Forty Minutes in Fallujah

...Pruitt started walking down the street wounded, dazed, and in pain...

...His dad, Gerald, ran the farm while sharing boy-raising duties with Brad's mom, Myrna...

...I took Nicholl's pressure dressing off him to treat whatever his other wound was...

...Then Cpl...

...The Army's 7th Cav swept through the breach and began the street-to-street fight for, Kasai recalled, about the first 13 blocks...

...I was trying to cut his flack jacket off...

...They were searching the one and two-story houses for insurgents, avoiding booby traps and improvised explosive devices as best they could...

...About 40 minutes later, Brad Kasal was carried out of the house and into the pantheon of heroes of the U.S...

...He remembers walking the fields hunting pheasant with an old hand-me-down 20-gauge shotgun...

...After a few days, K-3-1 pulled out and headed north...

...Nicholl behind me, and I start pieing off the doorway, meaning clearing just a little bit at a time without exposing any more of your body than you have to...

...They had fortified houses in anticipation of an attack from the south, but the Marines came in from the north...

...rolled over to the right to see what it was...

...And I yelled at some Marines and asked them if they'd cleared it...

...And so he did, and started taking over first aid trying to get [Nicholl's] flack jacket off and treat whatever chest wound he had...

...I just stuck my M-16 over his AK, stuck it right into his chest and just started pullin' the trigger, and kept pulling the trigger until he went down...

...There were about eight of us that went inside the building...

...But I couldn't get a good enough angle [to hit the bad guy] without exposing myself...

...It gave me about 42 shrapnel wounds...

...That's when I got my 9-mil out...

...While Kasal worked on the wound, Pruitt told him there had been a big firefight with a lot of bad guys, and there were three wounded Marines still trapped inside...

...I rolled over on my back and...

...Back in the States on Christmas leave in December 2002, Kasal and his unit got word they'd be deploying to Kuwait...

...Each one of us carried one pressure dressing...

...We did limited operations through August and September and all through the whole summer and fall," Kasal said...

...to see where he was hit...

...He declined to speak of what he did there...

...I never BY JED BABBIN 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 really made big issues of them...

...They led the regiment into the city and into what was probably the heaviest battle of the invasion...

...So then I get up to the doorway to that room, with Pfc...

...And that's where you see the picture...

...And everybody said no, hesitatin...

...Kasai doesn't know the names of the two Marines who rescued him...

...fired...

...Soon enough, Kasal was at war in Afghanistan...

...They started the house-to-house fight again at about 7 a.m...

...At a Navy field hospital and again at the big U.S...

...His shattered right leg is getting better, and he takes it day by day...

...Kasai dragged Pruitt into an alley and began to administer first aid...

...MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 21 FORTY MINUTES IN FALLUJAH were alive 'cause he could hear me yelling at Nicholl trying to keep him from losing consciousness...

...I kept my eyes on that room and I never looked behind me...

...But there was one room at the far left corner that everybody forgot about...

...I pushed him with my left leg–my good leg–up against the wall...

...They entered Baghdad on April 6 or 7, and were on their way home by May...

...I looked at the wall trying to think if we could bust our way out...

...I probably shot him a good eight or nine times, plus two more in his forehead...

...Kasal's company breached the enemy defenses, assaulting and capturing a critically located train station to pave the way for the rest of the assault force...

...You may never hear Bradley Kasal's name again...

...Tallulah ABOUT 50 MILES WEST OF BAGHDAD, and once a city of over 250,000, Fallujah was the insurgents' biggest stronghold in Iraq...

...Some time in August or September 2003, Kasal'sunit got the word they were headed back to Iraq...

...I'd served 20 years in the military to make a difference...

...There were a couple of dark rooms...

...It was a hand grenade, sitting right there about four feet from me....It was just out of reach so I couldn't swat it back out of the room...

...It was the most dangerous because the Marines' feinting attacks in 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 the months before—all from the south—had drawn the terrorists in that direction...

...When he came in he talked about hard work and discipline when the other recruiters were preaching more about money, skills, and things like that, I was more impressed by the history of the Marine Corps and I figured that if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do the hardest...

...But there's more than a little speculation that Brad Kasai may receive the Medal of Honor for those 40 minutes in Fallujah...

...It was a big open room, with a [stairwell] and a couple of adjoining rooms...

...He spent a lot of time in the field with his new men, making sure they were ready for what they'd have to face...

...rolled him over top of me to get him on the other side of me [out of the doorway and the line of fire...

...Nicholl lived but lost his leg...

...I'm crawling out of the doorway, [and] the bad guy I just killed is blocking the way...

...upstairs to 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 suppress the bad guy...

...So looking at that as a possible danger area, I grabbed another young Marine, Pfc...

...No drugs, or any of the other serious problems teenagers fall prey to...

...I had it taped to my shoulder, and put it on Nicholl's leg as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding...

...Kasai lost about 60 percent of his blood in the fight...

...Nicholl, and we went to go clear that room...

...Jed Babbin, an American Spectator contributing editor, is also the author of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think (Refinery, 2004...

...Much of what the Marines did in Afghanistan remains classified...

...Brad Kasai is on the mend, and though he wants to go back to the fight he may never be able to...

...And as I was yelling at the Marines behind me, keeping my head forward just yelling behind me to tell them to keep covering the ladder well–all of a sudden that's when AK fire from above and behind me opened up on fully automatic...

...I didn't have time to crawl to it to swat it, so I quickly rolled over to my left side and pushed Nicholl down and I laid on top of him and bear hugged him to try to cover him up as good I could and the grenade went off...

...Brad Kasal's war ended about four hours later...

...Kasal, with two of his Marines—Private First Class Nicholl and Corporal Mitchell—had been in heavy room-to-room fights on the 12th, and they expected more of the same on the 13th...

...I was able to shake it off and keep going...

...They were in combat, day after day and night after night, but the Marines stuck to it...

...I did what I had to do...

...It was in Fallujah, in December 2003, that the insurgents killed four American security workers in an ambush, mutilated their bodies, and hung them on a bridge for conveniently present television crews to broadcast the atrocity...

...A few months later, by April 2004, the Marines were making probing attacks into Fallujah...

...It was a cool November day, about 60 degrees and—as on every Fallujah street—a sewer-like odor hung in the air...

...First to Fight K-3-1 WAS ASSIGNED to Regimental Combat Team 1, which led the invasion and moved north quickly to the city of An Nasiriyah...

...Two young Marines from Kilo Company came running into the room and grabbed me and pulled me out...

...all I could think about was three of our own getting captured by the bad guys and beheaded later on or shot right there...

...It takes months, sometimes years, for the Marines and the chain of command to decide on such things...

...but those two young Marines who pulled me out [are] who I consider heroes...

...Nicholl was conscious, and holding his stomach, so I thought he had a gut or a chest wound...

...And then again, you may...

...As the months passed, the Marines were getting antsy: the fight was going to happen, and they wanted to put it behind them...

...Forty Minutes in "The Queens" WEAPONS COMPANY WAS ORDERED in with Kasal's old outfit, K-3-1, which was leading the fight through part of the Queens...

...Mitchell was in there and he was starting to direct Marines to fan out and go clear the other rooms...

...and the bad guy [at the top of the stairwell] started shooting at him...

...They didn't sleep, just catching naps when they could...

...After the fight, his unit found unidentified drugs in the house, which could have accounted for the man being able to keep fighting when Kasal kept shooting him...

...Kasal and his men got their first real night's sleep on November 12...

...He had sever-al days of blood transfusions, and then spent 67 days recuperating in Bethesda Naval Hospital...

...He was still being] shot at, so I...

...I was wrestling around with it and I couldn't quite get it...

...crawled back out into the doorway to grab him and pull him out of the line of fire...

...Nicholl–at least one insurgent shooting down at them from above–and whoever else might still be in the darkened room...

...Calling another Marine to take care of Pruitt, Kasai rounded up a handful of his men and rushed into the house to rescue the wounded Marines...

...I've done other combat tours but in my 20 years this is probably the most important one...

...And he fell at my feet...

...I was about third through the door...

...Blood was spurting out of my leg...

...I told him what Nicholl's wounds were, he asked me about mine and I told him just take care of Nicholl and his wounds and don't worry about me...

...For the next 20 years, Brad Kasai was a Marine infantryman...

...to come through another direction in the house and...

...I got out of the line of fire, but then Nicholl fell into the doorway...

...I heard it and then I felt several rounds hit my leg...

...Kasai was everyone's friend, so there wasn't a lot of peer pressure...

...He was wounded in the 1991 Gulf War, but Kasal wasn't collecting Purple Hearts...

...I was able to crawl out of the doorway and around the other side of the wall and pull my right leg with my hands...

...On 9-11, Brad Kasal was First Sergeant of Kilo Company, Third Battalion, First Marine Division: K-3-1 in Marine lingo...

...Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, he had several operations to put his leg back together...

...Most of his family were Army men, but he chose the Marines, "because it's the most challenging and I was more impressed with the Marine recruiter...

...Kasal said his men, "Were exhausted but with as busy as we were and with the danger the way it was and the adrenaline kicking in everybody was holding up pretty well...

...I knew that they were dead if we left them in that building ...in my mind something had to be done and done quickly to save those three Marines...

...On the 12th we hit the north part—what we called `the Queens'—which [was]...the most dangerous part [of the city...

...I told two other Marines [to] go to the wounded Marine to provide security and first aid...

...They suffered casualties every day, on almost every street...

...Kasal led the 170 enlisted men of K-3-1 aboard ship, setting sail for Kuwait on January 17...

...It was just Kasal, the dead man, Pfc...

...Eventually, after about 30 or 40 minutes from the beginning of it all, other Marines were able...

...I succeeded...

...Luckily Mitchell...

...There weren't a lot of in-town activities, so Brad grewup doing chores, studying, and hunting and trapping for recreation...

...It was lit for the most part...

...They didn't get to stay home for long...

...right there two feet from me–I coulda shook his hand he was so close–was a bad guy crouched up against the wall with his AK pointed right at me...

...Kasal remembers, "We had some wounded but no one was seriously wounded...

...He could have opted to stay home, but he volunteered to go back to the fight...

...Kasal said, "It was their first good rest," since the attack began on the 8th...

...My adrenaline was flowing too high [to black out...

...In a moment or two, Kasal's head cleared and he resumed cutting Nicholl's flack jacket off...

...but it was too solid, so I told him to try to yell out the window to the friendly Marines outside or try to bust our way through another part of the wall, and come in another direction...

...In the back of my mind I was thinking the bad guy was going to come in and spray the room or try to throw a grenade...

...I heard a noise to the right of me, so I stopped what I was doing I...

...At about 10 a.m., Kasal had just climbed out of his Humvee to continue the battle on yet another street when he recognized one of the sergeants from K-3-1, Sergeant Pruitt, coming out of a house wounded...

...The [bullets] were hitting the wall all around me...

...Thirty-eight-year-old Brad Kasai (he pronounces it "castle") grew up on a farm in tiny Afton, Iowa...

...He hopes to be walking again by mid-summer...

...On Nov-ember 8, the Marines assaulted Fallujah and Kasal's company led the way...

...All the blast hit me...

...Kasal's Weapons Company was part of the Marine force that made the stop-and-start attacks MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 19 FORTY MINUTES IN FALLUJAH on insurgent positions in Fallujah for months...

...By that time he'd been in the Marines for almost 20 years...

...I wasn't going to miss it...

...I knew he knew we Kasal didn't know it, but the Marines supposedly covering the staircase had gone to another part of the building, chasing other insurgents...

...So then I started crawling on my arms to try to get out of the doorway 'cause [bullets] were still hitting around me...

...was able to get out of the doorway [and wasn't hit...

...So everybody came out in pretty good shape...

...Kasal's company followed by the second day, and again took a lead position...

...I yelled back at Nicholl, "bad guy," and I backed up [just as] he fired a burst from his AK that went right in front of me...

...So I told two Marines, keep the [staircase] covered...

...Mitchell carne running in...

...Marine Corps...

...He'd been in "just about every Middle Eastern country" several times and had been in combat all too often...

...My leg collapsed and I fell into the doorway next to the bad guy...

...As far as [protecting Nicholl from the grenade blast], a lot of people would call that heroic but I think any Marine would do that for any other Marine...

...I was bleedin' pretty bad by this time...

...I got shot in the butt, and I felt it, but grabbed ahold of Nicholl's sleeve and started pulling, I tried to drag him backwards and get him out of the doorway...

...And as I got around to the near wall...

...I fired two rounds...

...A wrestler and middle linebacker in high school, he hung out with the athletic crowd and "with the people who weren't athletes but partied all the time...

...The insurgent fell] down right in the door-way of the room that I was clearing...

...Then, he said: Cpl...

...I noticed two enemy dead there in the first room [and one wounded Marine...

...In February, Kasal was assigned as First Sergeant of Weapons Company, still part of K-3-1...

...The two young Marines that ran into that room knew that they were going to get shot at...

...Kasai, in the matter-of-fact tones one of us might use to describe a day at the office, told the story of what happened after he dragged Pruitt to safety: When [Pruitt told me] that there were three Marines trapped inside...

...Because they'd been deployed overseas for nearly a year, K-3-1 got one of the top spots on the list of homeward-bound Marines...

...Because it's important what we're doing over there...

...Between Brad and his five brothers, Gerald and Myrna were busy people...

...They ate when they could, and only dreamed of getting a shower and a good night's sleep...

...I was kind of getting weak and starting to lose consciousness...

...When he graduated from high school in 1984, Kasal gravitated toward the military...

...I told [Mitchell] we had to get Nicholl out of there that he was losing too much blood...

...I was bleeding pretty profusely...

...I turned down a lot of injuries [that might have earned him medals...

...Nicholl was still behind me, but the rest of the room is dark, [so] I can't see [anything...

...J E D B A B B I N Kasal speculated that the insurgent was drugged up...

...First Sergeant Brad Kasai recognized Sergeant Pruitt s he came out of a house three doors up...

...That's who I really consider heroes...

...That door where we're coming out of is the original door where we first came in...