Originally Posted by LeftyCharette
Something I wrote on my myspace blog this week.
I just want to say that Dam Security Unit 3( B Co. 4th LAR) attached to RCT-7 and based out of Haditha, Iraq has come home. We left with 110 and 110 made it home. There was only one casualty...me, go figure. Took a bullet to the hand(amputated thumb) and a bullet in and out the neck( paralysis of left arm) but I sit here today because my fellow Marines and Sailors took care of me. Don't ever give a corpsman ****, because he will save your life.
We patrolled the Euphrates river in the Anbar province as far north as the Syrian border and as far south as Ramadi. We used SURC boats provided to us by Small Craft Company, 2D AA BN. 2D AA did an outstanding job training our LAV crewmen to become captains, coxswains, and gunners on our boats. Our 0311 scouts also had great training prior to deployment and had great success finding cache's, identifying IED's, detaining EPW's, and performed outstandingly well through multiple firefights weekly while patrolling the waterways.
Even though I was wounded in an ambush, once I heal up I am more than willing to go back over. Good things are happening out there. The US has effectively lassoed Anbar province and the fighting there has slowed greatly. In Haditha there were many engagements daily, but now there is usually only 1-2 attacks a week now. The US, IA's and IP's have made it very difficult for insurgents to operate in the cities and our DSU Marines made it just as difficult to traffic weapons, drugs, money, and men on the waterways that connect all the cities in Al Anbar.
Thank you RCT-7 for utilizing the talent of the DSU Marines. Thank you to 2D AA BN and Special Missions Training Center for the great training prior to our deployment. Cpl Mignoli and Sgt White, you guys were awesome. Sgt Smotherman, thanks for coming over with us, you are a natural born leader. Thank you to Cpl Artuso and Doc Schumacher for saving my life and thank you to the Army helo pilots that medevaced me Oct 23, 2006. I dont know your names but I will never forget you. Thank you to all the medical teams that took care of me in Balad, Landstuhl, and Bethesda. Thank you to all the people that still support our troops. Please dont pull us out until we are done helping the Iraqi's. Give it time, good things are happening over there. Thank you Tony for being an awesome roommate at Bethesda, hope you are recovering well.
Thank you Marine Corps for giving me the adventure of my life while fighting in Iraq. Thank you insurgents, militant muslims, Iran and anyone else supporting chaos in the rebuilding of Iraq. Without you I wouldn't have anyone to shoot. I hope you all either assimilate or die.
Semper Fi,
Lcpl Chris Charette