Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Brent Morel and Willie Copeland understood each other. Copeland was a sergeant leading three other marines, while Morel was a captain commanding a platoon of 24. But Morel had been an enlisted man before he got his officer's commission. "Morel understood what it meant to be a young marine coming up, and he understood the platoon from the ground up," Copeland recalled in an interview with National Journal. "And he would always say that he was a scrapper."
Trained as "recon" marines -- assigned to reconnoiter ahead of the main body, and in many ways the Corps's equivalent of Army Special Forces -- Morel and Copeland had aggression as part of their job descriptions. On April 7, 2004, however, their unit was on convoy duty, escorting headquarters and supply vehicles to set up a new forward base in Anbar province. "That was a typical mission for us," Copeland said, "but we knew the area, and that day we realized something was wrong. The hair rose on the back of our necks."
Iraqi insurgents opened fire from both sides of the road with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Morel and Copeland were in the command Humvee, Copeland feverishly warning other units over the radio. At first they followed standard procedure and tried to push forward beyond the kill zone in their unarmored Humvees.
"Then our lead vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, which wounded all five marines inside," Copeland said. Leaving them behind was not an option. "Morel ordered us to dismount from the vehicles and push on foot toward the enemy positions." With one escort Humvee down and two others out of reach at the tail end of the convoy, only nine men in just two Humvees were left to execute Morel's order. Leaving a driver and a machine gunner with each vehicle, Morel, Copeland, and three riflemen charged across open desert, up a 10-foot berm, through a shallow canal, up a second embankment on the far side, and into trenches held by 40 to 60 Iraqis.
Copeland does not remember exactly how he got to the berms, only that he got there. Morel led the three riflemen through the waist-deep canal and ordered Copeland to cover them. When the others had crossed, Copeland splashed in after them. As soon as Copeland scrambled up the far embankment and could see his comrades again, "that's when Captain Morel was shot," Copeland said.
Morel collapsed and another man threw himself down to give first aid. From Copeland's vantage point, it looked as if both had been hit. "I thought I had two marines down," he said, "and only one marine still standing." So Copeland abandoned the relative security of the berm and ran to the others in the open field, covered only by "some type of crop between ankle- and knee-high." They put the wounded Morel in a shallow ditch and divided their efforts between protecting him and shooting back.
The Iraqi guerrillas had planned on a hit-and-run ambush, not a stand-up fight, and the charge of five men against 50 must have shocked them. "Some of them continued to fire," Copeland said, "but there were also individuals that were running away from -- I'd guess you'd call it our counterattack." The two sides pulled back from each other, still exchanging fire.
"Morel was still conscious and talking to us when we loaded him into a Humvee," Copeland recalled. The other marines returned to base. "I was kind of tired," is all the feeling Copeland can recall. "I was ready for a shower after crawling through a chest-deep muddy canal." Only later did word come that Morel had died of his wounds. He would be the only marine from his battalion to die on that deployment: After that astounding charge, the insurgents backed off from launching convoy attacks in that sector for months.
Even so, Copeland said, "I was incredibly busy," breaking in a new platoon commander and leading his own men. There was no time to reflect on death or valor, he recalled: "I didn't even know I was nominated for the award until we were back in California." After Copeland received the Navy Cross, however, admiring marines and the media descended like a thunderstorm. "I'm the type of person who likes to keep a low profile, and to have that much attention is kind of overwhelming," he said, still uncomfortable talking to a reporter after nearly two years and yet another tour in Iraq.
"Marines are all taught to do those actions that I did; that's part of being a marine," Copeland went on. "I don't know that I did anything more extraordinary than anyone else. I wear that medal not for me, but to honor all the heroes that were there that day -- because everyone that day did exceptional things."
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