seruriermarshal
06-03-2004, 06:34 AM
The Right Thing to Do
FORT HOOD, Texas, June 2, 2004 — The patrol assignment for Forward Operating Base Cobra that evening was routine. The soldiers would search the towns of Jalula and As Sadiyah, in the Sunni Triangle of northeastern Iraq, for weapons or wanted insurgents.
The patrol usually returned to camp without incident. But the actions of the infantrymen and medics during a firefight October 3, 2003, became something the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division will remember every time they walk into their regimental room.
“It was a strange evening,” Capt. Matthew Weinrich, the company commander, begins the story. “I was going to go out with those guys, but a local Iraqi came in with intelligence, so I stayed in camp to question him. This was a typical patrol, two tanks in the area and the three Bradleys. The side mission was to go and search a tribal hall building for weapons.”
Weinrich planned “to link up with the soldiers when they came back through camp on their way to the next town.” He interviewed the Iraqi and waited for the patrol to arrive and pick him up.
“You could hear explosions from far away. First there was one small boom and then a second boom. A week or two before, mortars were dropped on our [forward operating base]. At first, we thought it was that. Then we realized it was RPG (rocket propelled grenade) fire. Then the first radio call came from the platoon leader and he was certain the first vehicle had been hit.”
Weinrich scrambled his quick reaction force in four Bradleys. Continuing radio contact with the attacked patrol confirmed American casualties.
“It was very, very dark,” 1st Sgt. Herb Silva picks up the story. “You couldn’t see 15 feet. It was overcast, pitch black, no illumination. We conducted patrols in both towns daily. No set pattern, three times a day, sometimes two in the day and one at night, always mixing it up.”
Silva had been sitting in camp, just outside the command post when the radio call confirmed “friendly casualties. The medics were getting spun up,” he said, describing the speed with which the troops responded. “One of my primary functions as a tactician is to get medics to the point of injury and back to the medical station as quickly as possible.”
Silva’s group arrived at the ambush point within six minutes. “I remember looking through the hatch with night vision goggles as we were driving and seeing the Bradleys’ shooting 25 mms (millimeters) with their ‘toot toot toot’ sound and their distinctive tracers.”
“They were still engaged in a firefight when we drove up,” Staff Sgt. Daniel Pimental, the medic who responded with Silva said. “It was bad. The Bradleys were all spaced out. We were concerned about where the casualties were. We ran to where the first Bradley had stopped after it was disabled.”
“It was a one in a million shot,” Lt. Col. John Miller, III, commander, said, describing where the rocket propelled grenade struck the Bradley. “It was a simultaneous [rocket propelled grenade], small arms ambush. The guy (insurgent) couldn’t have made that shot again if he had to. It just hit a spot on the Bradley that allowed it to penetrate. Their next shot hit a second Bradley and just glanced off.”
When the first rocket propelled grenade struck the Bradley, Cpl. Heath Pirtle was manning the gun turret. Sgt. Rene Cortez was standing next to him when the rocket propelled grenade hit. Shrapnel struck Cortez, hitting his leg. Pirtle caught the bulk of the rocket propelled grenade in his torso and abdomen.
Silva’s group spotted the wounded soldiers being cared for by the embedded medic when they pulled up to the ambush. “I remember seeing a soldier on a litter by the back of the ramp on the Bradley,” Silva said. “A medic was over him, attending to him. Cortez was laying on a ramp. We spun the vehicle and backed up, lowered our ramp and loaded Pirtle onto it and lowered it into the vehicle. We grabbed Cortez and took off like lightening.”
The medics were headed to camp in less than two minutes, but Pirtle’s vital signs were failing. “He wasn’t breathing well. I peeked under the dressing and immediately told everyone ‘We have to go right now!’” Pimental said. “He was a lot worse than what we thought he was, way way worse that what we had initially been told.”
Pirtle stopped breathing and Pimental started CPR and told Silva to call the aid station, “Get a bird there now!” The group arrived back in camp in less than five minutes.
Capt. John Shaughnessy, the senior medical officer and physician’s assistant was waiting for the wounded soldiers. It fell to him to ****ounce Pirtle. “I declared him dead and immediately started working on Team Leader Gomez. He had shrapnel in his leg and his face was burned from the blast,” Shaughnessy said. The helicopter arrived in a few minutes and transported Pirtle’s body and Gomez to Balad.
The medical team was still cleaning up from the soldiers when the next call for treatment came. The patrol and its reinforcements were pursuing the Iraqis. “They were running on foot through irrigated farmland. It was muddy and the ditches are about two feet deep. With our thermal sights we could only see them when they stood up because the cooler mud masks their body temperature,” Weinrich said.
The Cobra patrol had spotted the ambushers using the ditches for cover. One Iraqi was dead and another was lying in a ditch, severely wounded, trying to crawl away unseen. The soldiers had him pinned down from one position as another group of soldiers worked their way to him, maneuvering among the irrigation ditches.
“My guys could have taken him at any time but my guidance to my soldiers is once you have someone pinned down and they can’t move we need to capture them and get information like their name and tribe,” Weinrich said.
And although this was not the first time medical personnel at Forward Operating Base Cobra had treated a wounded Iraqi, this was different. “It was more difficult on medical guys because they had just ****ounced one of our guys, treated one and flew them out on a helicopter and now they have to turn around and treat him,” Weinrich explained. “He was screaming about the treatment, he wasn’t happy about the IV or the catheter, he’d probably been hit a couple of times. That guy did not want to be touched. He knew he was hurt pretty bad. He had been hit with 25mm HEs (high explosives).”
The other soldiers explained their actions towards the Iraqi. “We’re Americans and our instinct is to do the right thing. He’s a POW now and we have to feed him, shelter him, give him food and water. We are trained American soldiers,” Silva said.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Shaughnessy said. “They’re people too and even though they are trying to kill us, we take care of them as well as we do our own. Even though Cpl. Pirtle was our only KIA (killed in action) in our battalion, I do my best to treat them and ease their pain. I’m thinking about 12 guys giving the Army a black eye and I’m thinking here I am saving the life of an enemy that just killed one of our own.”
“The Iraqi was badly injured, but we treated him like anyone else,” Pimental said. “This wasn’t the first time. It was just the first time we had to deal with a guy who killed one of our own. This is our job. You put aside personal feelings and treat this one like any other. There’s a lot of emotion, anger and frustration, but this wasn’t the first time we had to deal with these emotions. The only difference was we knew ahead of time we had lost one of our own and this was the bad guy.”
The group’s commander said the actions of his soldiers didn’t surprise him.
“The thing I remember most is these soldiers fought so hard to keep Cortez and Pirtle alive and then treated the attacker and kept him alive,” Miller said. “The fact that soldiers treated an Iraqi that moments before had attacked them doesn’t surprise me at all. We saw it routinely. It’s so common we take it for granted that our soldiers set aside their emotions that this person was just trying to kill them. That soldiers could detach themselves and treat the enemy was commonplace throughout the brigade and the division. I believe its commonplace throughout the theatre.”
To honor Pirtle and his sacrifice, the 2-8’s regimental room was renamed the Pirtle Room. “It’s the most important room in the battalion, the heart and soul of the unit,” Miller said. “After Cpl. Pirtle was killed we wanted to figure out a way we would never forget the sacrifice he made. We wanted to have a ceremony involving the comrades closest to him and his family.”
Miller stops telling the story then and walks to the Pirtle Room. He points to the framed photograph of Pirtle, the unit crest, the wall honoring Medal of Honor soldiers. Miller points to Pirtle’s picture and notes the inscription. Like the other soldiers in the 2-8, Pirtle was carrying a small United States flag in his breast pocket when he was killed. When Miller comes to the double windows which look out on the grounds, he pauses.
“I was standing at the podium (during the renaming ceremony) and I was talking about these soldiers and Cpl. Pirtle. I looked out the windows and there, standing at attention was the entire company, everyone who couldn’t fit into the room. No one told them to do it; no one ordered them to attention.”
Miller’s voice drops and then he stops talking and looks out the window again. “It’s important to me, it’s important to the battalion that we never forget a soldier’s sacrifice. Every soldier in understands the sacrifice you make for duty. Some may not come home. We were fortunate to only lose one, but it was one too many.”
From (http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/jun2004/a060204d.html)
FORT HOOD, Texas, June 2, 2004 — The patrol assignment for Forward Operating Base Cobra that evening was routine. The soldiers would search the towns of Jalula and As Sadiyah, in the Sunni Triangle of northeastern Iraq, for weapons or wanted insurgents.
The patrol usually returned to camp without incident. But the actions of the infantrymen and medics during a firefight October 3, 2003, became something the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division will remember every time they walk into their regimental room.
“It was a strange evening,” Capt. Matthew Weinrich, the company commander, begins the story. “I was going to go out with those guys, but a local Iraqi came in with intelligence, so I stayed in camp to question him. This was a typical patrol, two tanks in the area and the three Bradleys. The side mission was to go and search a tribal hall building for weapons.”
Weinrich planned “to link up with the soldiers when they came back through camp on their way to the next town.” He interviewed the Iraqi and waited for the patrol to arrive and pick him up.
“You could hear explosions from far away. First there was one small boom and then a second boom. A week or two before, mortars were dropped on our [forward operating base]. At first, we thought it was that. Then we realized it was RPG (rocket propelled grenade) fire. Then the first radio call came from the platoon leader and he was certain the first vehicle had been hit.”
Weinrich scrambled his quick reaction force in four Bradleys. Continuing radio contact with the attacked patrol confirmed American casualties.
“It was very, very dark,” 1st Sgt. Herb Silva picks up the story. “You couldn’t see 15 feet. It was overcast, pitch black, no illumination. We conducted patrols in both towns daily. No set pattern, three times a day, sometimes two in the day and one at night, always mixing it up.”
Silva had been sitting in camp, just outside the command post when the radio call confirmed “friendly casualties. The medics were getting spun up,” he said, describing the speed with which the troops responded. “One of my primary functions as a tactician is to get medics to the point of injury and back to the medical station as quickly as possible.”
Silva’s group arrived at the ambush point within six minutes. “I remember looking through the hatch with night vision goggles as we were driving and seeing the Bradleys’ shooting 25 mms (millimeters) with their ‘toot toot toot’ sound and their distinctive tracers.”
“They were still engaged in a firefight when we drove up,” Staff Sgt. Daniel Pimental, the medic who responded with Silva said. “It was bad. The Bradleys were all spaced out. We were concerned about where the casualties were. We ran to where the first Bradley had stopped after it was disabled.”
“It was a one in a million shot,” Lt. Col. John Miller, III, commander, said, describing where the rocket propelled grenade struck the Bradley. “It was a simultaneous [rocket propelled grenade], small arms ambush. The guy (insurgent) couldn’t have made that shot again if he had to. It just hit a spot on the Bradley that allowed it to penetrate. Their next shot hit a second Bradley and just glanced off.”
When the first rocket propelled grenade struck the Bradley, Cpl. Heath Pirtle was manning the gun turret. Sgt. Rene Cortez was standing next to him when the rocket propelled grenade hit. Shrapnel struck Cortez, hitting his leg. Pirtle caught the bulk of the rocket propelled grenade in his torso and abdomen.
Silva’s group spotted the wounded soldiers being cared for by the embedded medic when they pulled up to the ambush. “I remember seeing a soldier on a litter by the back of the ramp on the Bradley,” Silva said. “A medic was over him, attending to him. Cortez was laying on a ramp. We spun the vehicle and backed up, lowered our ramp and loaded Pirtle onto it and lowered it into the vehicle. We grabbed Cortez and took off like lightening.”
The medics were headed to camp in less than two minutes, but Pirtle’s vital signs were failing. “He wasn’t breathing well. I peeked under the dressing and immediately told everyone ‘We have to go right now!’” Pimental said. “He was a lot worse than what we thought he was, way way worse that what we had initially been told.”
Pirtle stopped breathing and Pimental started CPR and told Silva to call the aid station, “Get a bird there now!” The group arrived back in camp in less than five minutes.
Capt. John Shaughnessy, the senior medical officer and physician’s assistant was waiting for the wounded soldiers. It fell to him to ****ounce Pirtle. “I declared him dead and immediately started working on Team Leader Gomez. He had shrapnel in his leg and his face was burned from the blast,” Shaughnessy said. The helicopter arrived in a few minutes and transported Pirtle’s body and Gomez to Balad.
The medical team was still cleaning up from the soldiers when the next call for treatment came. The patrol and its reinforcements were pursuing the Iraqis. “They were running on foot through irrigated farmland. It was muddy and the ditches are about two feet deep. With our thermal sights we could only see them when they stood up because the cooler mud masks their body temperature,” Weinrich said.
The Cobra patrol had spotted the ambushers using the ditches for cover. One Iraqi was dead and another was lying in a ditch, severely wounded, trying to crawl away unseen. The soldiers had him pinned down from one position as another group of soldiers worked their way to him, maneuvering among the irrigation ditches.
“My guys could have taken him at any time but my guidance to my soldiers is once you have someone pinned down and they can’t move we need to capture them and get information like their name and tribe,” Weinrich said.
And although this was not the first time medical personnel at Forward Operating Base Cobra had treated a wounded Iraqi, this was different. “It was more difficult on medical guys because they had just ****ounced one of our guys, treated one and flew them out on a helicopter and now they have to turn around and treat him,” Weinrich explained. “He was screaming about the treatment, he wasn’t happy about the IV or the catheter, he’d probably been hit a couple of times. That guy did not want to be touched. He knew he was hurt pretty bad. He had been hit with 25mm HEs (high explosives).”
The other soldiers explained their actions towards the Iraqi. “We’re Americans and our instinct is to do the right thing. He’s a POW now and we have to feed him, shelter him, give him food and water. We are trained American soldiers,” Silva said.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Shaughnessy said. “They’re people too and even though they are trying to kill us, we take care of them as well as we do our own. Even though Cpl. Pirtle was our only KIA (killed in action) in our battalion, I do my best to treat them and ease their pain. I’m thinking about 12 guys giving the Army a black eye and I’m thinking here I am saving the life of an enemy that just killed one of our own.”
“The Iraqi was badly injured, but we treated him like anyone else,” Pimental said. “This wasn’t the first time. It was just the first time we had to deal with a guy who killed one of our own. This is our job. You put aside personal feelings and treat this one like any other. There’s a lot of emotion, anger and frustration, but this wasn’t the first time we had to deal with these emotions. The only difference was we knew ahead of time we had lost one of our own and this was the bad guy.”
The group’s commander said the actions of his soldiers didn’t surprise him.
“The thing I remember most is these soldiers fought so hard to keep Cortez and Pirtle alive and then treated the attacker and kept him alive,” Miller said. “The fact that soldiers treated an Iraqi that moments before had attacked them doesn’t surprise me at all. We saw it routinely. It’s so common we take it for granted that our soldiers set aside their emotions that this person was just trying to kill them. That soldiers could detach themselves and treat the enemy was commonplace throughout the brigade and the division. I believe its commonplace throughout the theatre.”
To honor Pirtle and his sacrifice, the 2-8’s regimental room was renamed the Pirtle Room. “It’s the most important room in the battalion, the heart and soul of the unit,” Miller said. “After Cpl. Pirtle was killed we wanted to figure out a way we would never forget the sacrifice he made. We wanted to have a ceremony involving the comrades closest to him and his family.”
Miller stops telling the story then and walks to the Pirtle Room. He points to the framed photograph of Pirtle, the unit crest, the wall honoring Medal of Honor soldiers. Miller points to Pirtle’s picture and notes the inscription. Like the other soldiers in the 2-8, Pirtle was carrying a small United States flag in his breast pocket when he was killed. When Miller comes to the double windows which look out on the grounds, he pauses.
“I was standing at the podium (during the renaming ceremony) and I was talking about these soldiers and Cpl. Pirtle. I looked out the windows and there, standing at attention was the entire company, everyone who couldn’t fit into the room. No one told them to do it; no one ordered them to attention.”
Miller’s voice drops and then he stops talking and looks out the window again. “It’s important to me, it’s important to the battalion that we never forget a soldier’s sacrifice. Every soldier in understands the sacrifice you make for duty. Some may not come home. We were fortunate to only lose one, but it was one too many.”
From (http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/jun2004/a060204d.html)