Wednesday, December 24, 2008

MICHAEL MEYER PURPLE HEART

MICHAEL MEYER





Wounded in the initial assault on Bagdad, Iraq April 2003.
Michael was hit 8 times by rifle fire while he and his fellow marines were clearing the bridge to enter Bagdad.Basically what happened to me was I was -- pretty much the whole right flank of an ambush was pretty much directed towards me. What was happening is our company, Indi Company (ph), was taking -- was taking fire -- was in a firefight. And my platoon, 3rd Platoon, was in a -- was in the reserve. And usually if we're the reserve platoon, we don't have much to worry about, the Iraqis have either given up or run away by the time they even need the reserves.

So we're calmly waiting in the -- in the armored personnel vehicle, the Amtrak (ph), when we heard the call to get the reserves up there. So we unloaded. And as we were unloading and running to get behind this big berm, which was a part of an irrigation ditch, we were taking sniper fire. And as we were behind the ditch, we could see the enemy out in the field behind bunkers and bushes and other such things.

Well, while we were behind the berm, the field was constantly getting struck by artillery and Cobra helicopters were flying over and pretty much destroying everything that moved. After a good 15, 20 minutes of artillery and Cobra fire, they sent in our -- my platoon, 3rd platoon, to clear the field.

And my squad, which consisted of about 15, 16 Marines, covered a good 350 yards of this field. Some were spread out walking side by side through the field. And I was on the very, very right side of the whole squad. So I was -- anything to the right of me was either land or something else. And as we were walking through the field, we were constantly getting fire from the front. And every once in a while when we'd get fire, we'd get down in the prone (ph) and they'd clear that objective and we'd move on.

For some reason I wasn't too afraid or too scared. I was mainly worried about doing my job and keeping my sectors of firing. As I was walking, I walked up on about two or three enemy soldiers that were hiding, completely camouflaged behind a bush. I didn't -- I had no clue they were there. They were about five feet from me. The only thing that gave them away was them raising their weapon and clicking their weapon off of safe.

And as soon as I heard that, I turned to my right and tried to raise my M-16, and they had already gotten off six shots from their AK-47 assault rifle. And two shots struck me in my right arm, the other two in my left arm and the last two were into my bulletproof vest, which ended up saving my life.

And after the six shots struck me, I immediately hit the ground. And I couldn't feel either of my arms and I had blood running out of my mouth and I didn't -- I didn't know really what was going on. I knew that I was getting fired upon and that I was in the front. So I had to wait a little while for my team to get up to me.

While that was going on, I was constantly trying to crawl out of there, which I couldn't really do. I think I maybe got a couple of inches, which puts me in the whole firefight.

As my team, my fire team was laying down fire for me to -- for me to try and get out of their, the Navy corpsman named Doc Pira (ph) came and ran up there in the line of fire and grabbed me by my flack and drug me out of there and got me some cover and told me I was going to be all right and started patching me up. And that's when the rest of my fire team ran through there and got those guys.

And after they patched me up and gave me IV and told me I was going to be all right, they took me on a helicopter, got me to a MASH and everything was good from there.

I'd just like to thank Doc Pira for he probably had a big part of saving my life and dragging me out of that fight. And thank my fire team. Thank all the nurses here at this hospital. They've been awesome. And just like to say hi to the Army and Marine guys in the 7 Bravo, and that's about it. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well you've heard their stories, we'd like to answer any question you might have.

QUESTION: I'd like to ask Private Meyer, like a cat, private, do you think you have nine lives?

MEYER: I guess so. Somebody had to have been looking for me, because a number of things saved my life that day, the bulletproof vest, the corpsman, my fire team, so -- the guy that couldn't shoot five feet away eight shots couldn't get me. So just all of those I would like to thank God.

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