thedrifter
05-23-06, 01:14 PM
May 29, 2006
Intense firefight
Two Marines earn the Navy Cross during Fallujah battle
By Gidget Fuentes and John Hoellwarth
Times staff writers
OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Amid the echoes of automatic AK47 fire, Sgt. Jarrett Kraft ran with a fire team into a house in Fallujah’s Jolan neighborhood, hustled up a stairway and yelled “sitrep!”
From the second-floor landing, he saw a group of six Marines pressed against a wall. Without saying a word, several pointed to a doorway just feet from them.
Kraft and then-Cpl. Jeremiah Workman, another squad leader with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines’ 81mm mortar platoon’s first section, knew that room held insurgents who were slinging lead at the leathernecks from the sparsely furnished house.
The two noncommissioned officers would lead fire teams through deafening, adrenaline-rushing fusillades into the house — three times — to aid wounded troops and recover the bodies of three of the platoon’s men.
Both NCOs continued to lead and fight despite getting hit and knocked down by hot shrapnel and blast concussions.
“That was the most intense, insane freaking firefight ever,” recalled Kraft, now 22 and a police cadet in Fresno, Calif.
This month, in separate ceremonies held on the East and West coasts, Kraft and Workman, 23, each received the Navy Cross, the sea service’s second-highest medal for combat valor, for the “extraordinary heroism” they displayed leading their men in battle.
As combat awards go, it’s an unusual pairing: two high-level valor medals awarded for two Marines in the same unit for nearly identical actions in the same firefight. Kraft received his May 11; Workman, a day later.
“It was live or die, you know what I mean,” Kraft said, speaking by telephone May 17 and recounting the events of that day.
The battle came as the “Darkhorse” men of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines — which currently is halfway through its third deployment to Iraq — did back-clearing missions Dec. 23, 2004, a month after forces successfully took back the besieged, insurgent-held city of Fallujah as part of Task Force Bruno.
Face-to-face with the enemy
The night before, a patrol by the platoon’s second section had turned into a lead-soaked slugfest.
“They got into a pretty heavy firefight,” recalled Kraft, who left the Corps last summer after a four-year enlistment, “so we knew there were insurgents there.”
Workman said his Marines carried “found” AK47s in addition to their M16s because the insurgents’ fully automatic weapon of choice packs more stopping power. He recalled spending the night before the assault with his squad, cleaning the AK47s they had picked up in the city because of a feeling that “there was going to be an ambush.”
That morning, Kraft, Workman and others stepped out of their forward operating base at Camp Baharia, just outside Fallujah. It was about 9 a.m., and the Marines were on foot as they cleared the first two houses.
Kraft was standing in the yard of the second house when he heard AK47 fire from inside the third house. Calling to several men with a fire team, he dashed inside, led by his M16 rifle as they cleared the house’s first floor.
Halfway up the stairwell, he spotted six Marines on the second floor.
They said little, instead mostly relaying their assault plan through signals. In an instant, the Marines stacked themselves at the bottom of the stairs with Workman in the front. They fired their weapons, threw grenades into the room above and prepared to assault upward.
“Someone in the stack threw a grenade up the stairs, and the damn grenade rolled back down,” Workman said. “I remember looking, and people just scattered.”
The grenade blast left the Marines on the ground floor dazed but unwounded. Workman reformed the stack with a plan to advance up the fire-swept stairs on the count of three.
“So on three, I just took off running up the stairs with my eyes closed,” Workman said. “I was thinking the whole time ‘this isn’t going to last that long.’”
Workman got halfway up the stairs to the landing, folded himself into a corner just outside the enemy’s field of fire, looked back down the stairs and realized none of the Marines had followed him.
“Turns out, when I ran upstairs, [the enemy] started rocking their AKs at my feet like a frickin’ cartoon.”
Workman considered continuing the assault alone, but his Marines were yelling at him to come back down. There was another count of three, and Workman “Superman-dove back down,” he said. “Now, we’re back at square one again.”
The Marines regrouped, dashed up the stairs and through the door and came within hand-shaking distance with enemy fighters. Workman remembers seeing only their beards moving around through the smoke and fire.
“There were about 40-plus insurgents, and they were just firing AKs and RPK [machine guns] from tripods,” Kraft said.
It was close-quarters battle, an intensely personal quest to kill them before they kill you. “I was actually face to face, right up on them,” he said.
The Marines inside the house, four of whom were downed and severely wounded, fired into that room until they ran out of ammunition.
Kraft knew they had to get more ammo and get the wounded out of the house.
Outside, he grabbed more ammo from the Humvees and took another fire team along with him. What he didn’t know at the time was that his camouflage blouse and trousers oozed with blood.
“I didn’t notice that I was bleeding, I guess because of adrenaline,” he said. He had taken hot shrapnel in his right leg, ankle and torso.
Inside the house, Workman’s squad had switched to AK47s and awaited his three-count. “On three, somebody bumped me, and we all went running up the stairs spraying,” he said.
They reached the top and began pouring all the firepower they had into the upstairs bedrooms where the insurgents were holed up. Then, a curious-looking yellow grenade Workman said he’ll never forget came bouncing out of the bedroom toward them.
“It went off, and I just remember a lot of fire came out of it,” he said. “It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my legs.”
The blast sent Marines tumbling back down the stairs.
Two lay mortally wounded at the top of the stairs, and Kraft wanted to get them out. Two wounded men managed to jump from the second floor to safer cover in an adjacent yard. With two corporals and a lance corporal in tow, Kraft re-entered the house, only to encounter another big firefight.
Tied down by the Marines’ firepower, the insurgents were unaware that other leathernecks had scrambled to the second deck from an adjacent house, reaching their two fallen brothers — Cpl. Raleigh C. Smith and Lance Cpl. James R. Phillips — and carrying them away from the firefight by passing them man-to-man across the rooftops.
Around that time, an M1A1 Abrams tank arrived with a quick-reaction force. The tank, blocking nearly the whole street, fired six rounds into the house, and Kraft scrambled to get a sniper in position at a nearby house.
At that point, the blast effects from the tank’s main gun knocked Kraft off his feet.
Workman remembers hearing the insurgents continue to fire their AK47s from inside the second-floor bedroom as tank rounds slammed into the building.
Another fire team arrived and, along with a corpsman, helped Kraft and the men to safety.
As they left the area, they learned that a third Marine — Lance Cpl. Eric Hillenburg — had been killed by enemy sniper fire as he and his fire team raced to assist from a block away.
The Marines never took the second floor. After two hours of battle, they “called in an airstrike and leveled the entire block,” Workman said.
Kraft went to Bravo Surgical Company at Camp Fallujah “to take care of the wounded,” he said, and headed to Baharia, where he shed bloodstained clothes and grabbed a shower and joined other NCOs for a debrief.
The men would continue to patrol and fight another week as part of Task Force Bruno.
Moving on
The morning of Dec. 23, 2004, remains forefront in Kraft’s mind. After he left the Corps last summer, he spent about five months figuring out what his next step in life would be.
Kraft joined the Fresno Police Department, where he’s a cadet attending the academy and already doing street patrols as part of his training.
News of the Navy Cross initially came as a surprise to him — he knew he’d been put in for a combat medal but had never checked up on it — and so it’s stirred mixed feelings about the medal and what it means.
“I could care less about the medal, to tell you the truth,” he said May 17. “It’s an honor to be awarded the Navy Cross, but I don’t know.”
His voiced trailed off.
“It’s kind of a — it’d be a lot better if the Marines lived,” he said.
Workman, now a drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., heard he had been put in for the Silver Star, but forgot about the award until he was told in April he’d be receiving the Navy Cross.
“It’s an honor to get the thing, but I’d trade it in any day of the week for the three Marines we lost,” he said.
Ellie
Intense firefight
Two Marines earn the Navy Cross during Fallujah battle
By Gidget Fuentes and John Hoellwarth
Times staff writers
OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Amid the echoes of automatic AK47 fire, Sgt. Jarrett Kraft ran with a fire team into a house in Fallujah’s Jolan neighborhood, hustled up a stairway and yelled “sitrep!”
From the second-floor landing, he saw a group of six Marines pressed against a wall. Without saying a word, several pointed to a doorway just feet from them.
Kraft and then-Cpl. Jeremiah Workman, another squad leader with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines’ 81mm mortar platoon’s first section, knew that room held insurgents who were slinging lead at the leathernecks from the sparsely furnished house.
The two noncommissioned officers would lead fire teams through deafening, adrenaline-rushing fusillades into the house — three times — to aid wounded troops and recover the bodies of three of the platoon’s men.
Both NCOs continued to lead and fight despite getting hit and knocked down by hot shrapnel and blast concussions.
“That was the most intense, insane freaking firefight ever,” recalled Kraft, now 22 and a police cadet in Fresno, Calif.
This month, in separate ceremonies held on the East and West coasts, Kraft and Workman, 23, each received the Navy Cross, the sea service’s second-highest medal for combat valor, for the “extraordinary heroism” they displayed leading their men in battle.
As combat awards go, it’s an unusual pairing: two high-level valor medals awarded for two Marines in the same unit for nearly identical actions in the same firefight. Kraft received his May 11; Workman, a day later.
“It was live or die, you know what I mean,” Kraft said, speaking by telephone May 17 and recounting the events of that day.
The battle came as the “Darkhorse” men of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines — which currently is halfway through its third deployment to Iraq — did back-clearing missions Dec. 23, 2004, a month after forces successfully took back the besieged, insurgent-held city of Fallujah as part of Task Force Bruno.
Face-to-face with the enemy
The night before, a patrol by the platoon’s second section had turned into a lead-soaked slugfest.
“They got into a pretty heavy firefight,” recalled Kraft, who left the Corps last summer after a four-year enlistment, “so we knew there were insurgents there.”
Workman said his Marines carried “found” AK47s in addition to their M16s because the insurgents’ fully automatic weapon of choice packs more stopping power. He recalled spending the night before the assault with his squad, cleaning the AK47s they had picked up in the city because of a feeling that “there was going to be an ambush.”
That morning, Kraft, Workman and others stepped out of their forward operating base at Camp Baharia, just outside Fallujah. It was about 9 a.m., and the Marines were on foot as they cleared the first two houses.
Kraft was standing in the yard of the second house when he heard AK47 fire from inside the third house. Calling to several men with a fire team, he dashed inside, led by his M16 rifle as they cleared the house’s first floor.
Halfway up the stairwell, he spotted six Marines on the second floor.
They said little, instead mostly relaying their assault plan through signals. In an instant, the Marines stacked themselves at the bottom of the stairs with Workman in the front. They fired their weapons, threw grenades into the room above and prepared to assault upward.
“Someone in the stack threw a grenade up the stairs, and the damn grenade rolled back down,” Workman said. “I remember looking, and people just scattered.”
The grenade blast left the Marines on the ground floor dazed but unwounded. Workman reformed the stack with a plan to advance up the fire-swept stairs on the count of three.
“So on three, I just took off running up the stairs with my eyes closed,” Workman said. “I was thinking the whole time ‘this isn’t going to last that long.’”
Workman got halfway up the stairs to the landing, folded himself into a corner just outside the enemy’s field of fire, looked back down the stairs and realized none of the Marines had followed him.
“Turns out, when I ran upstairs, [the enemy] started rocking their AKs at my feet like a frickin’ cartoon.”
Workman considered continuing the assault alone, but his Marines were yelling at him to come back down. There was another count of three, and Workman “Superman-dove back down,” he said. “Now, we’re back at square one again.”
The Marines regrouped, dashed up the stairs and through the door and came within hand-shaking distance with enemy fighters. Workman remembers seeing only their beards moving around through the smoke and fire.
“There were about 40-plus insurgents, and they were just firing AKs and RPK [machine guns] from tripods,” Kraft said.
It was close-quarters battle, an intensely personal quest to kill them before they kill you. “I was actually face to face, right up on them,” he said.
The Marines inside the house, four of whom were downed and severely wounded, fired into that room until they ran out of ammunition.
Kraft knew they had to get more ammo and get the wounded out of the house.
Outside, he grabbed more ammo from the Humvees and took another fire team along with him. What he didn’t know at the time was that his camouflage blouse and trousers oozed with blood.
“I didn’t notice that I was bleeding, I guess because of adrenaline,” he said. He had taken hot shrapnel in his right leg, ankle and torso.
Inside the house, Workman’s squad had switched to AK47s and awaited his three-count. “On three, somebody bumped me, and we all went running up the stairs spraying,” he said.
They reached the top and began pouring all the firepower they had into the upstairs bedrooms where the insurgents were holed up. Then, a curious-looking yellow grenade Workman said he’ll never forget came bouncing out of the bedroom toward them.
“It went off, and I just remember a lot of fire came out of it,” he said. “It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my legs.”
The blast sent Marines tumbling back down the stairs.
Two lay mortally wounded at the top of the stairs, and Kraft wanted to get them out. Two wounded men managed to jump from the second floor to safer cover in an adjacent yard. With two corporals and a lance corporal in tow, Kraft re-entered the house, only to encounter another big firefight.
Tied down by the Marines’ firepower, the insurgents were unaware that other leathernecks had scrambled to the second deck from an adjacent house, reaching their two fallen brothers — Cpl. Raleigh C. Smith and Lance Cpl. James R. Phillips — and carrying them away from the firefight by passing them man-to-man across the rooftops.
Around that time, an M1A1 Abrams tank arrived with a quick-reaction force. The tank, blocking nearly the whole street, fired six rounds into the house, and Kraft scrambled to get a sniper in position at a nearby house.
At that point, the blast effects from the tank’s main gun knocked Kraft off his feet.
Workman remembers hearing the insurgents continue to fire their AK47s from inside the second-floor bedroom as tank rounds slammed into the building.
Another fire team arrived and, along with a corpsman, helped Kraft and the men to safety.
As they left the area, they learned that a third Marine — Lance Cpl. Eric Hillenburg — had been killed by enemy sniper fire as he and his fire team raced to assist from a block away.
The Marines never took the second floor. After two hours of battle, they “called in an airstrike and leveled the entire block,” Workman said.
Kraft went to Bravo Surgical Company at Camp Fallujah “to take care of the wounded,” he said, and headed to Baharia, where he shed bloodstained clothes and grabbed a shower and joined other NCOs for a debrief.
The men would continue to patrol and fight another week as part of Task Force Bruno.
Moving on
The morning of Dec. 23, 2004, remains forefront in Kraft’s mind. After he left the Corps last summer, he spent about five months figuring out what his next step in life would be.
Kraft joined the Fresno Police Department, where he’s a cadet attending the academy and already doing street patrols as part of his training.
News of the Navy Cross initially came as a surprise to him — he knew he’d been put in for a combat medal but had never checked up on it — and so it’s stirred mixed feelings about the medal and what it means.
“I could care less about the medal, to tell you the truth,” he said May 17. “It’s an honor to be awarded the Navy Cross, but I don’t know.”
His voiced trailed off.
“It’s kind of a — it’d be a lot better if the Marines lived,” he said.
Workman, now a drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., heard he had been put in for the Silver Star, but forgot about the award until he was told in April he’d be receiving the Navy Cross.
“It’s an honor to get the thing, but I’d trade it in any day of the week for the three Marines we lost,” he said.
Ellie