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[Professor]

Of course.  It all a matter of attitude: 



Cpl. Lonnie Young kneels next to his wounded comrade in high spirits, despite the fact there is a bullet lodged in his back. Young, a Defense Messaging System administrator by trade, learned first-hand that every Marine is a rifleman when the base he was working on in An Najaf, Iraq came under attack by approximately 800 anti-coalition militiamen, April 4, 2004. Young fought alongside seven Blackwater Security personnel in an effort to secure the base.

USMC.

Salute!!!!



This one probably slipped through the arm hole.

[Trembula]

Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
September 18, 2004

Norfolk Marine Tells Story Of Rooftop Fight In Iraq

By Kate Wiltrout, The Virginian-Pilot

NORFOLK — Outnumbered, low on ammo, perched on a rooftop for hours in a battle against Iraqi insurgents, Lonnie Young figured his number was up.

It was April 4, 2004, and the war had entered its deadliest month for Americans. Days earlier, four contractors passing through Fallujah had been ambushed, killed, and strung from a bridge.

At least half a dozen other men from their firm – Blackwater USA , based in Moyock – handled security at the Coalition Provisional Authority’s base in Najaf, where Young, a 25-year-old Norfolk-based Marine Corps corporal, was working that day.

After installing an antenna on the roof to upgrade communications, Young stretched out in the back of a truck for a pre-lunch catnap. Gunfire – and the more atypical sound of guards returning fire – woke him.

The battle that followed became front-page news, an early indication of the growing insurgency across Iraq. Within days, a picture of Young and the Blackwater commandos atop the roof appeared in newspapers across the country. But until Young sat down recently to share his story, his role in the outcome of the battle has gone untold.

According to one senior Marine officer on the ground in Najaf that day, Young’s actions helped turn the tide of the battle against a well-coordinated militia attacking from various directions.

“All of the Blackwater guys told me that if it hadn’t been for him, they may indeed have been overrun,” said the officer, who asked that his name not be used.

Moments after the attack began, Young donned his body armor, grabbed his M249 light machine gun, and raced upstairs with a handful of Blackwater commandos. The gun battle against hundreds of members of the al-Mahdi militia, loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, grew so intense that Young had to stop shooting every 15 minutes to let the barrel of his gun cool. He’d tear through 700 to 800 rounds, then spend five minutes filling magazines with bullets until the metal was cool enough to use.

The first break in action for the Kentucky native came when an Army captain near him was shot in the arm and back. Young dug into his medical kit and bandaged the man up, then eased him down four stories to nurses below. Next, Young dashed across the camp to Blackwater’s ammunition supply room, strapped about 150 pounds of bullets to his body, and sprinted back to the roof.

The noontime battle stretched into the afternoon. Young figured he’d die.

“I thought, 'This is my last day. I’m going out with a bang.’ If I had to die it would be defending my country,” Young said Friday.

“I just felt like we were losing ground, and I thought, 'If I’m going to die, I’m not going down without a fight.’ I knew we were seriously outnumbered. They were coming at us with pretty much everything they had. We were seriously struggling to keep our ground.”

The insurgents had machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and a sniper shooting out the window of a local hospital.

Young saw a red flash, then blood spurting 5 or 6 feet out of the jaw and neck of a contractor. He reached into the quarter-sized bullet hole in the man’s jaw and pinched his carotid artery closed, then dragged the man across the roof to where his medical kit lay sprawled open.

Midway across the roof, Young heard a loud smack. Pain danced across his face, chased by adrenaline, and he forgot about it. After a medic packed the man’s wounds with a substance that clots blood, Young strapped the man to his back and carried him downstairs. In all, the Marine left the roof five times: twice to transport wounded comrades, three times for ammunition.

When a group of U.S. Army military police officers joined the fight, Young used his experience as a weapons instructor to talk them through it. Conserve your ammo. Slow and steady before you squeeze. Adjust your sites for range and distance. Take breaks so your gun barrel doesn’t melt.

At some point, Young felt dizzy. He realized he couldn’t see out of his left eye. The doctor found a gunshot wound high on his left shoulder. Young didn’t want to leave the fight, but an Army captain told him otherwise.

“Basically, I refused to get down off the rooftop at first,” said Young, the father of a 7-year-old son back in Dry Ridge, Ky.

Soon afterward, a Blackwater helicopter flew Young to a combat support hospital in Baghdad. Chris Taylor, a director at Blackwater USA, praised Young after hearing how the Marine replenished the contractors’ ammunition to keep the bullets flying.

“When there are rounds firing, coming at you from down range, everybody pulls together to do what needs to be done,” said Taylor, a former Marine. “He should be proud of the way he acted.”

After surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder – it lodged an inch from his spine – and shrapnel from his eye, Young recuperated for two weeks in Baghdad, then spent a month at home in Kentucky.

Young said he dreams about combat every night, and his wounds remind him of what happened – especially on long runs or while doing pull-ups. The pain makes him wonder whether he should stay in the Marines when his hitch ends in December.

If he does leave, Young has a Purple Heart and a chunk of bullet cut out of his back for souvenirs. He has also been nominated for another award based on his actions that day, according to a Marine Corps spokesman.

Even if he gets out, and puts his degree in design engineering from Eastern Kentucky University to use, Young will never forget how he got to be a sniper, medic, ammunition supplier, weapons coach, and communications specialist – all on the same day.

Said Young: “I’d always wanted to be a Marine.”

OOHRAH!

Dan

[Trembula]

Here's some more on that incident in case someone missed hearing about it when it hit the news....
Private Guards Repel Attack on U.S. Headquarters

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 6, 2004; Page A01

An attack by hundreds of Iraqi militia members on the U.S. government's headquarters in
Najaf on Sunday was repulsed not by the U.S. military, but by eight commandos from a
private security firm, according to sources familiar with the incident.

Before U.S. reinforcements could arrive, the firm, Blackwater Security Consulting, sent
in its own helicopters amid an intense firefight to resupply its commandos with
ammunition and to ferry out a wounded Marine, the sources said.

The role of Blackwater's commandos in Sunday's fighting in Najaf illuminates the gray
zone between their formal role as bodyguards and the realities of operating in an active
war zone. Thousands of armed private security contractors are operating in Iraq in a wide
variety of missions and exchanging fire with Iraqis every day, according to informal
after-action reports from several companies.

In Sunday's fighting, Shiite militia forces barraged the Blackwater commandos, four MPs
and a Marine gunner with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 fire for hours before U.S.
Special Forces troops arrived. A sniper on a nearby roof apparently wounded three men.
U.S. troops faced heavy fighting in several Iraqi cities that day.

The Blackwater commandos, most of whom are former Special Forces troops, are on contract
to provide security for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Najaf.

With their ammunition nearly gone, a wounded and badly bleeding Marine on the rooftop,
and no reinforcement by the U.S. military in the immediate offing, the company sent in
helicopters to drop ammunition and pick up the Marine.

The identity of the Marine and two other wounded men could not be established, but their
blood was still fresh hours later, when the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, and spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt arrived to survey the battle zone.

Without commenting at a news conference yesterday on the role of the Blackwater guards,
Kimmitt described what he saw after the fighting ended. "I know on a rooftop yesterday in
An Najaf, with a small group of American soldiers and coalition soldiers . . . who had
just been through about 3 1/2 hours of combat, I looked in their eyes, there was no
crisis.

"They knew what they were here for," he continued. "They'd lost three wounded. We were
sitting there among the bullet shells -- the bullet casings -- and, frankly, the blood of
their comrades, and they were absolutely confident."

During the defense of the authority headquarters, thousands of rounds were fired and
hundreds of 40mm grenades shot. Sources who asked not to be identified because of the
sensitivity of Blackwater's work in Iraq reported an unspecified number of casualties
among Iraqis.

A spokesman for Blackwater confirmed that the company has a contract to provide security
to the CPA but would not describe the incident that unfolded Sunday.

A Defense Department spokesman said that there were no military reports about the opening
hours of the siege on CPA headquarters in Najaf because there were no military personnel
on the scene. The Defense Department often does not have a clear handle on the daily
actions of security contractors because the contractors work directly for the coalition
authority, which coordinates and communicates on a limited basis through the normal
military chain of command.

The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were also Blackwater employees and were
operating in the Sunni triangle area under more hazardous conditions -- unarmored cars
with no apparent backup -- than the U.S. military or the CIA permit.

One senior Blackwater manager has described those killings to U.S. government officials
as the result of a "high-quality" attack as skilled as one that can be mounted by U.S.
Special Forces, according to a copy of a report on the incident obtained by The
Washington Post.

The four victims of that attack, according to Blackwater spokesman Chris Bertelli, were
escorting trucks carrying either food or kitchen equipment for Regency Hotel and
Hospitality. Regency is a subcontractor to Eurest Support Services (ESS), a division of
the Compass Group, the world's largest food service company.

ESS provides food services to more than a dozen U.S. military dining facilities in Iraq,
according to news accounts.

Blackwater, a security and training company based in Moyock, N.C., prides itself on the
high caliber of its personnel, many of whom are former U.S. Navy SEALs. It has 450
employees in Iraq, many of them providing security to CPA employees, including the U.S.
administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and to VIPs visiting Iraq.

Blackwater has applied to occupy a former MIG air base near Baghdad as a counterterrorism
training facility for Iraqi forces. The training range will mirror the 6,000-acre Moyock
site, which is frequented by U.S. law enforcement and military personnel.

---

Dan

[Professor]

Thanks Dan,  I couldn't find the back story.

[Trembula]

Hopefully today or tomorrow when I get more time I will add in some additional info that I learned talking to folks connected to the story...

Dan