|
|
Gunny Popaditch
back at the Tank Ramp. |
|
TWENTYNINE
PALMS, Calif., May 17, 2004 — As Marine Gunnery Sgt. Nick
Popaditch sat and watched his 10-year-old son play third base
on May 8 at Luckie Park in Twentynine Palms, Calif., he couldn't
hide his enthusiasm.
Popaditch,
a Hammond, Ind., native, hadn't planned on making it to these
games.
"One
month ago, I was in Iraq, and I assumed I'd watch his first
baseball season on video tape after I got home," he
said from his red, white and blue canvas chair next to the dugout.
"This is a real treat, being here for these games."
A
real treat. Those three simple words provide a small preview
of Popaditch's endlessly positive all-Marine attitude.
The
event that brought him home in time for little league was life
changing, but when he speaks of it, he is humble and quick to
change the tide of the conversation to the Marines he met recently,
or to the support he has received from friends and strangers
alike, rather than be hailed as a hero himself.
"These
young Marines I met in the hospitals on my way home -- they
are the heroes," he said, telling story after story
of the Marines he met in various stages of recovery while in
hospitals in Landstuhl, Germany, Bethesda, Md., and San Diego
on his way home to Twentynine Palms. "Marines like
Corporal Ortiz."
Popaditch,
still watching the game in front of him, retold Ortiz's story,
a grin spreading across his chiseled, suntanned face.
"This
kid was waiting for his buddy to be medevaced when a frag grenade
came in. Ortiz could move, he could get out of the area, but
his friend couldn't — so Ortiz covered his buddy with
his own body, hoping their body armor would take up most of
the blast. He used his arms to shield his friend's face, and
at the last second, this other Marine, shot and bleeding, wrenched
his arm free to cover Ortiz's face, too."
Popaditch
stopped, an amazed look on his face, and shook his head.
"Man,
they sure took a beating from the shrapnel, but they are both
alive — they kept each other alive," he said.
"They are heroes to me."
To
fully understand why strangers across the country are sending
well wishes to "Nick Popaditch, a true American hero"
they've never met, one must rewind to Operation Iraqi Freedom
and the liberation of Baghdad. In a famous event that truly
symbolized the liberation, 1st Tank Battalion Marines pulled
down a statue of Saddam Hussein. An Associated Press photographer
captured then-Staff Sgt. Nick Popaditch grinning, smoking a
stogie with the statue falling in the background.
This
photo, which ended up on the front page of nearly every major
paper in the United States, earned him the title of "the
Cigar Marine."
Now
fast forward to April 7 this year. Popaditch, still a tank commander
with 1st Tank Battalion, volunteered to redeploy to Iraq with
another company when he found out his own company wasn't slated
to go back yet.
For
the 36-year-old father of two, that fateful day in Fallujah
was just another day at the office — or in the tank, if
you ask him.
"We'd
been in constant contact with the enemy for 36 hours,"
he started, absentmindedly tracing a scar above his right eyebrow.
"We were on a street so narrow there wasn't even room
to turn my turret."
With
the enemy somewhere in front of them, Popaditch and his crew,
which included a second tank, his wingman-slowly traversed the
narrow streets.
"We
passed an alley no wider than those two poles, and I looked
down the alley and saw anti-coalition forces fire (a rocket-propelled
grenade) straight at us," he continued.
The
poles he referred to were in the frame of the backstop, and
as he made the analogy, he paused to watch the game being played
in front of him, pointing out a kid in a pickle between first
and second base.
"That
RPG hit the side of my turret and it didn't penetrate, but I
ordered my driver to stop and as I turned to engage them with
my .50 caliber, another RPG was launched from a rooftop in front
of us, and I guess that sucker had better aim," he
laughed. "I'm not sure if he was aiming at my head,
or at the hatch. The best I can figure is he split the difference."
Splitting
the difference from a rooftop cost Popaditch his right eye —
a fact he refuses to dwell on. Rather he speaks of the heroic
actions of his 26-year-old gunner, Cpl. Ryan Chambers, a San
Luis Obispo, Calif., native.
"When
I got hit, I saw a flash of light and then everything went black.
All I could hear was fuzz and static," he recalled,
pausing to clap as his son's team brought in another runner,
putting them ahead by five runs. "The force of the
blast knocked me down into the tank, and I sat up and reached
for my radio to start telling the driver we needed to get out
of there. But my helmet was gone, so I had no radio."
Blinded,
momentarily deaf and not yet feeling pain, Popaditch groped
his way around the inside of his tank until he located Chambers.
"That
guy, man, he was injured too, and he'd already climbed right
up into the cupola — the same cupola I'd just been blown
out of — and was assessing the situation," said
Popaditch, stopping to laugh. "This is the funny part
of the story. I grabbed him and screamed, 'Chambers, we have
to get the tanks out of here,' and 'Chambers, you're going to
have to call for a medevac.' He didn't answer me, so I shook
him and screamed it three or four more times, until I realized
he'd probably answered me but I couldn't hear him."
As
the tank started moving he could faintly hear Chambers on the
radio, he said.
"I
heard him hollering at both drivers, just doing what tank commanders
do naturally," he said, admiration in his voice.
"We were blocks and blocks deep into the city, and Chambers
simply took control. That was comforting to me, to know that
he had taken charge of the situation."
With
Chambers in charge, Popaditch focused on himself for a moment
and said he suddenly felt very tired.
"I
wanted to lie down right there and go to sleep for a while,
but I knew from first aid training that I had to stay awake,"
he laughed, shaking his head sheepishly. "I stood up,
held on, and forced myself to stay awake. I don't remember anything
about the trip back to the center of command, but there is a
berm near the trestle we were based near, and when I felt the
tank cross that berm, I knew we were home."
Popaditch
said when his Marines and the medical crew pulled him out of
the tank; he knew everything was going to be OK. He said he's
still not sure if they were Army medics or Navy corpsmen, and
laughingly apologizes for not knowing, saying, "Hey,
I'd just been hit in the face with a grenade."
"When
they started treating me, I knew I was safe, and I knew my family
would never see a picture of me hanging from a train trestle
somewhere," he said. "It was such an emotionally
charged feeling, such a sense of relief."
He
remembers very little about being treated in Fallujah, or being
medevaced to Germany, but what he does remember amazes him.
"I
was on a cot, and they were working on me. I was very heavily
medicated," he recalled, taking off the patch covering
his right eye and rubbing his hand across his shaved head.
"All
of a sudden, they said, 'Gunny, we're being mortared, so we're
going to pile these flak jackets on you,' like it was no big
deal."
Popaditch
said they spread a flak vest on his legs, one on his torso and
one over his head. He then lost consciousness until he was on
the flight to Germany.
In
Germany, he spoke to his wife and parents on the telephone,
and after surgery, the doctors told him his right eye had been
unsalvageable.
"I'm
sure I left this guy on the floor of that tank," he
smiled, gesturing to his swollen and closed right eyelid, surrounded
with fresh pink scars and some small scabs peppered across his
cheeks, mouth and forehead, "But it was nice of them
to tell me I'd lost it. This other one is getting better every
day though, and I expect to regain 100 percent of my vision
in this eye."
Now
back at home in the Mojave Desert, Popaditch, who is still on
convalescent leave, spends a few hours every day at the headquarters
element of his battalion. The battalion surgeon asks him from
time to time why he isn't convalescing at home.
"I
told him, 'I want to wait until I feel good enough to enjoy
the leave, Sir,' and I just like being around the battalion,
seeing the guys, seeing what I can get into," laughs
Popaditch, who, with the help of his wife of 13 years, April,
regularly drives three hours one-way to see a variety of doctors
at Balboa Naval Medical Center, in San Diego.
"I
can't believe these doctors. I really feel like I've got the
greatest doctors in the world. There are so many of them, all
specialists of some sort, and all interested in helping me make
a full recovery."
When
asked how he would sum up the whole experience, Popaditch thought
for a minute and smiled.
"This
has been the most motivating experience of my life, and it has
restored my faith in the youth of America," he said
enthusiastically. "The people I've met along the way
are amazing. Corporal Chambers saved my life that day, the doctors
are working to give me the best quality of life possible, and
people across America are coming forward to support not only
me, but all of the guys fighting over there right now."
Along
with his eye, Popaditch lost his sense of smell, suffered permanent
hearing loss in his right ear, broke his nose and has undergone
several surgeries to remove shrapnel from his head, eye and
face.
His
sense of humor escaped unscathed, as did his love of God, Corps
and country.
"My
friends and my Marines are still there, still fighting,"
he said softly. "Any Marine in their right mind would want
to be right there with them. All I've really lost is about 10
degrees of peripheral vision, and I'll be OK without that. I'm
ready to be with my Marines again."
By U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Jennie Haskamp Marine
Corps Air Ground Combat Center
Back to my Gunny Popaditch
Main Page
|
