Marine Cheats Death

{uZa}Mr.POW · Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 9:59 pm Post subject: Marine Cheats Death

May 18: A U.S. Marine from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit flinches in a firefight with the Taliban near Garmser in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The Marine was uninjured in the exchange.

The Marine, part of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), was exchanging gunfire with Taliban fighters near Garmser in Afghanistan's Helmand Province when a Reuters photographer captured the soldier's very close call.

A series of six photos show the Marine, wearing a T-shirt and fatigues but no combat helmet, ducking as insurgent gunfire tears through the top of a mud wall he's using for cover. Remarkably, the Marine escaped the gunfight without injury.

“The insurgents are finding that every time they engage with the Marines, they lose,” Col. Peter Petronzio, commander of the 24th MEU, said in a statement issued May 10. “The Marines are gaining ground every day and securing more of the routes through the district. The support we have received from our allied partners has contributed to our many successes thus far.”

The Garmser district has been the center of a joint operation of U.S. and British troops designed to put pressure on Taliban insurgents, Agence France-Presse reports.

Troops have targeted this region on the Pakistan border that has served as a route for supplies and reinforcements for insurgents since April 28.

"Definitely they are putting resistance in the area because Garmser is very important for them," Gen. Carlos Branco, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, told the AFP.

"Garmser is a planning, staging and logistics hub. Once lost it will mean a severe defeat for them," he told the agency. "That is why they are reinforcing with insurgents coming from other places, both north and south."

Branco told the AFP that the insurgents had suffered "heavy" losses.

Foxnews story http://www.foxnews.com/photoessay/0,4644,3999,00.html#1_0

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 12:27 am Post subject:

Ooo RAH!!! Very Happy

_________________

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage!

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 12:58 am Post subject:

Sweet

my Cousin is over in Afghanistan, and was on the patrol when this happened. quite sad.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080516/militants_afghan_080516/20080516?hub=CTVNewsAt11

thought id post it since it is on the same line, afghanistan and so on.
not trying to take away from the thread though.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:30 am Post subject:

Wow...that was a close call! Shocked

I wonder if wearing a helmet would have helped if he would have been hit in the head... Rolling Eyes

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Respect all, fear none!
Conscia mens recti, famae mendacia ridet.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 7:36 am Post subject:

You can bet his scope is now off....

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 7:58 am Post subject:

Wow.

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Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 11:49 am Post subject:

Yikes, close one !!!!!!!

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:56 pm Post subject:

Who needs helmets? My boys have heads of kevlar wrapped steel.
If johnny rambo was smart he would have his gear on instead of looking like a Sgt Rock comic.

Hey Spam that is messed up. This is what you get when you deal with cowards. They take retarded women and small children to do their dirty work. Its especially sad when just a few megatons will solve all of this.

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:46 pm Post subject:

One of your boys drop his bride!!!!!

Can anyone list all the accessories on his rifle?

Mr.POW , out

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 10:45 pm Post subject:

here is an ideal wear your dam helmet you dumb ass Rolling Eyes

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Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:03 am Post subject:

Dang, I'd have to change my socks after something like that. Shocked

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There are many sunsets in a lifetime, but only one for each day.

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 5:52 pm Post subject:

Wow is right! Shocked

Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 10:48 am Post subject: Follow up on Fox

The pregnant wife of a brave Marine — whose brush with death during a gun battle with the Taliban was captured in a dramatic photo — told FOXNews.com that she feared an early trip to the delivery room when she realized the leatherneck under fire was her husband.

"I'm over seven months pregnant, so I thought I was going to go into labor," said Bobbie Bee, the wife of Sgt. William Olas Bee of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed in Afghanistan. "I knew automatically it was him."

A Reuters photographer captured Sgt. Bee's very close shave during a May 18 firefight in the Garmsir district of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, where U.S. and British troops have mounted an offensive since April 28 against a supply route used by the Taliban to funnel insurgents and weapons along the Pakistan border.

Bobbie, expecting her first child — a boy — said her 26-year-old husband is a "poker-face guy" who "lives for the Marine Corps." She spoke with him Wednesday morning and he reassured her he was "perfectly safe."

But she's had sleepless nights since the photographs of her husband surfaced earlier this week and flashed around the world.

She saw her husband's grimace in the photographs posted to a blog she reads, and though the captions of the photos said he was unscathed, she couldn't buy it.

"I wouldn't believe anybody saying he was OK until I actually spoke with him," Bobbie, 25, told FOXNews.com by phone from her parent's home in central Pennsylvania.

She quickly called the Marine's relatives to spread the good news.

"He's fighting to look out for the United States," said his grandmother, Belva Bee, noting "it’s something that he wanted to do, and if something happens to him over there I’ll know he was doing something that he wanted to do."

Sgt. Bee, an Ohio native and member of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment of the 24th MEU who has been a Marine for about nine years, has been deployed to Afghanistan since March. Though he's been there before, this is his first deployment since he married Bobbie on April Fool's Day 2006.

Bobbie credits the Marines Key Volunteer Network, a program that uses phone chains to keep families informed of their loved one's status, with helping her through the ordeal.

"We're taught the whole process, but when it becomes your own Marine, you lose all that," she said.

Much was made of the photographs, which showed Sgt. Bee defending a mud wall without a helmet. Bobbie said her husband told her he was changing into fresh clothes when the company came under gunfire.

"He said he turned around and did what he had to do."