Posted by KenW on Thursday, February 02, 2006 at 10:04PM :
Prior to posting this, I ran it by Joe C. for his approval. He gave his blessing.
A good friend's son is serving in Afghanistan with the 1/3 Marine Weapons group. We are able to send and receive e-mails from him.
I received a graphic tale of combat this morning through his father.
I wanted to post the letter and solicit responses from the forum that I could forward to him and his Company.
I know this has nothing to do with Power Wagons, but those who frequent the forum are a pretty level-headed group that would appreciate this young Marine's efforts and could offer words of encouragement. I promise to forward all appropriate replies to him.
His name is LCPL Matthew Smith, 20 years of age, from San Jose, California. Please address any and all replies as if you were addressing Matt.
Following is his e-mail:
"Well we lost one. They ambushed us with an IED and blew up the vehicle behind me. When I looked back the humvee was 20 ft behind me and the IED blew the vehicle 15 ft in the air and and when the guy fell out of the humvee the humvee came crashing down on top of him severing him from the waist down. The other guy came out without a scratch because he was blown away from the vehicle. As we were trying to pull his body from under the humvee they shot RPGs and machine guns at us, they hit Duca's humvee's radiator basically immobilizing it and painted our humvees up with bullets. RPGs impacted all around my humvee while I was shooting the MK-19 at the enemy position. The fire fight lasted for about 2hrs and we even called in a Medivac and we called in Apaches to lite up the mountains. Bullets were bouncing off my turret as I was firing. Absolutely crazy. After the fight I was in a daze. I haven't been in that big of a fire fight since Fallujah."
Thank you very much.
KenW - San Jose, CA
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