Navy Cross
MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (May 3, 2004) — Marine Sgt. Marcos A. Martinez received the Navy Cross from the Secretary of the Navy, Honorable Gordon R. England, during a ceremony Monday at 5th Marine Regiment parade deck here.
“These brave Marines did good things without notice,” said England, “and without the acclaim of crowds. But they got the acclaim of their fellow Marines.”
Martinez, 22, a Las Cruces, N.M., native, received the naval service’s second highest award for extraordinary heroism while serving as first fire team leader for 2nd squad, 1st Platoon, Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom April 12, 2003. The Medal of Honor is the highest military award.
A corporal at the time, Martinez responded to a call to reinforce 1st Platoon, which was under attack by enemy forces. Under fire, Martinez deployed his team in supporting positions for a squad assault.
He assumed control after his squad leader was wounded. While other Marines tended to the wounded squad leader, Martinez single-handedly assaulted the building and killed four enemy soldiers with a grenade and his rifle.
“All of the training is what helped me out,” said Martinez. “I relied on my training.”
The battle for Baghdad in April 2003 ended with the collapse of the Iraqi government and military under Saddam Hussein.
It took less than three weeks, but there were many fights in around the capital before it ended.
Sgt. Joseph Perez, 26, was the lead man in a squad that was out front of a Marine force moving into the city on April 4. With the Marines under intense fire, Perez, then a lance corporal, led a charge down a trench, firing his rifle and throwing a grenade to kill enemy fighters.
At one point he destroyed a machine gun bunker with a rocket launcher, killing four Iraqis. That allowed his squad to capture that position.
According to his citation, Perez continued to advance and fire at enemy fighters. Wounded by gunfire, he still directed his squad members to where they could open fire and finish off the enemy fighters.
On April 8, Sgt. Scott Montoya, was organizing Marine defenses when a company came under attack. Five different times, Montoya, 37, a Marine reservist, ran across open ground swept by enemy fire to rescue people. When an Iraqi civilian car was caught in the crossfire, Montoya dragged a wounded passenger to safety.
He led a dazed Marine to safety, dragged another one who was unconscious out of the line of fire and rescued a third, carrying him several hundred yards.
“My legs were burning like there was battery acid pumping through them,” says Montoya, today a sheriff’s deputy in Orange County, Calif. “I knew there was no way, while I had a breath of air in my lungs that I was going to leave that Marine lying there.”
On April 12, former Marine Cpl. Marco Martinez, 25, led an assault on Iraqi positions in Tarmiya, just north of Baghdad. When his squad leader was struck down by a grenade blast, Martinez assumed command. He led his Marines first through one building filled with enemy fighters and then into a second compound where resistance was even stiffer.
After a wall was breached in that second compound, Martinez led his troops into a large courtyard where they immediately came under fire from an adobe shed transformed by Iraqi fighters into a bunker. The Marines were pinned down behind palm trees.
The fighting became furious. Martinez spotted an enemy rocket launcher on the ground and ran into the open to retrieve it. He was trying to figure out how to fire it when a Marine near him was struck by a bullet in the spine. He dropped to the ground paralyzed.
Enemy riflemen turned their attention on the fallen Marine. Reacting to this, Martinez finally managed to fire the rocket at the bunker. This stunned the Iraqis for several seconds, allowing two other Marines to rush to aid their fallen comrade.
Gunfire from the bunker quickly resumed. So Martinez charged at it, emptying his rifle and then prepping a grenade which he threw into a gunport on the shed. The explosion killed all but one fighter inside. That man aimed his rifle at Martinez but Martinez killed him first.
“Within seconds, I stopped the firefight right there with that,” he said.
Perez, Montoya and Martinez each received the Navy Cross.
