I heard about this incident this morning on the way to work and got choked up. This Marine, a Mexican Immigrant who loved his new country so much he signed up to fight for it, placed his body on top of a grenade to save his buddies.
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Sgt. Rafael Peralta built a reputation as a man who always put his Marines’ interests ahead of his own.
He showed that again, when he made the ultimate sacrifice of his life Tuesday, by shielding his fellow Marines from a grenade blast.
“It’s stuff you hear about in boot camp, about World War II and Tarawa Marines who won the Medal of Honor,” said Lance Cpl. Rob Rogers, 22, of Tallahassee, Fla., one of Peralta’s platoon mates in 1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment.
Peralta, 25, as platoon scout, wasn’t even assigned to the assault team that entered the insurgent safe house in northern Fallujah, Marines said. Despite an assignment that would have allowed him to avoid such dangerous duty, he regularly asked squad leaders if he could join their assault teams, they said.
One of the first Marines to enter the house, Peralta was wounded in the face by rifle fire from a room near the entry door, said Lance Cpl. Adam Morrison, 20, of Tacoma, who was in the house when Peralta was first wounded.
Moments later, an insurgent rolled a fragmentation grenade into the area where a wounded Peralta and the other Marines were seeking cover.
As Morrison and another Marine scrambled to escape the blast, pounding against a locked door, Peralta grabbed the grenade and cradled it into his body, Morrison said. While one Marine was badly wounded by shrapnel from the blast, the Marines said they believe more lives would have been lost if not for Peralta’s selfless act.
“He saved half my fire team,” said Cpl. Brannon Dyer, 27, of Blairsville, Ga.
The Marines said such a sacrifice would be perfectly in character for Peralta, a Mexico native who lived in San Diego and gained U.S. citizenship after joining the Marines.
“He’d stand up for his Marines to an insane point,” Rogers said.
Rogers and others remembered Peralta as a squared-away Marine, so meticulous about uniform standards that he sent his camouflage uniform to be pressed while training in Kuwait before entering Iraq.
But mostly they remembered acts of selflessness: offering career advice, giving a buddy a ride home from the bar, teaching salsa dance steps in the barracks.
While Alpha Company was still gathering information, and a formal finding on Peralta’s death is likely months away, not a single Marine in Alpha Company doubted the account of Peralta’s act of sacrifice.
“I believe it,” said Alpha’s commander, Capt. Lee Johnson. “He was that kind of Marine.”
I have so many mixed feelings right now. I’m proud of his bravery, he didn’t hesitate to die so that his buddies might live. Then there are the feelings of anger towards the terrorists who caused this, to the left wing idiots who think they know about life while drinking there Vente Cappuccino…and could care less about this Marine. I will raise a toast to Sgt. Rafael Peralta tonight.
UPDATE – 12/5/04
Above is a picture of this true hero plus the below information from Lance Cpl. T. J. Kaemmerer, a combat correspondent:
“You’re still here, don’t forget that. Tell your kids, your grandkids, what Sgt. Peralta did for you and the other Marines today,” said Cpl. Richard A. Mason, to a group of Marines after a fierce firefight in the battle-scarred city of Fallujah.
I am attached to Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, for Operation Al Fajr. My job is to tell the stories of the heroic actions and daily realities faced by Mason and the rest of Co. A, 1/3, during Operation Al Fajr. The most telling story of that operation was the heroics of Sgt. Rafael Peralta.
I normally have to interview Marines to get the full story, but on Nov. 15 I witnessed for myself Peralta’s selfless act of heroism, the likes of which generations of Marines have heard about, but so few have actually experienced.
With the batteries to my camera dead, I decided to leave it behind and live up to the ethos that “every Marine is a rifleman” by volunteering to help clear the buildings that lined the streets of Fallujah.
I was the third man in a six-man group, or what Marines refer to as a “stack.” Two stacks of Marines were used to clear a house. Moving quickly from the third house to the fourth, our order in the stack changed. I found Peralta in my spot, so I fell in behind him as we moved toward the house.
Peralta was a platoon scout, which meant he could have stayed back in safety while the squads of 1st Platoon went into the danger-filled streets, but he was constantly asking to help out. I learned by speaking with Peralta and other Marines the night before that he frequently put his safety, reputation and career on the line for the needs and morale of the junior Marines around him.
When we reached the fourth house, we breached the gate and swiftly approached the building. The first Marine in the stack kicked in the front door, revealing another locked door to the front and another to the right.
Kicking in the doors simultaneously, one stack filed swiftly into the room to the front as the other group of Marines darted off to the right.
After successfully clearing the front rooms in the house, we met up to clear the back room of the house.
Two Marines stacked to the left of the door as Peralta, rifle in hand, tested the handle. I watched from the middle, slightly off to the right of the room as the handle turned with ease.
Peralta threw open the door and was met by gunfire from three insurgents.
Peralta was hit several times in his upper torso and face at point-blank range by the fully automatic 7.62 mm weapons employed by the three terrorists.
Mortally wounded, he jumped into the already cleared adjoining room, giving the rest of us a clear line of fire through the doorway to the rear of the house.
We opened fire, adding the bangs of our M-16A2 service rifles and the deafening, rolling cracks of a Squad Automatic Weapon to the already nerve-racking sound of the AKs.
I saw four Marines firing from the adjoining room when a yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade bounced into the room and rolled to a stop close to Peralta’s wrecked body.
In his last fleeting moments of consciousness, Peralta reached out and pulled the grenade into his body.
The four Marines scrambled to the corners of the room as the majority of the blast was absorbed by Peralta’s now lifeless mass. His selflessness left the four Marines with only minor injuries from smaller fragments of the grenade.
During the fight, a fire was sparked in the rear of the house, and the flames grew.
The Marine in charge of the squad ordered us to evacuate the injured Marines from the house, regroup and return to finish the fight and retrieve Peralta’s body.
We quickly ran for shelter, three or four houses up the street, to a house that had already been cleared and was occupied by the squad’s platoon.
The ingrained code that Marines have of never leaving a man behind drove the next few moments. Within seconds, we headed back to the house, not knowing what we may encounter, yet ready for another round.
I don’t remember walking back down the street or through the gate in front of the house. When we walked through the door the second time, I prayed that we wouldn’t lose another brother.
We entered the house and met no resistance. We couldn’t clear the rest of the house because the fire had grown immensely, and the danger of the enemy’s weapons cache exploding in the house was increasing by the second.
Most of us provided security while Peralta’s body was removed from the house.
We carried him back to our rally point and upon returning were told that other Marines who went to support us encountered and killed the three insurgents from inside the house.
Throughout Operation Al Fajr, we were constantly told by our leadership that we were making history, but even if the history books never mention this battle and Peralta’s heroism, I’m sure that Nov. 15, 2004 and Peralta’s sacrifice will never be forgotten by the Marines who were there.
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