OPERATION STEEL CURTAIN

“Now you tell me; do I deserve it?”

This is a serious question following a sincere conversation, but to understand its weight, you have to understand the context. It’s 15 May, 2007, and I’m sitting on a metal picnic bench across from Staff Sgt. Logan Cortes. Let’s just say his doubt has begun to set in.

Two hours prior, he was presented with the Bronze Star with combat distinguishing device for actions on 16 November, 2005, during Operation Iraqi Freedom in Anbar province with 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, then making up the battalion landing team (BLT) for the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) (Special Operations Capable).

At this point, the interview is almost over and the story has been laid bare; I have most of the general facts of what happened in New Ubaydi on that day during Operation Steel Curtain. I’m going over the story again in my mind when Cortes repeats his question.

“Do I deserve it?”

He’s talking about his Bronze Star. This is a fairly heavy question to pose to a lance corporal who’s never seen actual combat. I think about it, and the evidence, and my reply takes less than two seconds to surface.

“Yes. You do, staff sergeant.”

And after a short pause, I explain why.

SILENCE MASKS GRIT

I first met Staff Sgt. Cortes on the day of his award ceremony at Camp Hansen, Okinawa, Japan. The inside of the

House of Pain South gym’s basketball court area had been cleared out to allow the 31st MEU’s Battalion Landing Team 2/1 to attend.

Amid the sea of Marines and sailors pouring in to witness the presentation, I saw his nametape and approached him.

While introducing myself, I was caught off guard by his presence, which filled the air with benevolence, with an aura I have sometimes detected from experienced Marines, as well as other people of a particular high quality.

He stood about five feet, seven inches — slightly shorter than me — but completely solid; I had no reservations he could topple me at will. He had  jet-black hair and you could see the bottom half of a tattoo on his right bicep. In spite of an intimidating visage, he was particularly quiet; he possessed a gentle demeanor not expected of a Marine about to receive an award for valorous actions under fire.

After Cortes received his award from Lt. Col. Francis Donovan, the BLT’s commanding officer, my initial impressions of his character were validated: Cortes opted not to give a dramatic speech to the battalion, instead taking a more humble approach.

Donovan spoke on Cortes’ behalf, noting his leadership abilities and qualities. Cortes stood there proudly, but looked as if he would rather be somewhere else.

After the event, Cortes received attention from just about everyone. Marines and sailors from the battalion shook his hand and congratulated him. The attention seemed to make him slightly uncomfortable, but he handled it the way he would any circumstance—as a professional. Once everything calmed down, we made plans to meet during lunch for an interview, and then I left.

“WISE” WEIGHS IN ON THE “HAWK EYE”

Cortes gave me the name of someone I could use as a second source —the name of a corporal he described simply as “wise” — and told me he often exchanged ideas with this individual to benefit himself and his Marines, even though he himself is older and of higher rank.

So I sought out Cpl. Thomas M. Latimer, a squad leader with 1st Platoon, Company F, to get an inside word.

Latimer gave me a puzzled look when he answered the door, but invited me into his barracks room the second I mentioned Staff Sgt. Cortes. As I entered, he had a smile that seemed to indicate I was part of a long-running inside joke only the two of them would ever understand.

Latimer stood out to me immediately as a Marine who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, and he didn’t hold back much when I asked him about Cortes.

“My initial impression of him was he’s a hard case. Big guy, stares a lot, watches his people. He’s got that hawk eye on him. He always keeps close tabs on his people,” Latimer said. “The real first impression of him that I got before I even really got to talk to him was from talking to his machine gunners. He looked out for them.”

Latimer got to know Cortes when exchanging their squad and section Marines for cross-training. Not having known Cortes on a personal level until after the three-month deployment to Iraq didn’t stop Latimer from commenting on his award.

“If there’s one thing he believes in, he believes he is there for his Marines and his Marines alone,” Latimer said. “He’s a real selfless individual. You’re not going to tell him to not take care of his people.”

HE LED FROM THE FRONT

“Absolutely he deserves (the Bronze Star),” Latimer continued. “Did he have to leave a covered position and go help out people when other people would have come? There are people, brave men who would have made that decision – to stay right there. But it does take something to say, (forget) this, I’m charging across … we’re talking at least a hundred meters of open ground.

“When we first got there, we were three (hundred) to four hundred meters back and rounds were skipping off the deck in front of us before we even started our push. He went out there. He led from the front. Not only did he lead from the front, he pushed right to the very edge. How far can you go?”

What’s the most important thing he learned from Staff Sgt. Cortes?

“Do what you think is right,” Latimer responded instantly.

A moment passed.“Understand the consequences, sure, but do what you think is right.”

THE CORPS BECOMES A REFUGE

Cortes joined the Marine Corps in what he believes was more luck than willful act.

“I got in a fight with my elder sister and she threw me out of the house,” the Stockton, Calif., native said. He recalled this memory with a grin that seems to say he remembers the event with some form of fondness, even if it was a difficult time as it occurred.

“So I went to the recruiter and said, ‘You have three days to get me in.’ So here I am.”

Cortes held the military occupational specialty of rifleman upon his entrance into the Corps, and has been employed in several infantry billets since then. Currently, he serves as the Interim Fast Attack Vehicle section leader for Company G. He has decided so far to not leave the Marine Corps behind, choosing to remain because the organization seems to fit well.

“The brotherhood is awesome,” he said. “I felt it was a very good decision I made — joining the Marines. I saw other branches through the years, and I think it’s lucky that (the Marine Corps recruiter) was the first office I went to. I guess I’m just lucky.”

A REGULAR HOUSE IS A TERRORIST HAVEN

“The house looked like a regular house,” Cortes said. To illustrate the layout of the attack, of the ambush, of the enemies and the Marines he watched fall, Cortes reached over and drew something on my copy of his award citation.

This is a skill taught to all Marines, but it is especially essential to infantry: the ability to communicate terrain layouts through simple drawings. Throughout the day, I would interview Marines who were present during the fight, and they would do the same. Every time it would become necessary to express distance or shape or troop movements, the pens would come out and I would get some form of diagram.

“It was a regular house on the outside,” he said. “But on the inside, it was well protected. There had to be around seven (insurgents) in the house.”

He told me the final count of confirmed kills in the area was more than 30, but this included the surrounding neighborhood as well, which at the time contained New Ubaydi’s remaining insurgents. Operation Steel Curtain’s push into and through the terrorist haven had forced them into a pocket at the town’s edge.

When Marines from another platoon stacked up to enter the house, they were ambushed, and the house opened up like a bee hive.

“There was enemy all over the place,” he said.

AN INSURGENT’S LAST STAND

As the Marines of 2/1 started the assault toward the enemy, Cortes and his machine gunners, Lance Cpls. Roger Deeds and Richard Leary, began to set up a position behind a stone wall adjacent to the house. Moments later, they would hear of the Marine who went down inside – the front man on the stack attempting to clear the house – suffering wounds to both of his legs from an insurgent’s grenade.

“The first one to run over there was my lance corporal, Deeds,” Cortes recalled. “I was going to go there by myself, but Deeds went. He didn’t ask for permission or anything; he took off.”

Meanwhile, Leary set up a firing position to provide cover fire for the primary target house and to fire on several other houses to his right from where more insurgents had begun sending small arms fire.

Cortes pulled the injured Marine out of the house, only to realize he couldn’t locate his machine gunner. Leary had dropped behind the wall to protect himself from insurgent fire. He called out to Cortes that he was running low on ammunition. Cortes ran back to where the men had dropped their packs when the battle began and rummaged for the rounds his machine gunner would need to stay in the fight.

As Cortes scrambled back with the ammunition to supply Leary, an insurgent made the last mistake of his life by choosing to fire at Cortes.

“I came back over here to give Leary the ammo, and then (the insurgent) started firing over here,” Cortes said, making a couple of points on the map with his pen. “I guess I was a better shooter than he was.”

The award citation states the man was “at close range,” so I asked Cortes how close, and he pointed to a Marine walking toward us. The Marine was close enough for me to accurately see his rank.

Cortes said it felt like nothing. He said it felt like he feels right now, just talking to me at this table.

“Afterwards, the only things you think about are the (Marines) going to the hospital,” Cortes said. “You don’t really think about what happened or who was shooting at you or anything.”

GRENADES, EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE

Leary, who covered Cortes that day, is now a corporal and a squad leader in Weapons Platoon, Company F. For the most part, he just took me through his account of how things happened, which wasn’t far off from how I’d already heard it. He told me how he set up his firing position, how he saw all of the violence erupting around the house in the form of the usual accompaniments: grenades and explosions, gunfire, screaming, bleeding. He spoke about Cortes and Deeds running into the building, and Cortes bringing him ammunition when he was running out, and how he thought the Bronze Star was great because Cortes was someone who really deserved what he received.

“He sacrifices so much,” Leary said. “When he was with (our section), we had our group of machine gunners. I hate to be cliché, but it was a big, old, happy family.”

“A big, old, dysfunctional, happy family of brothers,” he corrected himself. “Anybody in that section would do anything for anyone else,” Leary continued. “It’s rare to see a staff (noncommissioned officer) sacrifice as much as he does for the lower-level Marines.”

When I mentioned Deeds, Leary pointed out his picture to me. It sat, framed, on top of his wall locker. Deeds was killed in action, along with four other 2/1 Marines the day Cortes rushed into hell to save a fallen brother.

Afterwards, right as I walked out the door, Leary said to make sure it’s a good story. That Cortes deserved it.

Cortes didn’t think so, and he explained his views. “Just like I told everyone else, my feelings are that I don’t deserve it because I didn’t do anything (more) than anyone over there did.”

But he’s wrong.

Beyond bureaucracies, beyond the frustration with who receives awards and who does not and why, beyond the reasons we fight and some die, there is this: One man falls in a building, others fall around it, and amidst the chaos are those who are still able who decide they will rescue their brethren or die trying.