August 3rd, 2005
A day that haunts me every single day of my life. I honestly don't know how to tell this story. There is so much pain that goes with it. Its not an easy story to tell, but I believe our guys deserve their story to be told. 17 years ago, I guess it actually starts with August 1st. Two sniper teams went out to overwatch an area outside of Barwanah. Somehow or another their position had been compromised, which led to an attack from the insurgents. A squad of mujahideen started a mortar attack on them, and at the same time rushed their postion. The snipers fought back but eventually were overrun. All six Marines lost their lives that day. Five initially, with one still alive but seriously wounded. After the attack, the insurgents drug off the wounded Marine’s body through the streets of Barwanah, handcuffed. As soon as we heard about this we all left the dam and headed straight for the site of the snipers. At that point, some of our grunts loaded up on aluminum boats to patrol up and down the river searching for any sign of the missing Marine. They soon hit contact (firefight) on the banks of Barwanah and Haditha and did gun runs up and down the river, but found no trace of the body. This is what led into Operation Quickstrike two days later. Our mission was to clear out the town of Barwanah and recover the Marine and all of the equipment. August 2nd we all staged outside of the town, and the morning of August 3rd we pushed towards the city. We approached the city early that morning, I remember like it was yesterday. Driving up to the city we were nervous like always. There's always that fear of the unknown, but like always we knew we had a job to do so we just suck it up and push forward. Nothing could prepare us for what was about to happen though. Our first couple tracs made it into the city. Then all of a sudden, BOOM. I saw the biggest explosion in my life. An IED exploded on one of our amtracs. 15 men lost their lives in that one instant. 11 grunts, 3 trackers, and 1 interpreter. The explosion was so big it flipped the 27 ton amtrack over on it's top. The whole convoy came to a halt and the first couple vehicles in front quickly unloaded and cleared out the general area. As much pain as we were in we couldn't even show our emotions because we couldn't let our guard down, we still had a job to do. Never in my life have I felt so much pain, seeing the aftermath was horrific. That by far was the worst day of my life. Here we are about to clear a town, and within the last couple days we just lost 21 of our guys. Everything after that just became numb. We all felt like our time was coming, it's just a matter of when. That feeling was strong throughout our whole deployment, but that day that moment solidified it. We kept on with the op though, we cleared the city. Our grunts just lost a third of their platoon, and they still nutted up and cleared the city. That's bravery on a whole new level. We also got intell that the insurgents drug the Marine across the river to another city. And that Delta force went in and recovered the body. During that op we got our revenge. That was the first time I've seen F-18s doing a gun run. We pushed the insurgents out of the city and they were literally jumping into the Euphrates river. That's when our F-18s swooped in and lit them fuckers up. Although we got our revenge, it still will never replace the men we lost. And by some crazy miracle one Marine survived that blast. He was one of our trackers, the driver. The guy 2 feet behind him was completely gone, but he survived and crawled away. While the ammo inside the trac was cooking off after the blast, another vehicle drove between him and the trac to shield him from getting hurt. He was med evaced and that guy is still alive and well today. Angels had their wings around him that morning.
We all lost a huge part of us in iraq, and I believe most of that part was in Barwanah. We left that city about 6 days later, all changed men. But what little we had left, our boys kept pushing forward, we kept fighting. We completed the mission and completed the deployment. There are so many more details that I care not to share, but I just wanted to give the men we lost the respect they deserve, as well as the rest of our men that never gave up. Semper Fi warriors. Today, this sacred day, is our day. Let us raise our glasses. Let us live for them.
August 1, 2005
Cpl. Jeffrey A. Boskovitch
Lcpl. Roger D. Castleberry Jr.
Sgt. David J. Coullard
Lcpl. Daniel N. Deyarmin Jr.
Lcpl. Brian P. Montgomery
Sgt. Nathaniel S. Rock
August 3, 2005
Cpl David Stewart - 24
Lcpl Kevin Waruinge - 22
Sgt Bradley Harper - 25
Sgt Justin Hoffman - 27
Lcpl Timothy Bell Jr - 22
Lcpl Eric Bernholtz - 23
Lcpl Michael Cifuentes - 25
Lcpl Christopher Dyer - 19
Sgt David Kreuter - 26
Lcpl Aaron Reed - 21
Lcpl William Wightman - 22
Lcpl Edward Schroeder II - 22
Lcpl Nicholas Bloem - 20
Lcpl Grant Fraser - 22
The tattoo on my back was actually drawn up by one of our grunts during the operation just a couple days after the explosion. Most of the company got this drawing tattooed. It is by far the most meaningful tattoo that I have.
