Cpl. Mark Camp
Silver Star
Portland Press Herald
A Marine reservist who grew up in Maine was honored Sunday [8/20/2006] for heroism while serving in Iraq.
Cpl. Mark Camp, 25, received the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest award for gallantry in battle, during a ceremony in Columbus, Ohio.
Camp was wounded in early May during an intense campaign with Lima Company of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines. The company, fighting insurgents in western Iraq as part of Operation Matador, lost 23 soldiers.
The former Maine resident and son of a Westbrook car dealer told The Columbus Dispatch newspaper that he was positioned at the top hatch of an amphibious assault vehicle while on patrol when a roadside bomb launched the vehicle into the air and sent shrapnel flying.
The explosion burned Camp’s hands and face, but he still attempted to rescue one of his comrades trapped inside the vehicle after the blast, the newspaper reported. He continued his rescue effort despite another explosion that knocked him out of the vehicle and set his hands on fire again.
Columbus Dispatch
The company had come from New Ubaydi near the Syrian border, where, on May 8, 2005, two of its members were killed clearing a house in Operation Matador. On May 11, they rode in amphibious assault vehicles, called Amtracs, to clear a small village of insurgents.
Lance Cpl. Mark Camp stood in the top hatch of one, providing security, making sure things looked safe. He put his goggles over his eyes, but he had left his fireproof gloves in his pack.
At first he saw children playing, which is usually a good sign. But as the “trac” rolled on, everyone seemed to disappear. It got quiet.
Then … boom. A roadside bomb launched the trac into the air, throwing a Marine standing with Camp into a nearby field. Inside, shrapnel tore through the men.
The explosion lit Camp’s hands and face on fire and knocked him back into the vehicle. He beat on his face with his arms and put out the flames. The goggles probably saved his eyes.
His hands took longer to extinguish. He waved them, he hit them against his uniform and, finally, they went out, too, horribly burned. He yelled for someone to open the back door.
Someone did, and most of the 17 Marines who had been inside tumbled out. Everyone was hurt. Some were on fire. Camp remembers asking one if he was OK.
“No,” the Marine said.
Then he heard yelling from inside the vehicle. It was Pfc. Christopher Dixon, 18, of Obetz, a member of Camp’s fire team. Camp knew his voice. He crawled back into the vehicle to save him.
“He was my friend,” Camp said.
Camp banged his leg, felt pain and noticed for the first time that he had taken shrapnel in his right thigh. He kept going. The heat was cooking off ammunition all around him. Bullets flew. He tried to keep low.
He grabbed Dixon with his burned hands, but he was weak. He kept telling Dixon that he was going to have to help him.
Then there was another explosion. Camp fell back out of the vehicle, on fire again. Once more, he put himself out. Dixon was still inside.
“I got back up. I crawled back in the trac,” he said.
Now, Dixon wasn’t moving, and he wasn’t talking. Camp tried to grip his pack, his helmet, anything, but by then the skin was melting from his hands. The heat inside the vehicle grew. Ammunition fired off everywhere.
“I’m screaming for someone to help me,” he said. “I’m screaming for someone with fresh hands.”
Finally, some Marines pulled Camp away and Dixon free, too. The second explosion had killed Dixon.
Outside the vehicle, Camp tried to move.
“All of the sudden, I can’t walk anymore,” he said. His right leg, the one with the shrapnel, gave out. Lima Company Marines told that story over and over again, said Gunnery Sgt. Shawn Delgado, as an example of how heroic someone can be. “Camp was a guy that everyone wanted to emulate,” Delgado said. Camp won the Silver Star for his rescue attempt on May 11, and for his actions on May 8, when insurgents who were hiding in a closet and in an underground crawl space of a house shot four members of his squad. Camp was outside, but ran inside the house three separate times to clear the insurgents and recover his squad members.
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