My Men are My Heroes (30 page)

Before Kasal entered the overlooked little room he paused outside the door and took a careful look, using a technique called “pieing,” mentally divides the room into pie-shape slices and visually searches one “slice” at a time.

“All of a sudden no more then two feet from me there was an enemy insurgent with his AK-47 barrel pointed right at me,” Kasal says. “By pieing off the room and exposing only a little of my body at a time I was able to avoid him getting a good aim at me until we were so close we could have shook hands.

“He brought his weapon up to fire and at the same time I moved back a step and brought my barrel to bear on him. He was too close to aim directly as my rifle was longer than the distance between us, so as he fired a short burst, the rounds were skimming in front of my chest and impacting to my right.

“I placed my weapon over the top of his rifle and stuck my barrel straight into his chest and pulled the trigger,” Kasal says. “I emptied eight to 10 rounds into his chest before he went down. And as he fell to the floor I noticed him still moving, so I placed two more well-aimed shots into his forehead to make sure. Even after this he was still moving around but I was convinced he was dead. I directed my attention to deeper inside the room, which by now was dark and dusty—filled with the smoke and dust caused by the firing from our weapons in such a small space.

“I had my weapon trained on the darkness to my direct front when all of a sudden I remembered the stairwell to our rear and became nervous because it was a real danger area. Not wanting to take my eyes off my front, I yelled behind me to the two Marines I placed as security on the stairwell.

“I got no answer and so I yelled again. Then, out of nowhere, all hell broke loose from my direct rear.”

When Kasal and Nicoll turned, Mitchell and McCowan went straight ahead into a room where they could see Carlisle. For some reason the insurgents on the roof did not immediately fire at them when they ran through the main room to get to the wounded man. When Mitchell got there he discovered several Marines already crowded inside.

“I went into that first room where Carlisle was,” Mitchell says. “Nicoll and Kasal had gone to the left. Chandler and a few more of us went in that back room. I think Farmer and Severtsgard were there. Carlisle was lying face down on the floor bleeding from his leg. I started to apply direct pressure to stop the bleeding. I felt his bones shift. He screamed and I stopped. I was afraid I would do more damage and cause him more pain.

“That is when I think I heard Nicoll and First Sergeant get hit. Shooting was going on everywhere. Somebody fired an AK and I heard a scream. I think it was Nicoll screaming in pain although I am not sure. There was noise, explosions, shooting, and screaming. I decided to go back to where Kasal and Nicoll
were. I didn't know for sure they were down, but I knew they were getting shot at.”

Kasal and Nicoll were still looking forward when shots rang out behind them. The room was dark, filled with smoke and dust. Kasal still doesn't know what happened to the pair of Marines he had posted to protect their rear. They may have been called away by their squad leader, or perhaps they were ordered to some other urgent duty—but for whatever reason they left, the repercussions were profound.

“I never saw it coming or even where it came from,” Kasal says. “I just heard automatic weapons fire and then what felt like someone hitting me in the lower leg with a sledgehammer as my legs crumpled from beneath me; I fell to the floor. I heard Nicoll yell in pain behind me and immediately knew he was also hit.

“Rounds were still impacting all around as I lay there. I started crawling inside of the room I just cleared in order to find some cover. However the enemy insurgent I just shot was blocking the doorway, so I had to push him out of the way and get around him. Nicoll then fell inside the doorway. I looked back and saw rounds still impacting around him, and then he winced and grabbed his stomach, and I saw blood coming from between his fingers.

“Realizing he was still in danger, I crawled back out into the doorway. The enemy started shooting at me again and I grabbed Nicoll to try to pull him to cover. As I was doing so I felt a round hit me directly in the buttock and the sharp pain that followed. Rounds were still coming and I felt like a duck during hunting season. But I was able to grab Nicoll and pull him into the room. I rolled him over the top of me so that I was between him and the enemy with the door to my immediate right.”

The room was so small that Kasal was lying partially on top of a dead enemy combatant. “His system was still kicking from all the drugs the insurgents would take so they could keep fighting until the end,” Kasal says. “They would take huge amounts of different drugs so that they could take pain and multiple wounds and still stay alive to, hopefully, take one more Marine with him before he died.”

Pictures of dead insurgents with drug-filled syringes found on or near their bodies were taken in grisly monotony by Marine intel specialists at Fallujah. During the fighting the Marines found large caches of amphetamines, adrenaline, and painkillers with their attendant syringes donated by humanitarian aid organizations in Europe and the United States. The drugs were intended to treat innocent wounded civilians, but they ended up being used to hype-up insurgent killers so they could kill more.

“The enemy's fire in the next room stopped momentarily now that we were behind cover, and I couldn't hear any movement,” Kasal says. “It was just the dead insurgent, badly wounded Nicoll, and me in the room with an undetermined number and location of enemy right next to us.”

Both Marines were bleeding profusely from multiple wounds, but each man carried only one pressure dressing. “I knew a tourniquet was needed on the legs of both of us in addition to the upper body wounds,” Kasal says. “So this is where I made my first decision to die that day.

“I decided to use all our dressings on Nicoll so that at least one of us could live. I knew I was tough and what I was physically capable of, so I decided to try to gut it out while I stopped his bleeding. I also thought of the enemy next door and kept listening for sounds of movement.

“I realized that when friendly forces reached us they might not know who was inside the room. I was concerned that hearing our movements they might think we were the enemy. So I decided to use my M16 to mark the doorway. I knew any Marine seeing it would at least pause before spraying the room. I then pulled out my 9mm pistol and laid it on my stomach to use for defense.”

Satisfied that he had accomplished all there was to do to protect them, Kasal turned his attention to saving Nicoll. As he did so his own blood was steadily seeping onto the sand-covered floor. Kasal struggled to put a tourniquet on Nicoll's leg to stop the bleeding. “Being in the position I was in I couldn't do a very good job but did manage to get a half-assed tourniquet in place,” he says. Although he could barely move Kasal wrestled with Nicoll's gear, fighting to get a dressing on his upper body wounds.

“I was talking to him to try to help him remain conscious. It was then that I became aware of the enemy presence again—kind of like a sixth sense—and I heard a noise to my right. I rolled half over to get ready for whatever was next. When I looked down I saw a pineapple grenade lying about three feet away from me on the floor.”

With nowhere to go and feeling too wounded to try, Kasal says he made his second decision to die that day.

“In all honesty I thought I was going to bleed to death from severe wounds and lack of medical treatment anyway,” he says. “So out of instinct—and love for the Marine next to me—I did the only thing any Marine would do if faced with the same situation: I protected my brother. I rolled over, pushed Nicoll down, and lay on top of him, using my body to shield him from the grenade blast.

“The grenade went off, sending sharp pain from shrapnel into my legs, buttocks, and lower back and causing my head to spin and my ears to feel like they had just burst. But my gear
absorbed some of the blast, and the closeness of the grenade caused much of the blast to go above me. Those two things probably saved me.”

Mitchell knew Kasal and Nicoll were trapped in the small room on the other side of the house and he intended to get to them. As he started to cross the main room of the house the insurgent at the top of the stairs sprayed the open space with his AK. The 7.62mm slugs whacked into walls and scampered about the floor, each impact a sharp crackling explosion. Movies that have filmed such attacks simply can't capture the sound of a high-power automatic weapon on full-auto in an enclosed space. It is literally numbing. Yet Mitchell scarcely noticed.

“I had to cross that danger area—4 or 5 feet—in that middle room,” he says. “An insurgent on the roof had it covered through the skylight. When I came running in he started shooting. Bullets were hitting all around me. I just remember small-arms explosions until I got into the room with Nicoll and First Sergeant.”

Mitchell found Kasal facing the doorway with his pistol at the ready. “It was spooky,” he says. “I ran into that room. If I remember right I had to pull Nicoll—one of them—out of the doorway a little bit. I don't think Nicoll was conscious. He slipped in and out. I could see he was hurt real bad.”

Kasal was still trying to shake off the concussive effects of a grenade exploding 3 feet from his prone body. “I tried to shrug it off and get back in the fight,” he says. “I was thinking that the enemy would follow it up with more or even come in after us. Then out of nowhere Mitchell came bursting into the room. He stopped in the doorway and immediately enemy fire began impacting all around him. He was immediately hit with some of the shrapnel from the exploding rounds as they hit the wall. He managed to get out of the way and joined us in the room.

“In my opinion—and I'll say this to my grave—Mitchell was the true hero that day. I did what I had to do because it's called survival and the right thing to do. I had no choice. But Mitchell voluntarily ran through enemy fire and joined us in a room that was sealed off from rescue and covered by enemy fire to try and help us. He is the true hero.”

Mitchell has another point of view: “Kasal was being First Sergeant Kasal. He told me, ‘We need help.' He didn't sound excited or out of control; he was strictly business. He gave me a strict assessment of the situation. To me it was like getting an order from the First Sergeant when I came into the room. He told me I needed to concentrate on saving the lives of as many Marines as I could, save Nicoll, and then get the fuck out. He had control of the doorway and I knew that he was going to be fine.”

So Mitchell turned his attention to Nicoll and tried to get a pressure bandage on him. “I had a hard time getting off his vest,” he says. “I was having trouble using my arms.

“Then Kasal started talking to us just to keep us from blacking out while I was attending him and Nicoll. They took the brunt of that grenade. Kasal was bleeding out from his back and Nicoll was bleeding out from his leg and his stomach. I tried to help them. I thought Nicoll was going to die.”

Mitchell says he has no memory of the grenade blast that sent seven pieces of shrapnel into his left leg. “I guess it happened when I was running across the main room. It was only five or six steps. Kasal asked me if I was hurt and then I saw the blood on my leg. It really didn't hurt that bad. I looked down and saw blood. I saw I was peppered with some pretty good-size pieces. My adrenaline was going strong so I didn't feel too much. Every wound I got was like that. It never hurt me until later.”