# 2 Marines receive posthumous Navy Crosses



## Ravage (Feb 21, 2009)

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2009/02/marine_navy_crosses_022009w/

Lance Cpl. Nicholas Xiarhos was manning a rooftop observation post in Ramadi, Iraq, early April 22 when he heard a distinct sound: American gunfire.

A second later, an explosion rocked Joint Security Station Nasser. A fireball erupted as 2,000 pounds of explosives on a tanker truck exploded at one of the post’s gates, bowling over Marines across the installation, Xiarhos said.

“The explosion was so big, I thought the Iraqi police station (near the gate) had exploded,” Xiarhos said. “It put us all on the ground. The shock wave knocked us all down.”

It could have been worse. The attackers had the apparent intention of barreling onto the installation and blowing it up, killing as many of the 50 Marines and Iraqi police officers inside as possible.

But they hadn’t counted on crossing Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter and Cpl. Jonathan Yale.

On Friday, Haerter and Yale were posthumously awarded the Navy Cross — the nation’s second highest award for valor — for their actions that day. Navy Secretary Donald Winter presented the medals to their families in a ceremony at the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va.

Marine officials said the two leathernecks held their positions as the truck barreled down on a security checkpoint while weaving through serpentine traffic barriers. Yale, of 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, used a M249 squad automatic weapon while Haerter, of 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, opened fire with a M4 rifle to stop the truck before it could get on post. It exploded just a few feet away from them, leveling the security station.

At the ceremony, dozens of Marines from their units and top Marine officials joined Winter in honoring the two Marines. Sgt. Maj. Carlton Kent, the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, assisted Winter in presenting the medals to Yale’s wife, Shannon, and Haerter’s mother, Jo Anne Lyles. Among those in attendance were Commandant Gen. James Conway, Assistant Commandant Gen. James Amos and numerous commanding officers and generals from nearby Quantico.

Reflecting on the incident, Winter credited Haerter and Yale with keeping cool heads and protecting their fellow Marines.

“They could have had many other opportunities in life, but they chose to serve their Corps and their country,” Winter said. “Make no mistake about it: When these young men decided to serve their country, they knew the situation they would likely face.”

Lance Cpl. Corey Teague, Haerter’s team leader on 3rd Platoon, Weapons Company, said he was monitoring security cameras inside a building just a few hundred feet away from the security checkpoint as the bombing unfolded. It happened quickly, he said, with the Marines opening up with a five- or six-second burst of gunfire, then rounds from the SAW.

“It was just one of those sucker punches that comes out of nowhere,” Teague said. “It hits you, it hits you hard, and you feel it. … He saved my life, so I’ll be telling my kids about it, and they’ll be telling their kids about it.”

Sgt. Nicholas J. Trapani, of Weapons Company, 2/8, said he was more than two miles away from Nasser when the explosion occurred, but could still hear it. In fact, it stirred him from his early-morning sleep.

“I said, ‘I don’t really don’t know what that is, but I better stay awake and find out,’ Trapani said.

Xiarhos, of 1/9, said he said he still struggles with accepting the incident, especially because Haerter was considered one of the more professional, squared-away Marines in the unit.

“The only thing I remember is getting up, looking around, doing security on the roof and making sure that no one was trying to infiltrate us,” Xiarhos said. “Then I looked back down and over the ledge (of the observation post), and the first thing I heard was, ‘Corpsman!’ Hearing that in that kind of situation, you just know.”








> Navy Secretary Donald Winter awarded the Navy Cross to two fallen Marines on Feb. 20.


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## InfantryScout64 (Feb 21, 2009)

RIP, Marines...


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## car (Feb 21, 2009)

They're guarding the streets of Heaven now.

RIP


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## AssadUSMC (Feb 21, 2009)

Semper fi Devil Dogs - thank you for keeping your brothers safe.


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## AWP (Feb 21, 2009)

Blue Skies, Marines.


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## tova (Feb 21, 2009)

RIP, Godspeed, PBS....


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## CBTech (Feb 21, 2009)

An excerpt from Major General John F. Kelly's speach to Marines on Veterans Day:

...... In closing I wanted to share a story that you may not be aware of that took place only a few miles from here in Ramadi. On 22 April 2nd Battalion 8th Marines and 1st Battalion, 9th Marines were in the process of turning over a Joint Security Station Nasser. 
It's in the Sophia district of Ramadi, and was once the center of the insurgency in that city. Two Marines who barely knew each other as one was coming and the other going were standing guard at the Entry Control Point (ECP): their names were Jonathan Yale and Jordan Haerter. 
At 0745, and without warning, a large truck accelerated towards the ECP careening off the protective serpentine. Both must have understood on instinct what was happening as in less then a second they went to the guns and opened fire until the massive 2,000lb blast took their lives-but the suicide bomber never passed the post they protected, and 50 other Marines and perhaps as many police didn't die that day inside the JSS. 
I spoke to several Iraqi police eyewitness and they all told the same story, but one more emotionally than the others. 
He said no sane man would have stood there directly in the path of a speeding truck firing their weapons-yet two did. His officers, some as close as ten feet initially from the Marines, fired and ran when it was obvious the truck could not be stopped-and they survived. The Marines stood their ground and stopped the truck before it detonated, and saved the lives of their buddies.
A sacred duty of every commander in combat, yet the one we dread the most, is writing letters home to families who have lost a son or a daughter. I wanted to close by reading you a letter I wrote that night to the mother of one of those two heroes that for me sums up who and what we are as warriors and Veterans, why we serve, and how we will remember each other.”


I recieved this in an email a few days after Vets Day and yes I save speaches like this for fear of them getting lost forever. I recognized the story of sacrifice and dug down in my thumb drive to find it. 
Below I'll post the whole speech because it is probably what motivated the Major Gen.'s speech.


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## CBTech (Feb 21, 2009)

Major General John F. Kelly offers words about veterans past and present. 

 (FALLUJAH, Iraq) - Major General John F. Kelly dispatched a letter from Iraq stating that they held their Memorial Day ceremony in Fallujah today and it was inspiring. 

"Something about looking out at real Americans who know the price paid for our protection, and the world's freedoms. Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen and Marines - heroes all," Kelly said.
The General continued: "First, a few statistics to ponder. There are twenty-five million living American Veterans. Since General George Washington commanded the Continental Army forty-two million Americans have served the colors. 
A million have been killed in its defense. Another million and a half wounded. When most of us think about military cemeteries the first thought that comes to mind is Arlington National in Washington, but there are many, many more in the U.S.
Most Americans also don't know there are 24 American cemeteries maintained overseas with 125,000 graves of our fallen-61,000 in France alone-the result of two wars that saved Europe and the world from horrors unimaginable to Americans today; unimaginable, that is, unless you are a Veteran who have seen the terrible face of war so those who remained safe in America, and those yet unborn, would never have to. 

There are also memorials overseas to an additional 94,000 Americans who were lost at sea, or their remains never recovered from battlefields around the globe. With all this service and loss, we as Americans can be proud of the kind of people we are as we have never retained a square foot of any country we have defeated, we possess no empire, nor have we enslaved a single human being. 
On the contrary, billions across the planet are today-and billions yet unborn-live free because our Veterans have fought and died, and, once peace achieved, we've rebuilt destroyed cities, economies, and societies.
Memorial Day was established three years after our terrible Civil War that finally established what kind of nation we would be. A war in which 600,000 young Americans-North and South-perished. For a century the day continued to mean visiting and decorating graves or town-square memorials to those who died serving our great nation, and celebrating with parades and civic events. 
Americans kept the day quiet pausing to remember, at least for a little while, the kind of men and women they were who gave the last full measure, and the immensity of the sacrifice they made for those who remained protected at home.
Americans should not forget this weekend or any weekend as they relax with a few days off that the country is at war, and a new Greatest Generation is fighting a merciless enemy on their behalf in the terrible heat of Iraq, and in the mountains of Afghanistan. Like it or not America is engaged in a war today against an enemy that is savage, offers no quarter, whose only objectives are to either kill every one of our families in our homeland, or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that rational men and women can understand. 
Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy would do it today, tomorrow and everyday thereafter. I don't know why they hate us, and I frankly don't care and they can all go to hell, but they do hate us and are driven irrationally to our destruction. The best way to fight them is somewhere else and that is why we are here. For whatever reason they want to destroy our way of life our countrymen at home should be on their knees everyday thanking God we still have enough young people in America today willing to take up the fight as our Veterans did from the earliest days of our nation.
They should know that they are protected today by men and women as good as have ever served; as good today as their fathers were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and World War II. In this my third tour in Iraq I have never seen an American hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the danger and, with no apparent fear of death or injury, take the fight to the enemies of our way of life. 
As anyone who has ever experienced combat knows, and many of you do, when it starts, when the explosions and tracers are everywhere and the calls for the Corpsman or medic are screamed from the throats of men who know they are dying-when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion and fast forward at the same time-everything in one's survival instinct says stop, get down, save yourself -yet you don't. 
When no one would call you coward for cowering behind a wall or in a hole looking to your own self preservation, none of you do. It doesn't matter if it's an IED, a suicide bomber, mortar attack, fighting in the upstairs room of a house, or all of it at once-America should know you fight today in the same way our warriors have since the Revolution.
The wonderful thing about America's Armed Forces is that none of us are born killers. On the contrary we are good and decent Americans mostly from the neighborhoods of America's cities, and small towns. Almost all come from "salt of the earth" working class homes, and more often than not are the sons and daughters of cops and firemen, factory and service workers, and farmers. 
Most of us delivered papers, stocked shelves in the grocery store, played Little League baseball and pickup hockey in the local rink, and served Mass on Sunday morning. Some are former athletes, and many "couch potatoes" who drove our cars and motorcycles too fast, and blasted our music louder than perhaps we should have. 
We are all ordinary people performing remarkable acts of bravery and selfless acts of devotion to a cause bigger than ourselves-and for millions who will never know our names. Any one of us could have all stayed in school or gone another way, but yet we chose to serve knowing full well Iraq and Afghanistan was in our future. You did not avoid the most basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen-to defend the nation and its people-on the contrary, you went after it. 
You did not fail in life which the chattering class back home likes to believe is why you chose to serve and risk dying for the nation, but, rather, are the best our nation produces and have consciously put every American at home above your own self interest. You are all heroes and like many Veterans throughout our history many of us have endured things-sights, sounds and horrors-that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.


                                        VVVVVVVVVV  SPEECH CONTINUED VVVVVVVVVV


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## CBTech (Feb 21, 2009)

*SPEECH CONTINUED*

I know I find comfort that because I am here those I love and have sworn to protect will never have to deal with memories so terrible. I hope you who have seen these things have the same sense of purpose and balance when you relive the scenes of violence, and of decisions made. America's Armed Forces today know the price of being the finest men and women this nation has to offer, and pay it we do everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
More than four thousand of us have died in this war, and ten-times this number have been wounded. And the sacrifice continues as young Americans have gone to God since we all went to bed last night and slept free and protected. 
Their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives, husbands, and fiancés are sitting in their living rooms right now with casualty officers learning the true price of freedom, and are only just beginning a lifelong struggle of dealing with the pain and loss of someone so dear, but they are not victims as they knew what they were about and were doing what they wanted to do. 
Many of today's self-proclaimed experts and media commentators endeavor to make them out to be victims but they are wrong, and this only detracts from the decision these patriots made to step forward and protect the country that has given so much to all of us. We who are serving, and have served, demand not to be categorized as victims-we are not. 
Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never understand it when strong and committed men and women stand tall and firm against our enemies, just as they can't begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night-the protected never do. 
What the experts, commentators, and elites are missing, what they will also never understand, is the sense of commitment, joy, and honor, of serving the nation in its uniform, but every American Veteran, and their loved ones who support them and fear for them everyday, do understand.
We should all be confident that this experiment in democracy we call America will forever remain the "land of the free and home of the brave" so long as we never run out of tough young Americans willing to look beyond their own self interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us harm.
In closing I wanted to share a story that you may not be aware of that took place only a few miles from here in Ramadi. On 22 April 2nd Battalion 8th Marines and 1st Battalion, 9th Marines were in the process of turning over a Joint Security Station Nasser. 
It's in the Sophia district of Ramadi, and was once the center of the insurgency in that city. Two Marines who barely knew each other as one was coming and the other going were standing guard at the Entry Control Point (ECP): their names were Jonathan Yale and Jordan Haerter. 
At 0745, and without warning, a large truck accelerated towards the ECP careening off the protective serpentine. Both must have understood on instinct what was happening as in less then a second they went to the guns and opened fire until the massive 2,000lb blast took their lives-but the suicide bomber never passed the post they protected, and 50 other Marines and perhaps as many police didn't die that day inside the JSS. 
I spoke to several Iraqi police eyewitness and they all told the same story, but one more emotionally than the others. 
He said no sane man would have stood there directly in the path of a speeding truck firing their weapons-yet two did. His officers, some as close as ten feet initially from the Marines, fired and ran when it was obvious the truck could not be stopped-and they survived. The Marines stood their ground and stopped the truck before it detonated, and saved the lives of their buddies.
A sacred duty of every commander in combat, yet the one we dread the most, is writing letters home to families who have lost a son or a daughter. I wanted to close by reading you a letter I wrote that night to the mother of one of those two heroes that for me sums up who and what we are as warriors and Veterans, why we serve, and how we will remember each other.”


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## 8'Duece (Feb 21, 2009)

Rest easy now brothers, your watch is over. 

Thank you for your service, you are not forgotten.


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## The91Bravo (Feb 21, 2009)

Rest Easy Marines...

Where is that Kleenex??


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## JBS (Feb 21, 2009)

RIP, Warriors.


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## Trip_Wire (Feb 21, 2009)

RIP Marines — Semper Fidelis


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## 0699 (Feb 21, 2009)

RIP Marines.

Semper Fidelis.


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## FireWatch (Feb 22, 2009)

Semper Fidelis brothers RIP


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## Gypsy (Feb 22, 2009)

Rest in Peace, Marines.  Thank you.


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## 7point62 (Feb 25, 2009)

I'm late with this, but salute and RIP to my fallen younger brothers. Semper Fi.


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## SgtUSMC8541 (Feb 25, 2009)

RIP My Brother Warriors.


Semper Fi


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