Lucky 'Bastard' escapes death (Honest that's MNF-Iraq Title)

Multi-National Forces-Iraq ^ | Lance Cpl. Ray Lewis

[SandRat]

Cpl. Jamie L. Emerson, 22-year-old mortarman with the 2nd Marine Regiment, looks at his damaged helmet at a Marine outpost near Iraq's border with Syria recently. He narrowly escaped death when a enemy round struck him in his Kevlar helmet in Husayba on Aug. 1.

[SandRat]

One LUCKY Marine.

[pissant]

Very Lucky. Thank God, indeed.

[Saije]

Lucky us. We need them all alive and fighting.

[Axhandle]

Before 9/11, when most training consisted of "movement to daylight" through wait-a-minute vines with a set of PVS-7's and perhaps a MILES halo on your kevlar, I think every infantryman with a sore neck has commented something to the effect of "if this helmet doesn't save my life someday then I'm going to be po'd."

[dr_who_2]

A shame they didn't nail the little creep who shot at him.

[phoenix0468]

Too bad he didn't have a chance to fire back, or the other marines for that matter. Those terrorists wouldn't have been so lucky. BTW, at least the MNF press knows who the "enemy" is. Refreshing to see a news report without the word insurgent.

[Oldsailor]

This guy is lucky as hell and the referance to Tarawa is of interest to me.

Tarawa wa a very small ilsand in the pacific the was defended by the Japanese so strongly that our casualties there were just awful. The assualt was misplaned and our assault guys were dumped out of the LCVP boats a very long way off shore due to the low tide. They waded in deep water to get ashore and were slautered by the enemy. We still took the island and beat the Japs.

I had a good friend who was there.

We won that war, even though bad things like that happened and I still don't ever remember any of us thinking that we couldn't win that war.

[Samwise]

Foxhole ping

[Screaming_Gerbil]

“I think God was looking out for me,” he said.

I think so too.

[tomzz]

One large factor in winning that war was MacArthur's idea of taking only those island we actually needed for airbases. If we'd tried to take all the islands, WWII in sthe Pacific would still be going on.

[Oldsailor]

You lost me there.....what does that mean?

[Soaring Feather]

Bump and thanks for the ping. Lucky Marine.

[tomzz]

The idea was called "island hopping". Basically, American staff figured we needed a chain of island air bases culminating in the Mariannas, from which B29s could bomb Japan en masse, and we took only such islands as were necessary to construct and protect that necessary chain. The effort to take all the Japanese islands in the Pacific was avoided and the islands we did not need were sealed off from resupply and bypassed.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Hey Marine ,Dont waste your time playing the lottery. You have already won the big one . God speed

[stumpy]

When I was in Boot Camp back in '65, they showed us color combat footage of that landing. The entire lagoon was PINK, from the blood of the Marines. They estimated 1000 Marines died in the lagoon before the first Marine made it to shore. The Actor Eddie Albert was decorated for saving Marines in that lagoon. Semper Fi.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

I know this isn't funny, but it reminds me of the scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where the guy (on the Normandy landing) gets a bullet on the helmet, takes it off, and laughs about it for a split-second before dying. Good thing it didn't happen to this Marine.

[snippy_about_it]

Dang. That is certainly a blessed Marine! Also glad to see our Navy Corpsmen are armed!

[Oldsailor]

For those who were there that day, the trip to the beach was nearly impossible. You are right, way too many died that day because of poor planning among other things. Still the Marines did the job and won that island and that was may point in my previous post.

[Oldsailor]

Thanks for the instruction about how "island hopping" was done. I assume you must have been there too. I was in the pacific during the "island hopping" and am pretty familiar with which islands were taken and which were bypassed.....which is what we called the islands we bypassed.

you are indeed correct that if we had tried to take every island we would have taken too long to do the job. Fortunatley our country was pretty united behind those in charge of the war and the anti-war sniping was not a problem like it is today.