Navy Cross, Silver Star awarded for
actions in deadly firefight
Story by
Beth Zimmerman, Marine Corps Times
Lance Cpl. Todd Corbin and the
rest of his battalion commander’s personal security detachment had just
finished several days of routine patrol and had returned to Hadithah Dam
when they got the call.
A platoon from the battalion was taking fire on the east side of the
Euphrates River, and they needed Marines to block the insurgents’ retreat.
Corbin hopped into his 7-ton truck, while other members of the detachment —
which was now a quick-reaction force — piled into three Humvees and two
tanks and barreled east toward the action.
By the end of May 7, 2005, four Marines would lose their lives, but Corbin’s
role in saving more than half of the QRF would earn him the Navy Cross more
than a year later. A Marine driving the third Humvee, then-Cpl. Jeff
Schuller, would later receive the Silver Star.
From silence to chaos
That day, the QRF consisting mostly of leathernecks from
3rd Battalion, 25th
Marines, passed plenty of Iraqis on its way to the west side of the river,
but once it passed under the gate into Hadithah, “there was no one out,
nothing moving,” Corbin said.
Passing an alley perpendicular to the road, the convoy started turning
around. Before the vehicles could all face north, Corbin said, “all hell
broke loose.”
A white van tore out of the alley and blew up between two of the Humvees.
Then, another explosion “came out of nowhere,” said Corbin, who still isn’t
even sure if it was from a roadside bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade.
Meanwhile, the enemy pelted the Marines with RPGs, mortars and small-arms
fire in a “choke point” surrounded by high ground, Corbin said.
“It was a total nightmare,” said Schuller, now a 26-year-old sergeant.
A Navy corpsman and three QRF Marines — two sergeants and a lance corporal —
were killed instantly. Only five of the remaining 15 Marines were unscathed,
leaving more than half of the QRF killed or injured, Schuller said.
Corbin, 32, who has since been promoted to corporal, “leapt into the enemy
fire, directing Marines to engage and marking targets,” his Navy Cross
citation states. He ran to his patrol leader, a seriously injured sergeant,
threw him over his shoulder and ran back to the 7-ton, all the while “firing
at the enemy with his off-hand,” the citation states.
“He just jumped [out of the 7-ton] and took over,” said Schuller, who added
that they were down to uninjured corporals and lance corporals running the
QRF at that point. “He immediately started getting the killed and wounded,
not thinking of himself.”
When the gunner for Schuller’s Humvee, Lance Cpl. Mark Kalinowski, was hit
in the wrist with shrapnel, Schuller jumped up and took the lance corporal’s
spot behind the M240G machine gun.
Under intense enemy fire, Schuller gunned down insurgents shooting from the
windows, doorways and roof of a nearby hospital, and others shooting from
another roof and the alley. He swung his machine gun back and forth between
targets for nearly 40 minutes, according to his Silver Star citation, using
all of his ammo — short of launching a rocket.
“When the 240 went dry, [Kalinowski] handed me my M16 with a full magazine … as I got the M16 empty, he had a new box of 240 [ammo] waiting for me,” Schuller said.
As that was happening, Corbin
raced back and forth through the kill zone, dragging Marines back to the
7-ton. He said he can’t remember how many times he ran across the firing
zone.
At one point, Corbin and a wounded Marine were carrying their corpsman to
the 7-ton when the enemy opened up with small-arms fire at close range.
Corbin leaned over the corpsman to shield him from the action while Schuller
pushed back the enemy with his machine gun, the citation says.
Since one gunner had been killed
and two were wounded, Corbin said, only one gunner was left, firing a Mark
19 from the 7-ton. When the Mark 19 jammed, the only remaining gunner was
Schuller, Corbin said.
“My biggest worry was that we were gonna run out of ammo,” said Schuller,
who even fired his 9mm pistol. Schuller was “just short of shooting my AT4
and throwing my Ka-bar” before he dismounted, he said.
He then ran to the 7-ton and helped Corbin load Schuller’s vehicle
commander, who had been killed, before he returned through enemy fire to
guide Kalinowski to the 7-ton.
Grabbing magazines of ammo from Corbin, Schuller fired his rifle while the
rest of the QRF packed into the 7-ton. Any Marine who could fire a weapon
had it pointed out of the truck, firing at insurgents, Corbin said.
“The 7-ton looked like a porcupine with all these weapons sticking out of
it,” he said.
It also had three flat tires and a shot-up radiator.
“I don’t even know how this vehicle even ran,” Corbin said.
“The whole platoon rolled out in that 7-ton,” Schuller said. “It’s a
testament to Cpl. Corbin’s knowledge of that vehicle that he kept it
running.”
Corbin was flipping switches the whole time he drove the five miles back to
the battalion aid station, Schuller said.
“Because of [Corbin’s] heroism, no Marine lost his life after the initial
attack,” the citation states.
An overwhelming honor
Corbin and Schuller received their medals during a ceremony July 4 at 3/25’s
headquarters in Brook Park, Ohio, an event Schuller said was humbling and a
little surreal.
“In hindsight, would I do that again? Hell, I don’t know,” Corbin said.
“It’s a situation you want to say yeah, every time, but you don’t know,” he
said. “It’s just what you’re trained for … and you do it for your buddies.
“I live my life for those who didn’t come home.”