Posted on 05/18/2004 2:24:49 PM PDT by wingnutx
U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Nick Popaditch
'Cigar Marine' Returns Home Less One Eye, But With Spirit Intact
By U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Jennie Haskamp Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif., May 17, 2004 — As Marine Gunnery Sgt. Nick Popaditch sat and watched his 10-year-old son play third base on May 8 at Luckie Park in Twentynine Palms, Calif., he couldn't hide his enthusiasm.
Popaditch, a Hammond, Ind., native, hadn't planned on making it to these games.
"One month ago, I was in Iraq, and I assumed I'd watch his first baseball season on video tape after I got home," he said from his red, white and blue canvas chair next to the dugout. "This is a real treat, being here for these games."
A real treat. Those three simple words provide a small preview of Popaditch's endlessly positive all-Marine attitude.
The event that brought him home in time for little league was life changing, but when he speaks of it, he is humble and quick to change the tide of the conversation to the Marines he met recently, or to the support he has received from friends and strangers alike, rather than be hailed as a hero himself.
"These young Marines I met in the hospitals on my way home -- they are the heroes," he said, telling story after story of the Marines he met in various stages of recovery while in hospitals in Landstuhl, Germany, Bethesda, Md., and San Diego on his way home to Twentynine Palms. "Marines like Corporal Ortiz."
Popaditch, still watching the game in front of him, retold Ortiz's story, a grin spreading across his chiseled, suntanned face.
"This kid was waiting for his buddy to be medevaced when a frag grenade came in. Ortiz could move, he could get out of the area, but his friend couldn't — so Ortiz covered his buddy with his own body, hoping their body armor would take up most of the blast. He used his arms to shield his friend's face, and at the last second, this other Marine, shot and bleeding, wrenched his arm free to cover Ortiz's face, too."
Popaditch stopped, an amazed look on his face, and shook his head.
"Man, they sure took a beating from the shrapnel, but they are both alive — they kept each other alive," he said. "They are heroes to me."
To fully understand why strangers across the country are sending well wishes to "Nick Popaditch, a true American hero" they've never met, one must rewind to Operation Iraqi Freedom and the liberation of Baghdad. In a famous event that truly symbolized the liberation, 1st Tank Battalion Marines pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein. An Associated Press photographer captured then-Staff Sgt. Nick Popaditch grinning, smoking a stogie with the statue falling in the background.
This photo, which ended up on the front page of nearly every major paper in the United States, earned him the title of "the Cigar Marine."
Now fast forward to April 7 this year. Popaditch, still a tank commander with 1st Tank Battalion, volunteered to redeploy to Iraq with another company when he found out his own company wasn't slated to go back yet.
For the 36-year-old father of two, that fateful day in Fallujah was just another day at the office — or in the tank, if you ask him.
"We'd been in constant contact with the enemy for 36 hours," he started, absentmindedly tracing a scar above his right eyebrow. "We were on a street so narrow there wasn't even room to turn my turret."
With the enemy somewhere in front of them, Popaditch and his crew, which included a second tank, his wingman-slowly traversed the narrow streets.
"We passed an alley no wider than those two poles, and I looked down the alley and saw anti-coalition forces fire (a rocket-propelled grenade) straight at us," he continued.
The poles he referred to were in the frame of the backstop, and as he made the analogy, he paused to watch the game being played in front of him, pointing out a kid in a pickle between first and second base.
"That RPG hit the side of my turret and it didn't penetrate, but I ordered my driver to stop and as I turned to engage them with my .50 caliber, another RPG was launched from a rooftop in front of us, and I guess that sucker had better aim," he laughed. "I'm not sure if he was aiming at my head, or at the hatch. The best I can figure is he split the difference."
Splitting the difference from a rooftop cost Popaditch his right eye — a fact he refuses to dwell on. Rather he speaks of the heroic actions of his 26-year-old gunner, Cpl. Ryan Chambers, a San Luis Obispo, Calif., native.
"When I got hit, I saw a flash of light and then everything went black. All I could hear was fuzz and static," he recalled, pausing to clap as his son's team brought in another runner, putting them ahead by five runs. "The force of the blast knocked me down into the tank, and I sat up and reached for my radio to start telling the driver we needed to get out of there. But my helmet was gone, so I had no radio."
Blinded, momentarily deaf and not yet feeling pain, Popaditch groped his way around the inside of his tank until he located Chambers.
"That guy, man, he was injured too, and he'd already climbed right up into the cupola — the same cupola I'd just been blown out of — and was assessing the situation," said Popaditch, stopping to laugh. "This is the funny part of the story. I grabbed him and screamed, 'Chambers, we have to get the tanks out of here,' and 'Chambers, you're going to have to call for a medevac.' He didn't answer me, so I shook him and screamed it three or four more times, until I realized he'd probably answered me but I couldn't hear him."
As the tank started moving he could faintly hear Chambers on the radio, he said.
"I heard him hollering at both drivers, just doing what tank commanders do naturally," he said, admiration in his voice. "We were blocks and blocks deep into the city, and Chambers simply took control. That was comforting to me, to know that he had taken charge of the situation."
With Chambers in charge, Popaditch focused on himself for a moment and said he suddenly felt very tired.
"I wanted to lie down right there and go to sleep for a while, but I knew from first aid training that I had to stay awake," he laughed, shaking his head sheepishly. "I stood up, held on, and forced myself to stay awake. I don't remember anything about the trip back to the center of command, but there is a berm near the trestle we were based near, and when I felt the tank cross that berm, I knew we were home."
Popaditch said when his Marines and the medical crew pulled him out of the tank; he knew everything was going to be OK. He said he's still not sure if they were Army medics or Navy corpsmen, and laughingly apologizes for not knowing, saying, "Hey, I'd just been hit in the face with a grenade."
"When they started treating me, I knew I was safe, and I knew my family would never see a picture of me hanging from a train trestle somewhere," he said. "It was such an emotionally charged feeling, such a sense of relief."
He remembers very little about being treated in Fallujah, or being medevaced to Germany, but what he does remember amazes him.
"I was on a cot, and they were working on me. I was very heavily medicated," he recalled, taking off the patch covering his right eye and rubbing his hand across his shaved head.
"All of a sudden, they said, 'Gunny, we're being mortared, so we're going to pile these flak jackets on you,' like it was no big deal."
Popaditch said they spread a flak vest on his legs, one on his torso and one over his head. He then lost consciousness until he was on the flight to Germany.
In Germany, he spoke to his wife and parents on the telephone, and after surgery, the doctors told him his right eye had been unsalvageable.
"I'm sure I left this guy on the floor of that tank," he smiled, gesturing to his swollen and closed right eyelid, surrounded with fresh pink scars and some small scabs peppered across his cheeks, mouth and forehead, "But it was nice of them to tell me I'd lost it. This other one is getting better every day though, and I expect to regain 100 percent of my vision in this eye."
Now back at home in the Mojave Desert, Popaditch, who is still on convalescent leave, spends a few hours every day at the headquarters element of his battalion. The battalion surgeon asks him from time to time why he isn't convalescing at home.
"I told him, 'I want to wait until I feel good enough to enjoy the leave, Sir,' and I just like being around the battalion, seeing the guys, seeing what I can get into," laughs Popaditch, who, with the help of his wife of 13 years, April, regularly drives three hours one-way to see a variety of doctors at Balboa Naval Medical Center, in San Diego.
"I can't believe these doctors. I really feel like I've got the greatest doctors in the world. There are so many of them, all specialists of some sort, and all interested in helping me make a full recovery."
When asked how he would sum up the whole experience, Popaditch thought for a minute and smiled.
"This has been the most motivating experience of my life, and it has restored my faith in the youth of America," he said enthusiastically. "The people I've met along the way are amazing. Corporal Chambers saved my life that day, the doctors are working to give me the best quality of life possible, and people across America are coming forward to support not only me, but all of the guys fighting over there right now."
Along with his eye, Popaditch lost his sense of smell, suffered permanent hearing loss in his right ear, broke his nose and has undergone several surgeries to remove shrapnel from his head, eye and face.
His sense of humor escaped unscathed, as did his love of God, Corps and country.
"My friends and my Marines are still there, still fighting," he said softly. "Any Marine in their right mind would want to be right there with them. All I've really lost is about 10 degrees of peripheral vision, and I'll be OK without that. I'm ready to be with my Marines again."
You might be interested in this story :-)
Cheers.
Thank you for the ping, and your service. This man has some amazing experiences, and has certainly earned his accolades. Wowzer.
Wow! What a man.
Thanks for the ping.
ping
Kerry isn't fit to shine his shoes.
Kerry isn't fit to breathe the same air as this man.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
L
I know an Admiral that might be able to find a place on his staff.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Damn, he takes an RPG basically to the face, and merely gets knocked about a bit and loses one eye, but is still in one piece.
Good to hear he's gonna be okay.
No kidding. What an American!
There were many salutes and many prayers for Popaditch when news of his wounds hit Free Republic here just a few short weeks ago. A great man with a great story, the Corps needs to get him out in front of the public.
Gotta love this guy. Thank God for our service people.
Thanks for the ping.
Navy Corpsman Jerrod Corhey looks at the shrapnel wound of Marine Cpl. Ryan Chambers, after a rocket propelled grenade hit his tank in Fallujah.
Just after 11 a.m., a tank hit by a rocket-propelled grenade some 500 yards into the city hobbled back to the train trestle that Marines have used as a fallback position since they arrived here Monday morning.
Climbing out of the tank turret to extinguish packs that were still on fire from the blast, Cpl. Ryan Chambers, 26, of San Luis Obispo, yelled for a medic.
"Corpsman! Corpsman!" he shouted as other Marines climbed atop the tank to help.
Together they pulled a Marine off the tank and placed him on the back of a humvee.
He was wounded with shrapnel to the head and eye, and another Marine from the tank was badly wounded in the hand.
After seeing his wounded tank crew off, Chambers realized he was wounded, too ---- hit in the upper left arm with shrapnel.
"I saw a couple of guys run, so we went after them," he said as the medic cut off his sleeve. "Then POW! The first one missed us, but the second one got us. They're just going to patch me up and I'm going back in."
I second your motion. Thank you Sgt. Popaditch.
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