overwhelmed Kellogg as someone finally loaded him onto a chopper. Door gunners opened up with their machine guns as they lifted off, showering the floor with spent brass rolling around Kellogg’s stretcher. All four fluid bottles ran dry. The corpsman looked frantic as he hooked up four more, clearly concerned he might fail to keep his charge alive.
A flurry of doctors met Kellogg aboard the hospital ship and rushed him down to surgery.Someone leaned over Kellogg’s battered face as they ran alongside his stretcher wheeling across the deck.
“Do you want a priest?”
Kellogg never considered himself especially religious but knew enough to understand that last rites were usually reserved for those crossing death’s doorstep.
“Do I need one?”
The battle outside Khe Sanh raged beyond midday. Time conspired against the Marines. Cerda swapped barrels on the .30-cal. when it overheated. He ran low on 90 mm rounds. An RPG detonated on the turret next to him. The metal inside glowed with bright orange spalling, barely containing the brunt of the explo-sion. Still, shrapnel blasted through the turret, peppering Cerda’s side. The flak jacket again saved him from catastrophic injury. Hot metal sliced through the communications cord attached to his helmet. One piece dug into his wrist, cutting cleanly through his watch band. Another RPG penetrated the turret, wounding Cerda a third time along with the rest of the crew. Exhausted, dehydrated, disoriented and bleeding, the tankers fought on.
The armored giant became the favored target of every RPG within range. Multiple penetrations into B-15’s engine crippled the transmission and ruptured the fuel tanks. Unable to move and running low on ammo, the tankers persevered. When an RPG damaged the remote firing mechanism for the coaxial machine gun, Cerda took over triggering the weapon. When the turret lost all electrical power, Cerda worked the hand crank, manually traversing the main gun. Smoke suffused through the rear of the turret from the engine compartment. Within minutes, the Marines inside choked down every breath.
“Put your gas masks on!” Himes ordered.
The tankers donned their masks and continued fighting. The infiltrating smoke soon morphed into licking fire. Himes called to his Marines through the smoke and kindling flames. Cerda leaned over the .30-cal., looking more dead than alive. Cox and Larabell, muffled by their gas masks, sounded in nearly as rough of shape. B-15 faced the irreversible end of its role in the battle. Himes weighed their options aloud.
“OK gents. Looks like we’ve got two choices. We can either stay in here and burn up with the tank or jump out and get shot. What do you want to do?”
Each crewmember threw off their gas masks and scrambled outside. Cox and Larabell leaped down and sprinted toward a nearby bomb crater. Himes discovered Cerda nearly limp and stuck inside the turret, severely weakened from blood loss. Himes grasped his arms and hoisted him out onto the fender. Cerda drifted in and out of consciousness, lying in the open while Himes jumped to the ground. Enemy fire poured on unabated. Himes snatched up Cerda over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Grunts lay down a barrage of covering fire as Himes plodded toward the crater with Cerda’s weight exacerbating painful shrapnel wounds in his legs. He stumbled and fell into the hole, his entire crew miraculously intact.
The tankers joined the grunts in shoot-ing, armed only with pistols and a grease gun. A jeep zipped past the bomb crater laden with ammo. When it circled back empty of cargo, Himes clambered out into the driver’s path with arms waving over his head. The driver halted long enough to load the wounded tank crew aboard, then sped back toward the combat base.
B-15’s crew underwent the same rapid triage as the B-12 tankers. Another med-evac chopper swooped in, lifting Himes and Cerda away. Elevated high above the battlefield, Himes spotted B-14 still under heavy bombardment. B-15 remained conspicuously paralyzed like a forbidding monument erected in memory of the tankers’ heroic deeds, a conflagration beneath a billowing plume of black smoke.
After nearly six hours of fighting, the battle’s outcome remained undecided. B-14 suffered multiple penetrating RPG hits, severely wounding crewmembers in-side before finally returning to base. The platoon’s fifth and final tank, B-11, deployed with another reinforcing wave of Marine infantry. Despite everything he already endured driving Kellogg’s B-12, Stanley Williams returned to the battlefield driving B-11. Golf Company, 2/1, advanced from Khe Sanh, along with Echo 2/3 sweeping in from another direction.
The fresh wave of infantry waded through a thick field of carnage. Dead bodies clogged the ground along their path. Discarded and damaged equipment littered the ravaged landscape. The Marines rearmed themselves along the way, commandeering machine guns and bayonets cast aside. They steered clear of B-15, still burning with rounds cooking off inside. They pushed into the fray, close enough to hear NVA jeers in accented English hurled their way alongside the bullets. The grunts fired back with, “Ho Chi Minh sucks!” and a serenade of machine guns.
Napalm finally broke the enemy’s back. A-4 Skyhawks streaked in so low the grunts could see the pilots’ faces as they dropped their terrifying ordnance. The firebombs exploded danger-close to Marines scattered across the field, some as close as 50 yards away. The Marines shielded themselves and gasped for breath as the flash inferno sucked the oxygen from the air and burned the enemy soldiers alive.
Both contestants embroiled in the birthday battle outside Khe Sanh suffered dearly. Eighteen Marines from 2/1 died, with several dozen more wounded. One of the KIA, Private First Class Patrick Riordan, would posthumously receive a Silver Star for his heroism. Lieutenant Colonel William R. Duncan, the battalion commander of 2/1, also received a Silver Star. The whole battalion received a Mer-itorious Unit Citation. According to the 3rd Tank Battalion command chron-ology, May 19 cost the NVA 165 confirmed KIA. The number of dead dragged away or wounded to escape the battlefield will never be known.
In terms of percentages, the tank platoon withstood perhaps the most shocking casualties. Eleven tankers received Purple Hearts, more than half of the platoon. Six of these required medical evacuation. All five of Himes’ tanks absorbed at least three RPG hits each, with B-15 incinerating on the battlefield as a complete combat loss. Miraculously, every tanker survived.
Surgeons counted 73 shrapnel holes spread across Kellogg’s body. They ex-tracted the largest pieces and stitched over the rest. Kellogg recuperated on the hospital ship for two weeks before stabilizing enough for a flight to Japan. He spent nearly a year fully recovering back in the States. The Corps assigned him as an instructor at the tank schoolhouse in Del Mar, Calif., to finish out his enlist-ment. For his role in the battle, Kellogg eventually received a Bronze Star with combat “V.”
Himes returned to the unit following his recovery. He walked with a cane but was determined once again to be with his Marines. After 10 months leading a tank platoon in combat and two harrowing medical evacuations, the battalion ordered Himes to finish out his tour in the rear. He remained on active duty following his time in Vietnam for another two years, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.
Cerda shuffled through multiple hos-pitals after May 19. He spent several days fighting a blinding headache before doctors at a U.S. Air Force hospital finally X-rayed his head. They discovered a large chunk of metal embedded in his skull and rushed Cerda into surgery. Like Kellogg, Cerda finished out his enlistment and left active duty. In recognition of his part in the ambush, the Marine Corps presented Cerda with the Silver Star.
The passage of time has clouded the memory and significance of May 19. Today, the ambush exists in the shadows of larger events that took place around Khe Sanh. The exception lies within the battle’s survivors, who lived their lives in memory of their fallen brothers and defined by the experience. Kellogg en-dured decades of vivid nightmares that began before he was even evacuated from the battlefield in his semi-conscious state. He was convinced he had accidentally run over Marines during the battle. The compressed chaos surrounding his tank made the possibility inevitable, he believed. He refused to discuss the battle, despite its inescapable grip and undeniable impact on his later career in law enforcement. Not until 2003 at a reunion of Vietnam tankers did he begin to open up. The decision ushered in a new phase of camaraderie, understanding and healing.
Kellogg eventually connected with veterans from 2/1 who also survived the battle. He met a grunt who watched Kellogg’s tank in action throughout the engagement from less than 20 feet away. The veteran confirmed that Kellogg never ran over any Marines. For Kellogg, the news washed over like a cleansing rain. His nightmares vanished.
Veterans of the May 19 battle sit for an oral history interview at a reunion of the USMC Vietnam Tankers Association in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2023. From left to right: Doc Michael Pipkin, a U.S. Navy corpsman assigned to Fox Co, 2/1; Fred Kellogg, B-12 TC; Harris Himes, platoon commander, 1st Platoon, Bravo Co, 3rd Tank Battalion; Rick Oswood, B-14 gunner and Rene Cerda, B-15 tank commander. (Courtesy of The USMC Vietnam Tankers Association)
In 2008, Himes led an effort to reunite survivors on the 40th anniversary of the battle. Marines gathered from around the country at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va., to reminisce and fill each others’ gaps in understanding. Himes, Cerda, Kellogg and many others from the platoon all joined numerous others from the infantry units that played a part. The resulting picture of May 19, 1968, proved more complete than ever before.
“A focused mission that can cost you your life is something that will forge a relationship that deserves to be kept,” Himes reflected during the reunion. Those relationships forged nearly 60 years ago persist even now.
The medals for valor some of the tank-ers received were downgraded from Himes’ original recommendations. Himes submitted Cerda to receive the Navy Cross. The rapid disintegration of his platoon also led to awards less than fitting for the heroism exhibited. Himes penned Kellogg’s award citation in the days following the ambush, large-ly unaware of the depth of courage and specific actions Kellogg had taken through–out the engagement. Those details would only be filled in over the ensuing decades. Eventually, Himes learned that Cox and Conklin both received the Silver Star, Larabell a Bronze Star with “V,” and Baddgor and Oswood both a Navy Commendation Medal. To this day, Himes remains convinced the valor of his men deserves much higher recognition.
“Heroism is just doing your job even though it’s scary and sometimes you’re a little scared,” Himes stated today. “The circumstances just pile up and it’s the aftermath that says whether you’re a hero. As far as I’m concerned, all my men are heroes.”
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. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children.
Featured Image (Top): Cpl Fred Kellogg seated on his cupola, covered in dirt after riding the second tank in line during a road march. Kellogg arrived in Vietnam in January 1968 and was quickly promoted to his role as TC. (Courtesy of Fred Kellogg)
It was Dec. 18, 1965, and First Lieutenant Harvey “Barney” Barnum maneuvered east along a dirt road that crossed hills of dense jungle and wound around flooded rice paddies of the Quế Sơn Valley with the rest of Company H, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment. The road was designated Route 586, but no vehicle could traverse it.
According to Nicholas J. Schlosser’s pamphlet titled “In Persistent Battle” about Operation Harvest Moon, Barnum had arrived in Vietnam 10 days earlier and was designated Co H’s artillery forward observer. His deployment was a 90-day temporary duty assignment from his duty station at Marine Barracks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In 1965, the Marine Corps sent company-grade officers and senior en-listed for three-month deployments to Vietnam to gain combat experience and lessons learned to share with their home units. Marine Barracks Pearl Harbor had only one allotment available, and as the only bachelor among the officers, Barnum volunteered so the others could spend the holidays with their families. The rest of Company H had been in Vietnam for five months already and were expected to be there after his tour ended. Despite being the newly assigned forward observer in an experienced infantry company, Barnum would bring them to safety from the brink of annihilation over the next few hours.
Company H was serving as the rear element in 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment’s column movement along Route 586 as part of Operation Harvest Moon. Co H was attached to 2/7 to replace the beleaguered Co E, 2/7 on Dec. 13 after combat casualties and immersion foot made the company combat ineffective, according to Schlosser. In the days since, they had covered more than 30 kilometers of flooded roads and paddies on foot. On Dec. 18, the battalion planned to reach Route 1 by nightfall, before all visibility would be lost due to the thick cloud cover of a winter monsoon. They expected this to be the last day of the operation and that the trucks awaiting them at Route 1 would bring 2/7 to Chu Lai and Co H back to Da Nang.
Operation Harvest Moon, which intended to clear the 1st Viet Cong Regiment from the Quế Sơn Valley, had begun 11 days earlier. With brigade-strength task forces of U.S. Marines and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers, this was the largest combined operation of the conflict to date, according to “U.S. Marines In Vietnam: The Landing And The Buildup, 1965,” by Dr. Jack Shulimson and Maj Charles M. Johnson. Unfortunately, the operation did not go as planned. In the first two days, am-bushes by the 1st Viet Cong Regiment reduced the combat power of one ARVN battalion by one-third in only 15 minutes and overran another ARVN regiment, killing their regimental commander. By the third day, the Marine Corps task force commander was relieved and cooperation between the Marine Corps and ARVN deteriorated, according to Schlosser.
However, the operation continued, and Barnum and the rest of Co H trudged on. For the Marines, the weather was the greatest enemy of the operation so far. Despite a resupply of thousands of socks, many Marines suffered immersion foot. After months of jungle hiking, their boots were rotting away. So were their chafed feet. Company E 2/7 evacuated 54 Marines for immersion foot before Company H 2/9 attached to the battalion. Barnum later recalled in a Congressional Medal of Honor Society interview that when he first heard gunfire ahead, “I didn’t think much of it.” The main body of the column had reached the small market town of Ky Phu—only 9 km before Route 1. Around 1:30 p.m., the previously distant gunfire erupted along the column. The battalion had experienced sniper fire in the days prior, but this was different. This was a well-coordinated ambush of the entire battalion.
Two companies of the 1st Viet Cong Regiment stretched 1,000 yards in entrenched, well-camouflaged positions. Movement by 2/7 halted in the face of the sudden barrage of machine-gun fire. The lead element in the column, Co G, established a defensive position east of Ky Phu as they started to receive mortar fire. Fortunately, many of the mortar rounds sank into the muck around them. After days of rain, the saturated soil made the fire much less effective, according to Schlosser. Viet Cong snipers, however, were undeterred and killed several Co G radio operators in the opening minutes of the ambush.
On Dec. 10, 1965, Marines advance along rice paddy dikes in pursuit of enemy forces.
The battalion commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Leon Utter, lost contact with much of the battalion as the radio operators were killed. In the turmoil, some radio traffic went out on the wrong nets and the battalion’s column started to separate. Two platoons of Co F were sent to relieve Co G in the defensive positions east of Ky Phu. The rear guard, Co H, however, was still about 500 meters west of the village. Two Viet Cong companies attacked from north and south of the road to exploit this gap. When the attack intensified on the western perimeter of the village, Co F was ordered back west.
As Co F raced west, the VC unleashed a flurry of fire upon Co H. Effective rifle, heavy machine-gun, recoilless rifle and mortar fire from entrenched and camouflaged positions curtailed any movement from Co H. In a 2021 interview with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Barnum recalled, “The enemy knew what the hell they were doing, and it was hellacious.” He first sent a call for fire to the artillery battery to take out the machine-gun emplacement on their right flank. The enemy positions were so close, he said, that “the first fire mission I call[ed] was in on that trench line. The first rounds we took some ‘shrapmetal’ in our positions.” Barnum ceased fire after two rounds. He could only adjust fire for missions that weren’t overhead because the targets were at the battery’s maximum range and the missions were dangerously close.
Meanwhile, Barnum saw Hospital Corpsmen Wesley “Doc Wes” Berrard streak by, yelling, “The skipper’s down! The skipper’s down!” About 50 yards ahead, he saw a pile of Marines. Among them were Co H Commanding Officer, Captain Paul L. Gormley Jr., and his radio operator, Lance Corporal Savoy. Fifty-seven millimeter recoilless rifle fire hit them in the opening salvos of the ambush. Doc Wes was shot several times in his dash to the CO. So was the artillery scout sergeant, Private First Class McClain, who followed him.
Barnum was still adjusting artillery fire when he realized that in a matter of moments, the company CO, radio operator, corpsman and scout sergeant were all down ahead of him. Now Barnum raced forward, but it was too late to help Savoy—he was already dead. Barnum carried Gormley back to a covered position as the firefight continued all around him. He had been with the company for a matter of days. Now the commanding officer was dying in his arms.
Marines of G/2/7 search for VC during Operation Harvest Moon in 1965.
Back at Ky Phu, the battalion began establishing defensive positions around the village. Company H, however, remained pinned down 500 meters away, with a dead commanding officer and radio operator and no radio connection to the leadership.
All around Barnum, the platoon commanders of Co H were in their own firefights. As he held his dead CO, he realized that the radio was still out there. To reestablish communications with the battalion and provide direction to the company, he had to retrieve it. Barnum raced back to Savoy’s body and slung the radio (and its telltale 3-foot antenna) onto his back. He later explained in an interview, “I think the PRC-25 saved our lives.” He immediately contacted Lieutenant Colonel Utter to report the situation, to which Utter replied, “Young man, it sounds like you have a grasp of the situation. Make sure everyone knows you’re the skipper.”
Although airstrikes from Air Force B-52s helped to drive out the enemy, the hills had to be combed on foot by Marines.
Utter also warned, “Lieutenant, you’ve gotta come on out. We can’t come get you. We’re in our own fight in here. Can’t come out and get you. It’s getting dark. If you don’t fight your way out, you’re there by yourself tonight.” Barnum was the only artilleryman in the company of infantrymen, but he was now the one in command. He later reflected, “When I took over that company, they didn’t even know my name, but I had a bar on my collar and they knew that lieutenants were supposed to give orders. So when I started giving orders, they did exactly what I tasked them to do.” He was grateful that he was only three years out of The Basic School, where every Marine Corps officer is trained in the principles of leading as an infantry platoon commander.
Barnum needed to evacuate the dead and wounded and break through the enemy ambush to rejoin 2/7 in Ky Phu. He recalled, “These young Marines who were pinned down and scared, all they wanted was someone to give them direction. And when I started doing things, they got motivation going. So, at that point, I launched a counterattack on that trench line to our right.” The consequences of command soon weighed on Barnum. “I just got four Marines wounded, and I turn to the next four and say, ‘OK, it’s your turn,’ ” he relayed in an interview with the VA. But he maintained his composure and continued to lead: “We mounted a charge, and I led it. I didn’t say, ‘Go get ’em,’ I said, ‘Follow me.’ And I took off and they were right behind me.”
Now one enemy machine gun was out of action, but the attack continued unrelenting. An hour and a half after the ambush began, close air support arrived: three UH-1E Iroquois, armed with 3.5 mm rockets. Barnum put his experience as a forward observer to good use. His first target was a nearby trench line. He marked it with white phosphorus and talked the pilots onto the target. Barnum continued marking targets until he ran out of white phosphorus, and then, according to Schlosser, he “stood up there and was pointing with [his] arms outstretched at the targets, and the chopper pilots flew down the axis of [his] arms at the targets.”
Company H rallied under Barnum’s leadership. Slowly, they fought back the attack and established a defensive position around a small hill north of the road. Barnum still had to manage an evacuation, so he sent engineers out to blow down trees to make space for a landing zone. After four hours of fighting, they were still repelling the ambush south of the road but had prepared a landing zone on the north side. Barnum explained in his Congressional Medal of Honor Society interview, “Doc Wes was shot five or six times, and he would not let us evacuate him. … He was still giving instructions on how to handle the other cases that were serious and he was the last one he would let me put on a helicopter. … He got shot for the seventh time, but he lived.” Company H’s defense of the landing zone ensured the UH-34 Seahorses evacuated all of the company’s dead and wounded.
Following the loss of his company commander and radio operator to enemy fire, 1stLt Harvey Barnum assumed command of his unit, moving through heavy fire to rally and reorganize his fellow Marines. Barnum urged his troops forward in a successful counterattack, exposing himself to direct enemy fire. After the attack, Barnum coordinated the landing of two transport helicopters to evacuate the dead and wounded, ensuring the safety and recovery of his men. Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze presented Barnum with the Medal of Honor in a ceremony held on Feb. 27, 1967.
Barnum and the company still had those 500 meters of open rice paddies to cross under heavy fire to rejoin the rest of the battalion in Ky Phu. It was over a quarter of a mile of hell for Co H. Barnum collected all the inoperable radios, ma-chine guns and other equipment, and he had his engineers destroy them to lighten the load. Next, he had the company drop their packs in a pile to burn them. Barnum explained to the company, “Marines don’t leave anybody on the battlefield. Someone drops, you pick him up and bring him with you. So that’s the reason I made you light.”
Relying on his early training, Barnum started moving the company across the rice paddy in fire team rushes. He soon realized that he would never maneuver the entire company across the dike while still receiving intensive fire. Barnum contacted 2/7 and had them provide a base of fire so that he could rush squad by squad across the dike. As each new squad prepared to rush, he told them, “You run as fast as you can. Don’t even stop. The only time you stop is if someone gets shot and you pick them up.” It took almost an hour, but Co H made it into Ky Phu before dark.
Two days later, Co H returned to 2/9, and an infantry officer was assigned command. Shortly after, Barnum was informed that Lieutenant General Walt, III Marine Amphibious Force Commander, had nominated him for the Medal of Honor. Just over 14 months later, Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze presented Barnum with the medal at a ceremony at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C.
Then-Capt Harvey “Barney” Barnum, USMC
Barnum served in the Marine Corps for another 24 years. In that time, he returned to Vietnam to command Battery E, 2nd Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment; taught at The Basic School; commanded 2nd Battalion, Recruit Training Regiment, Parris Island, S.C., and served as Chief of Operations, U.S. Central Command, among many other assignments. After the Marine Corps, his life of service continued as the principal director of Drug Enforcement Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense; assistant secretary of the Navy for Reserve Affairs; acting assistant secretary of the Navy (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) and in leadership positions with several nonprofits.
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus shakes hands with retired Marine Col. and Medal of Honor recipient Harvey C. Barnum, Jr. during the renaming of the Navy Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, DDG 124 at Marine Barracks Washington, July 28th, 2016. The destroyer was renamed USS Harvey C. Barnum, Jr. Barnum earned the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam as a first lieutenant. (Marine Corps Photo by Lance Cpl. Dana Beesley/Released)
Barnum’s quick action, composure and sound leadership saved the lives of over 130 Marines and corpsmen of Co H on Dec. 18, 1965. In the Congressional Medal of Honor Society interview, Barnum reflected on that day, explaining that he wears his Medal of Honor “in honor of those corpsmen and young Marines that I had the opportunity to lead on the field of battle that day. And anytime I put this medal on, I think of them. And any actions I do or decisions I make, I make it in their name.”
Author’s bio: William J. Prom was a Marine Corps artillery officer from 2009-2014 and now serves as Development Director for the nonprofit veteran service organization, NextOp. He is the 2022 U.S. Naval Institute Naval History Author of the Year, and his work has appeared in Naval History and Proceedings.
Featured Image (Top): Radio operator Cpl Patrick Iacunato, left, and 1stLt Harvey “Barney” Barnum pose for a photo together on Dec. 20, 1965, two days after Barnum’s actions during Operation Harvest Moon, which resulted in the Medal of Honor.
