May 23, 2005

They’re riflemen first
Bloodied in fierce ambush, a platoon of reservists proves its infantry skills

By Robert Hodierne
Times staff writer

AL ASAD, Iraq — They were, in their own words, a mutt platoon. Cooks, mechanics, truck drivers, clerks. Reservists, yanked from civilian life last January, as the Corps’ last untapped infantry battalion deployed to Iraq.

Like the cast from some corny war movie, there were big-city boys and country kids, a Greek, an Italian, a Hispanic and a college boy who plans to write a war novel.

They were assembled in a Mobile Action Platoon that spent about half its time providing security for the commander of the Cleveland-based 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, Lt. Col. Lionel Urquhart. The rest of the time, they urgently tried to learn how to be grunts because they were pretty sure they’d need those skills.

They were right.

On May 7, at about 10 p.m., 18 men and a cook who begged for a ride loaded into four armored Humvees and a 7-ton truck. Boats that patrol the Euphrates River to protect the Haditha Dam, which provides much of Baghdad’s electricity, had taken fire from the shore.

Accompanied by two M1A1 Abrams tanks, the platoon drove into the town of Haditha, about 10 minutes from the dam and 135 miles northwest of Baghdad in restive Anbar province. Marines with 3/25 are spread throughout the province; the men of the Mobile Action Platoon are based at the dam.

Once in Haditha, they got as far as the town’s hospital but didn’t find the men who fired on the boats, so they turned around to head home.

Cpl. Stan Mayer, 23, was driving the lead Humvee when a white Ford Econoline van sped from an alley, heading at them. “They came out of nowhere,” Mayer said.

In the gun turret, Mayer’s best friend, Lance Cpl. Lance T. Graham, 26, of San Antonio, was shouting, “Stop! Stop! F----ing stop!”

That’s when the truck rammed them on the right rear side, exploding in a fireball that scorched everything on Mayer’s right side — his neck, his uniform, his right arm.

In the seat behind Mayer was Lance Cpl. Emmanuel Fellouzis, 22, the cook who had tagged along because he was tired of being stuck inside the wire.

“I saw a flash in the middle of the vehicle, and then I was sucking in flames and dirt,” Fellouzis said.

Both Fellouzis and Mayer staggered from the smoldering Humvee, deafened and temporarily blinded by the explosion.

That’s when bad became worse.

From the hospital, behind sandbagged window positions, gunmen opened up on the convoy. With rocket-propelled grenades exploding and machine-gun fire snapping around them, Mayer and Fellouzis frantically searched for Graham. They found him blown 30 feet from the Humvee, facedown and covered in the gray soot that now coated everything. They tried patching Graham’s gaping wounds before they realized he was dead.

They wanted to pull Graham’s body back to safety, but he was a giant of a man, 6 feet, 7 inches tall, 250 pounds. Mayer ran down the open street to get help.

“I kept trying to get back to Graham, but I kept tripping over bodies,” he said.

The rest of the convoy was spread out along the street over a distance of about 100 meters. “It seemed like a long ways,” Mayer recalled.

The scene was lit by Mayer’s burning Humvee, which blocked their avenue of possible escape. Grenades, flares and small-arms ammunition started cooking off, adding to the chaos.

Mayer stopped to help patch up their doc, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Jeffery L. Wiener, 32, of Louisville, Ky. Mayer looked into the doc’s open eyes and realized he was dead. Near him was Sgt. Michael A. Marzano, 28, of Greenville, Pa., a bulk fuels specialist, who was also dead. The two had been riding in another Humvee that was hit and disabled; by the end of the fight, all four Humvees were out of commission.

When the gunner in his vehicle was wounded, Cpl. Jeff Schuller, of Monroeville, Ohio, pulled his Humvee directly in front of the hospital, climbed into the gun turret and opened fire with the M240 machine gun.

“If he hadn’t done that, a lot more of us would have been dead,” Mayer said.

At one point, Mayer was standing next to Schuller’s truck. “Look out,” Schuller shouted and swung the barrel of his gun right next to Mayer’s face.

“I just felt the hot gas in front of my face,” Mayer said, remembering the moment Schuller opened fire, knocking down enemy fighters who were getting ready to unload on the man next to the Humvee.

Mayer also found Sgt. Aaron N. Cepeda, Sr., 22, of San Antonio, another cook, who had been shot to death in the fight.

After a tank drove over Mayer’s Humvee, opening an escape path, the Marines loaded their dead and wounded into the 7-ton and then everyone else piled on board.

“Anyone who could loaded a magazine, and we shot our way out,” Mayer said.

But he was frantic because they hadn’t been able to retrieve Graham’s body.

It wasn’t until the next morning in the hospital that he learned crewmen from the last tank pulling out of the ambush had managed to recover Graham.

The Marines killed five enemy fighters and critically injured two others, whom they turned over to Iraqi medical officials.

Ambush changes the message

The shrapnel wounds Mayer and Fellouzis received are healing, and they will be back with their units soon. For now, home is a hot, dusty transient-personnel tent at Al Asad.

Fellouzis wants to leave the kitchen permanently and join the Mobile Action Platoon. He’s a solid, jovial guy who owns the Flaming Pit steakhouse back in Canton, Ohio. But he has a harder time articulating things and often defers to Mayer, a creative writing major at Ohio State University.

Both have talked to Navy psychological counselors about the battle.

Said Mayer, “I don’t want to be one of those guys who’s in one firefight for 45 minutes and four guys get killed and is too messed up to go back out there again.”

Mayer wants to write about his experiences in the war, but the ambush has changed what he had planned to say.

“At first, it was the idealism and tragedy that my generation is immune to that I wanted to write about,” he said.

What’s more, “I wanted to know what that kind of pain was like ... so I’d merit a better life later. That s--- went out the window last Saturday night.

“I was infatuated with the idea of being the kind of Marine who kills and loses friends,” he said. “I’m not so infatuated with that idea any more.”

If those feelings were turned inward, his new focus is outward.

“Now, I feel pretty indebted to these guys. I want people to pick up my book and know what kind of guys they were.”

Take Graham, for instance.

While others wore yellow Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” bracelets, Graham fashioned a black rubber bracelet from a motorcycle inner tube. “Ask me what it means,” he demanded of Mayer.

“OK, what does it mean?” Mayer asked.

“My thing is, ‘Die Strong.’”

“He did,” Mayer said. “He did.”

Robert Hodierne is covering II Marine Expeditionary Force operations in Iraq.

Ellie