My husband received this email today from our son, LCpl Reece Lodder. It speaks for itself.
Hey Dad,
Please pass this on to the family. I don't have everyone's addresses on my
Marine Corps email. This is a goosebump-inducing testament to why Marines,
sailors, soldiers and airman fight for the U.S. and each other.
Semper fidelis,
Reece
Sent: 12/5/2010 8:00:45 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
Subj: LAST 6 SECONDS - LTGEN KELLY
The last half of a speech given by LtGen Kelly to the Semper Fi Society of
St. Louis MO on 13 November. As always around the birthday of the Marine Corps,
November 10, it is common to highlight the legacy of the Marine Corps through
the actions of those who bravely defended the country, or as Admiral Nimitz said
after Iwo Jima, “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue.”
As you probably know General Kelly’s son died 4 days before this speech by
an IED in Afghanistan while on his 3d combat tour. He was a second lieutenant
doing what lieutenants and NCO’s do – leading from the front and forward into
the enemy. His name was Robert Kelly.
Where do we get such people? We are most fortunate they walk among us and
protect us. Baker, surgeon
"I will leave you with a story about the kind of people they are…about the
quality of the steel in their backs…about the kind of dedication they bring to
our country while they serve in uniform and forever after as veterans. Two
years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the
22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and
2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their
deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat
tour. Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22
and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch
together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks
housing 50 Marines. The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to
100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists
in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by
Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and
daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well.
He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other
hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island. They were from two
completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never
have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously
depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might
have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same
crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as
close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.
The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure
went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no
unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and
Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes
Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the
words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved
two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of
Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq.
A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way-perhaps
60-70 yards in length-and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey
walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated,
killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were
damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine
came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it
stopped. Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of
explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in
their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American
brothers-in-arms.
When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it
happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this
struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace
in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground
and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission
takes. But this just seemed different. The regimental commander had just
returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American
witnesses to the event-just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of
finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to
acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two
eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy
Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the
signature of a general officer.
I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen
Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into
the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine.
They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines
began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and
then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion. All survived. Many
were injured…some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears
welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.” “What
he didn’t know until then,” he said, “and what he learned that very instant, was
that Marines are not normal.” Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the
name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.” “No
sane man.” “They saved us all.”
What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later
after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy
Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast,
recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had
described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley
until it detonated.
You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in
their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately
come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into
their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or
call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an
instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes
before: “…let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” The two Marines had
about five seconds left to live.
It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take
aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and
gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi
police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and
rational men they were-some running right past the Marines. They had three
seconds left to live.
For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing
non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds
take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get
past them to kill their brothers-American and Iraqi-bedded down in the barracks
totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on
two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have
known they were safe…because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide
bomber. The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front
of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never
hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They
never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With
their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as
fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.
Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country,
their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for
two very brave young men to do their duty…into eternity. That is the kind of
people who are on watch all over the world tonight-for you.
We Marines believe that God gave America the greatest gift he could bestow
to man while he lived on this earth-freedom. We also believe he gave us another
gift nearly as precious-our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and
Marines-to safeguard that gift and guarantee no force on this earth can every
steal it away. It has been my distinct honor to have been with you here today.
Rest assured our America, this experiment in democracy started over two
centuries ago, will forever remain the “land of the free and home of the brave”
so long as we never run out of tough young Americans who are willing to look
beyond their own self-interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest
and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us
harm.
God Bless America, and….SEMPER FIDELIS!"
"A great leader can see farther than those around him, knows what is coming
before it happens, and has a plan to implement before adversity arrives with
shock and surprize"
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