Mark Lee Greenblatt - Valor: Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front

Praise for Valor

I was privileged and honored to lead US troops in combat in both Iraq and in Afghanistan and saw the best of them every day under the most demanding conditions in our military history. They werethey areAmericas new Greatest Generation, and they were precious to me beyond words. Ive heard the radio traffic of their close combat. Ive stood next to their broken bodies as they desperately clung to life. Ive walked innumerable sets of their honored remains onto the backs of our transport aircraft for the flight home to heartbroken families and a grieving nation. Sadly, little of the literature of these wars has celebrated the individual heroism of these young actors in their moments of truth... until now. In Valor , Mark Lee Greenblatt has honored this incredible service, and, in doing so, has performed a great service for America. In his words, crafted with marvelous eloquence, Mark has captured the raw, gut-wrenching emotion of battle and its aftermath in all its forms and thus has erected the ultimate monument to Americas veterans, including the fallen, the wounded, and their precious families. We owe him, indeed all America owes him, a great debt of thanks.

General John R. Allen, US Marine Corps (ret.)

The stories in Valor capture very powerfully the extraordinary courage, selfless service, and sacrifice that our young men and women have demonstrated repeatedly in the wars of the post9/11 period. Valor s accounts of extraordinary heroism in Iraq and Afghanistan reinforce the increasingly widespread convictionwith which I strongly agreethat the young men and women who have served our country downrange in the past decade truly are Americas New Greatest Generation.

General David H. Petraeus, US Army (ret.)

Mark Greenblatt gives us a close-up view of the uncommon valor that is common among Americas military today.... Valor is an eloquent tribute from someone who grew up hearing tales of Audie Murphy and the Second World War to the heroes of another Great Generation.

Ambassador Paul Wolfowitz

Greenblatt has shown [that] humility and valor seem to coincide when the stakes are mortal. Heroes dont only save lives and accomplish seemingly impossible feats at great risk to themselvestheir stories can also inspire us to face lesser dangers and fears in our own lives.

Brigadier General Howard T. Prince, II, US Army (ret.); recipient of a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts; University of Texas at Austin

Valor

Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front

Mark Lee Greenblatt

TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Plymouth, UK

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2014 by Mark Lee Greenblatt

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. The views expressed in this book are solely of the author and not those of his employer.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Greenblatt, Mark Lee, 1973

Valor : unsung heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the home front / Mark Lee Greenblatt.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-58979-952-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58979-953-0 (electronic)

1. Iraq War, 20032011Biography. 2. Afghan War, 2001Biography. 3. United StatesArmed ForcesBiography. 4. SoldiersUnited StatesBiography 5. HeroesUnited StatesBiography I. Title.

DS79.766.A1G74 2014

956.704434092273dc23

2013047073

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

In memory of my mother, Marian Greenblatt.

Contents

Preface

T his book tells true stories of brave Americans. As the country trudged through the peaks and valleys of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I heard stories of extraordinary heroism by our troopsincidents in which men and women in uniform risked life and limb to save a comrade or accomplish a mission. I stood in awe of those men and women, frequently wondering whether I could muster the same strength, courage, and determination.

Over time, I grew frustrated that such storiesnot to mention the heroes themselveswere not well known. I wanted to shout their stories from the rooftops. War heroes of previous generations, like Sergeant Alvin York of World War I and Audie Murphy of World War II, became household names, and cities and towns held ticker-tape parades in their honor.

We have no one like that today. Instead, accounts of bravery and self-sacrifice largely have gotten lost amidst the frenzied, and often nasty, debate surrounding the wars. Some are working to change that, such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, whose annual Grateful Nation Awards honor American troops for courageous acts. But the sad truth is that the few troops known throughout America are usually famous for dishonorable reasons or caught up in an unsavory controversy.

I finally became fed up and decided to do something about it. That was the start of Valor . In short, this generation does not have an Audie Murphy, and I set out to change that with this book.

Over five years, I sought out stories of courage and tracked down heroes. Learning about great stories was not terribly difficult; convincing a military hero to share his or her tale in a book, however, can be a Herculean effort. Many refused, citing an unwritten military code prohibiting anything perceived as self-aggrandizement.

Eventually, I enlistedthrough an intricate combination of begging, pleading, and cajolinga handful of individuals in my project. Their actions are breathtaking:

• a Navy SEAL who single-handedly liberated a group of Marines trapped in a house in Fallujah, Iraq, and dragged one injured Marine fifty yards down a dusty alley to safety as insurgents chased them;
• an Army pilot who landed his Apache helicopter in hostile territory to rescue two downed pilots, lugged one of them one hundred yards across an open field, and, because of a lack of space in the aircraft, strapped himself to the outside of the helicopter for the harrowing flight to the hospital;
• a Marine Corps private who carried a gravely injured comrade through close-range enemy fire from an insurgent-held building to a medevac helicopter roughly one hundred yards away;
• an Army Special Forces commander who fought back against a point-blank insurgent ambush armed with only a pistol and who ran through the kill-zone twice in an attempt to save a colleagues life and recover valuable equipment;
• an Army Ranger who ran across machine-gun cross fire deep in an Afghan valley and assaulted a Taliban bunker, continuing his efforts even after realizing that he was completely alone and that his rifle had jammed;
• an Army private who, after helping evacuate several injured soldiers out of an insurgent stronghold in Iraq, gave CPR to a fallen comrade as a sniper shot him multiple times at point-blank range and then killed the sniper before passing out from blood loss;
• a Navy rescue swimmer who jumped into incredibly turbulent water in the middle of the night during a horrific storm to save a shipwrecked American;
• an Army specialist who held off an insurgent ambush of his remote outpost in Afghanistan, despite suffering serious injuries to his face; and