One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War Read Online Free PDF Page A

A dozen Marines huddled around the radios; there was nothing they could do. Another squad had already left Fires to help, and the 81mm mortars at Inkerman were firing. Amid the background clunk of outgoing mortar shells, those in the ops center could only listen to the screams over the radio.

    At the scene of the fight, Abbate was checking on the wounded. Ruiz was still aiding Johnson, the chunk of rifle barrel still soldered deep into his mangled left thigh.
    “You’re going to make it,” Abbate said. “We’ll get you out of here.”
    Johnson remembered being thrown into the air. He thought his friend had caught him.
    Some of the enemy had forded the canal farther to the north and were attacking the Marines’ right flank, trying to cut off their route back to Fires. Abbate ran over to Cpl. Royce Hughie, who was covering the eastern approach with his squad automatic weapon. A SAW spews 800 rounds a minute; that volume of bullets melds into a glowing red laser beam slicing in half anything in its path. As Hughie shifted around, a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) shot out of the corn, struck the ground in front of him, and spun to a stop without exploding. Hughie shoved the SAW’s bipod into the mud and hosed down the fields to the north.
    Abbate ran back down the road, with bullets zipping in different directions, to see after Catherwood. Doc Swartz looked up and shook his head.
    “I can’t revive him,” he said. “He’s dead.”
    Shells from the mortars back at Inkerman were exploding to the north. The Taliban responded with RPGs, some direct shots through the corn and most lofted at an angle. Corn stalks were smoldering and the battlefield was thick with smoke. Over the next twenty minutes, under supporting fire by Hughie, all of the Marines moved back across the canal.
    Seeking cover, LCpl. Joseph Lopez ran toward a compound designated House 3 on the leaders’ photomaps. A concussion wave swept over Abbate and Swartz, followed by a sharp
bang!
and a swirl of black smoke. Lopez, twenty-six, from Rosamond, California, had absorbed the full force of the explosion.
    Instinctively, Cpl. Sloan Hicks started toward Lopez. Abbate grabbed him.
    “No!” he shouted. “Stay off that goddamn path!”
    The Taliban had dug in IEDs along the banks of the canal, on the few trails, and in the courtyards. Marines were screaming back and forth, no one daring to move. Despite what he had just told Hicks, Abbate stood up, ignored the incoming fire, ran at full speed back to Ruiz, and grabbed the handset.
    “We have multiple cas from a second IED,” he radioed to Fires. “Too many to carry back. Direct the helos in here.”
    Doc Swartz was running past Abbate, toward the wounded near House 3. Another flash, another concussion wave, another patch of black smoke. Doc was down, with both legs blown off.
    “Freeze!” Abbate screamed at the spread-out Marines. “No one else move. Get that Vallon up here!”
    The engineer trained to use the metal detector was in shock. Three successive blasts had struck down four Marines behind him and three more in front of him. He refused to move. When Abbate yelled at him a second time, he responded by pitching his Vallon forward.
    Abbate crawled over and picked it up. He had no idea how to read a small quiver of the needle. He faked it, standing erect and slowly walking to Doc Swartz, scuffing his feet to leave marks for the others to follow. He kept going for about twenty meters until he reached a spot where the dirt was caked as hard as concrete, safe from any IED. Then he threw the Vallon to Hughie, who was holding the dying Lopez.
    Joseph Lopez had joined the Marines to “find his way.” He read the Bible daily and Johnson, his squad leader, hadtrusted his judgment. Before deploying, he told his father, “I know God, and if anything happens to me, I want you to tell my Mom I’m okay.”
    Together, Sergeant Dy, as everyone called him, and Sergeant Abbate carried first Lopez and then Doc