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CAMP PENDLETON ---- A Marine Corps hero showered praise Monday on a comrade who is on trial for killing an unarmed prisoner of war. Navy Cross recipient Sgt. Maj. Brad Kasal said the accused Marine, Sgt. Ryan Weemer, was a skilled warrior who always displayed "excellent" military characteristics. Kasal was given the Navy Cross, the second-highest award a Marine can receive, for saving fellow Marines despite suffering severe wounds during the "Hell House" battle in Fallujah, Iraq, on Nov. 13, 2004. Both Kasal, now head of a five-state recruiting region based in Des Moines, Iowa, and Weemer were injured that...

Yesterday, my son raised his right hand and swore to defend this country in the Marine Corps with tears running down his face. My son was welcomed into the Marine family family were congratulated by SgtMaj. Brad Kasel, recipient of the Navy Cross for Action in Iraq. At the end of the time with the SgtMaj, my wife told him about politics, McCain/Palin and that I was a freeper. Unexpectedly, he gave me a personal copy of his book, "My Men Are My Heroes". Quite a day.

CAMP PENDLETON – It was the first time the four had all been together again since that day in Fallujah, Iraq, nearly 2½ years ago – the day they stepped into a “meat grinder” now known in Marine Corps lore as the “House of Hell.” For their actions and courage that day, Nov. 13, 2004, Sgt. Maj. Brad Kasal and former Sgt. Robert “R.J.” Mitchell would later receive the Navy Cross, the military's second-highest medal of valor. “My part was I went in the house, got shot first, came out of the house, told Kasal and everybody else what went...

My Men Are My Heroes: The Brad Kasal Story as told to Nathaniel R. Helms (Meredith Books: Des Moines, Iowa, 2007)For more about this riveting war memoir by a Marine awarded the Navy Cross for valor during the battle of Fallujah, go to In the words of Sgt. Maj. Brad Kasal, USMC...The day I was wounded I certainly didn't start out thinking I should kick in a door and engage practically hand-to-hand with the enemy However as I was with my Marines going street by street and house by house, upon learning that wounded Marines were trapped inside a...

U.S. Marine Corps First Sergeant Brad Kasal is an American hero. His story is a remarkable tale of bravery, sacrifice and savagery that adds another page to the great book of American military lore. Kasal may never join the pantheon of Marine Corps legends with colorful names like “Manila John” Basilone, or “Ol’ Gimlet Eye” Smedley Darlington Butler, who won two Medals of Honor, or Master Gunnery Sergeant Leland “Lou” Diamond, who sported a non-regulation goatee and once raised chickens behind his barracks. But he is every bit in their league. During his three tours of duty in Iraq and...

It was in the third week of the Iraq war, as U.S. troops barreled toward Baghdad, that Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith's band of combat engineers found themselves on the wrong end of 10-to-1 odds. In a walled courtyard not far from Baghdad's airport, Smith and his 15 lightly armed soldiers were trying to hold off 100 Special Republican Guard fighters wielding rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 assault rifles. When wounds downed the U.S. crew of the armored vehicle bearing the Americans' sole heavy machine gun, Smith scrambled into the breach. In the gunner's hatch of that personnel carrier, with...

Iowa Marine may be candidate for Medal of Honor Associated Press Saturday, February 26, 2005, 2:59:02 PM DES MOINES -- An Iowa Marine is receiving widespread praise for his bravery after leading a daring rescue mission in Iraq last fall. Sgt. Brad Kasal, of Afton, said he learned three fellow Marines were wounded inside an enemy-controlled house during house-to-house battles with insurgents in Fallujah on Nov. 13. "The insurgents would kill them, or worse -- torture them and then kill them, so time was essential," Kasal said. "So I gathered up a bunch of young Marines and tried to enter...

With more than half his blood draining onto an Iraqi battleground, a bullet-riddled Brad Kasal feared he might never again see his family in Afton, Iowa.   This photograph of wounded Marine 1st Sgt. Brad Kasal in Fallujah, Iraq, is making the rounds of the tight-knit Marine community. Kasal, of Afton, Iowa, shares a bond with two other Marines who also were wounded in the Nov. 13 firefight. But the first sergeant's resolve to save a younger Marine lying next to him pushed aside such thoughts. "I was losing consciousness," a recuperating Kasal recalled last week. "I forced myself...

 U.S. Marine Corps First Sergeant Brad Kasal is an American hero. His story is a remarkable tale of bravery, sacrifice and savagery that adds another page to the great book of American military lore.   Still holding his 9mm Beretta, a seriously injured First Sgt. Brad Kasal is helped from a Fallujah house on Nov. 13, 2004, after killing several Iraqi insurgents andwith his own body shielding a fellow Marine from a grenade blast. Kasal may never join the pantheon of Marine Corps legends with colorful names like “Manila John” Basilone, or “Ol’ Gimlet Eye” Smedley Darlington Butler, who won...