More Heros

American Thinker:

Two names to honor as long as there is an America
Alan Fraser

You've seen or read little or nothing about Cpl. Jonathan Yale and Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter. If our media were not so biased, these two heroes would be household names. Each received the Navy Cross -- posthumously.

In six seconds, the two Marine grunts offered their lives, and prevented a massacre of dozens of Marines and Iraqis in Ramadi.

Tony Perry wrote of their heroism last December in the Los Angeles Times:

Haerter had volunteered to watch the main gate [of Joint Security Station Nasser in Ramadi], even though it was considered the most hazardous of the compound's three guard stations because it could be approached from a busy thoroughfare.

The sun had barely risen when the two sentries spotted a 20-foot-long truck headed toward the gate, weaving with increasing speed through the concrete barriers. Two Iraqi police officers assigned to the gate ran for their lives. So did several Iraqi police on the adjacent street.

Yale and Haerter tried to wave off the truck, but it kept coming. They opened fire, Yale with a machine gun, Haerter with an M-16. Their bullets peppered the radiator and windshield. The truck slowed but kept rolling.

A few dozen feet from the gate, the truck exploded. Investigators found that it was loaded with 2,000 pounds of explosives and that its driver, his hand on a "dead-man switch," was determined to commit suicide and slaughter Marines and Iraqi police.

The thunderous explosion rocked much of Ramadi, interrupting the morning call to prayers from the many mosques. A nearby mosque and a home were flattened. The blast ripped a crater 5 feet deep and 20 feet across into the street.Shards of concrete
scattered everywhere, and choking dust filled the air.

Haerter was dead; Yale was dying.

Without them we'd still be hearing about the massacre... and the tide of the war would have been turned against us. Two men. Heroes to remember.

Only the Medal of Honor is higher than the Navy Cross. To date 27 Navy Crosses have been awarded the Navy Cross in the Global War on Terror.

Did you know that?

An America that ignores or forgets those who defend her with their lives cannot survive.