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By John E. Mulligan
Journal Washington Bureau

The Weapons Company of the 1st Battalion, 25th Marines drew some grim duty on the first Monday of last September: guarding a memorial service in downtown Fallujah for a fallen Marine from Connecticut.

“Our job was to stir up the hornets’ nest,” said Patrick Murray, a machine-gunner in the company’s 1st Platoon. With several other units, his section of eight Humvees circled a local government building to discourage attacks — especially mortar fire — on the more than 100 Marines assembled inside to honor the dead.

Murray heard an explosion from about three blocks north, then saw the boiling black cloud from his turret. Lance Corporal Jonathan Goldman gunned their Humvee toward the blast. They found a truck so fully engulfed in fire that the metal was melting. “So hot that it pushed me back,” said the 1st Platoon commander, Capt. Brendan C. Fogerty, of North Kingstown, who also rushed to the scene.

One man had been blown free, grievously burned. For those still inside the flaming hulk, there was nothing to be done. Platoons raced up and set defenses to protect the recovery of the dead. Rounds of ammunition cooked off in the wreckage, spraying bullets all around.

“That was the start of our morning,” said Murray. It wasn’t yet 10 a.m.

By now, scores of men were streaming from the memorial to join the hunt for the triggermen of the roadside bombing. They swiftly quarantined 10 city blocks, seizing rooftop observation posts and searching house to house inside the cordon.

Murray and his truckmates, Sgt. Terrence “Shane” Burke and Lance Corporal Jonathan Goldman, grabbed a fleeing kid — maybe 15 — and held him to test for explosive residue on his hands.

Other Marines tracked wires from the bomb site to a nearby house. When they burst inside, the women of the house seemed to be afraid of two men in the room. A third man said the two strangers had forced their way inside and demanded sanctuary. The two Fallujans — apparently homegrown members of a nationalist insurgency group — were seized and charged with the fatal bombing.

Only later in the manhunt did Murray learn who the fatalities were. He encountered his platoon sergeant while breaking into a building to set up an observation post. The news from Staff Sgt. Armando Feliciano, of Barnstable, Mass., was a punch in the face: the dead were Navy Corpsman Christopher Walsh, 30, an emergency medic from St. Louis; Corporal Jared Shoemaker, 29, a policeman from Tulsa; and a close friend, Lance Corporal Eric Valdepeñas, 21, youngest of eight brothers and sisters, from Seekonk. Another Oklahoman, 23-year-old Lance Corporal Cody Hill, was severely burned and fighting for this life.

“That truck was full of aces,” Murray said later, “but there wasn’t much time where you got to sit around and feel too bad or too sorry ’cause right away someone’s trying to hurt another one of your friends.”

Just about that time, and a few blocks away, Captain Fogerty heard the telltale pop . . . whoosh . . . POW! Never mind the movies: there was nothing slow-motion about the approach of a rocket-propelled grenade. It hit Fogerty’s Humvee, shearing off its hood. All hands walked away from the blast, three Marines and one Iraqi prisoner with heads hammering and ears ringing from concussions. The Marines rigged the truck for tow and went back to the hunt.

It was after 5 p.m. when they finished policing the bomb site. No shred of a comrade’s garment, no scrap of a lost ID would be left as a trophy for some jihadist. Finally, they trekked back to camp.

Some guys kicked things that night at the lake. Some went silent. Murray got together with his close friend Corporal Mark Wills of 2nd Platoon. “This was really the worst thing that had happened to us,” Murray said.

As they grieved, the men did the chores needed to sustain the work still to come. “Refit and refuel the trucks, refit and refuel us,” as Murray put it. “You had to drink water. You had to eat.” Some, including Murray’s Mobile Assault Platoon One, were still on for night patrol. When it was time, Wills walked him out to his Humvee.

“Stay safe, man,” Wills said, as they hugged.

Murray got behind the wheel, swapping off with Goldman, who had been driving all day. Goldman climbed up to the machine-gun turret. Burke rode shotgun. They pulled out of camp after sundown, sixth in a line of seven led by Captain Fogerty’s Humvee.

The armored patrol navigated the modern cloverleaf and caught Route Michigan, a multilane national highway, west into Fallujah. The crumbling industrial zone rolled by to the south, outside Murray’s door window, a residential district to the north.

A half-mile along Michigan, Murray turned to follow the column across the median. “Hold on!” he called to Goldman, up top.

Their truck cleared the median. “Smooth, right?” Murray hollered.

“Smooth as always,” Goldman hollered back.

That was the last chuckle of Patrick Murray’s life on two legs.

The world ripped open: crack of thunder, blast of fire, gut-rending rush into the darkness.

The roadside bombing was a perfect belly-shot beneath the armored truck: maximum concentration of shock, optimal spread of flames.

Goldman flew straight up through the turret hole, smashing his head and legs against the steel. Murray flew through the left door, landing on his face by a curbstone 20 feet away. Burke flew partway through the left door and got stuck — flopping over the pavement as the wreck rolled on, his tan Nomex flight suit on fire.

Burke and Murray would have died, but for the work of an improvised shield. Three days before, when they lost a Humvee in a nonfatal bombing, the cautious Burke had insisted that they layer the floor of their replacement truck with scraps of body armor from the dump.

Now the Marines were in the battle they had been warned about so many months ago in training: chaos that no amount of training could anticipate.

As Murray went into shock, his senses sharpened. Time slowed. OK: he was half-deaf, his limbs were not working right; he was broken and burned but definitely alive. Then, he realized he might be dead any second in the gunfire over his face from the ambush at the bomb site.

Captain Fogerty sent trucks into a rough defensive perimeter near the wreck and read the bullet tracers and rocket shots from the north side of Michigan: “Their fire is pretty much high,” he judged. “That’s good.”

The fire was heavy, but nothing like the counterwave of suppressing fire from the rest of Fogerty’s platoon. The Marines spent nearly a night’s supply of ammunition in minutes — maybe 5 minutes, maybe 10. All anybody remembers for sure is that it lasted forever.

Simultaneously, a complex rescue was under way. The three wounded Marines were scattered in the dark beneath the deafening rain of fire.

Goldman, at least, was vertical, but he was addled by a concussion and limping on smashed knees and ankles after his blast-off through the turret hatch.

Navy Corpsmen Sam Jordan and Jim O’Brien sprinted to the wreck to free Burke. Jordan beat out the fire on Burke’s clothes with his bare hands, suffering second-degree burns.

“Where’s my gun?” cried Burke. “Let’s get Murray to the hospital!”

“Dude, your leg’s missing,” Jordan said to Burke. He gave Burke a shot of morphine.

Murray was missing, too. Thrown from the rolling wreck, he was 50 yards outside the defensive perimeter for long moments of terror.

Corporal Eric Wales spotted somebody lying near the median. “Who’s that? Who’s that?” Wales cried as he ran through the fire zone.

“Hey, it’s Murray,” said Pat. “I’m OK.”

“No you’re not,” Wales said.

He dragged his friend through the shooting gallery of Michigan and into shelter. Corpsman O’Brien peeled away from Burke to work on Murray. Sgt. Scott Parrish ran in to provide covering fire.

The image is etched in Murray’s memory: Parrish kneeling beside his head, firing at their attackers, his profile framed against a black sky ablaze with tracers, O’Brien leaning into him, tending to his wounds, oblivious of the din and flash of the fight.

Burke for certain and possibly Murray were in danger of bleeding to death in minutes. The unit was under heavy fire. Reinforcements were not yet at hand. The by-the-book minimum evacuation column — four trucks — was out of the question. Captain Fogerty and Corporal Brian Tomasevik held a short huddle, shouting over the noise, and made the call.

Screw the rulebook. These guys had to go immediately. Tomasevik organized the loading of Murray and Burke onto the rear of a flatbed casualty-evacuation truck, with the corpsmen to tend to them and another truck to cover.

“You OK to drive?” Tomasevik asked. He didn’t know Goldman was injured.

“Yeah,” Goldman said, and off they went to the hospital at Camp Fallujah, a well-appointed former Iraqi Army post southeast of Baharia.

During the run to the hospital, Doc Jordan performed a snap examination of Murray: broken arms, burns on hands and face, right leg smashed — a very ugly compound fracture by first appearances.

“Hey, Dude. Can I get some morphine?” Murray asked as they bounced along.

“You in a lot of pain?” Jordan answered.

“When’s the next time I’m ever going to get morphine?” Murray shot back with a grin on his burn-blackened face.

Doc Jordan performed a snap diagnosis: Murray was going to be fine.

Goldman pulled up at the hospital entrance and delivered Murray and Burke into the Emergency Room. Then Goldman collapsed and was wheeled into emergency.

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