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‘Squirrel’ had the heart of a lion

Iskandiriyah, Iraq — March 20, 2006

It was one year ago today that I witnessed Spc. Francisco Martinez’s brave and futile fight against the catastrophic effects of a sniper’s bullet.

He was shot while we were on a dismounted patrol in Ramadi, an insurgent-infested area about 75 miles west of Baghdad where many soldiers and Marines have been felled by snipers. I rode back to the aid station with him and was crushed to learn of his death an hour later after so many had raced to save his life.

I guess with so much going on it didn’t occur to me at the time that he had been killed on the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Today is the third anniversary of the start of operations and I want to bring to light the actions of another soldier I have learned about on this, my fifth, trip to Iraq to chronicle the soldiers’ lives at war.

His name was Staff Sgt. Michael J. McMullen and the bad guys got him in Ramadi, too. He was posthumously awarded a Silver Star medal

I never met this soldier, but here is what I know about him and what he did before he died. Some I learned from the narrative recommending him for the award, the rest from his commanders and peers in Kuwait.

It was Dec. 24, 2005, and McMullen, a member of 243rd Engineers Company of the Maryland National Guard, was driving an M915 tractor trailer in a supply convoy with at least 20 other trucks. Because of the danger posed by the insurgency in the area, the convoy was being escorted by three main battle tanks and traveling in what is known as “blackout drive,” which means every vehicle had its headlights out and soldiers wore night vision goggles to see the road.

As the convoy was departing Camp Corregidor en route east to Forward Operating Base al Taqqadum about 20 miles away, a bomb exploded on the driver’s side of another M915 and the cab started to become engulfed in flames after the gas tank exploded.

The disabled truck’s driver, Spc. Julie Cabell, and her truck commander, Sgt. Randal Divel, radioed for help. They were having trouble getting out of the cab.

Hearing this transmission, McMullen and his truck commander, Sgt. 1st Class James Bartholomew, who were 13th in the lineup of supply trucks, pulled away from the line and drove up to the rear of the burning truck. McMullen rushed to the passenger side, where Divel was trapped, and got the door opened.

The story is a cruel one, but unfortunately not that unusual. In what has been seen many times in Iraq, the bombers followed their first detonation with a coordinated barrage of gunfire. But that didn’t stop McMullen from wrestling open the 500-pound door through the fire, pulling Divel out of the cab and rolling him to safety on the ground in front of the truck to put out the flames that had already burned more than a third of his body.

McMullen, 25, who was an emergency medical technician and firefighter back home in Salisbury, Md., checked Divel for additional injuries, then instructed Bartholomew to prepare an IV bag for him.

That’s when the second bomb went off, spraying McMullen and Bartholomew with shrapnel. McMullen was struck with a deadly 2-inch by 4-inch piece of shrapnel, which destroyed his L3 vertebra.

The soldiers were immobilized by the 122 mm artillery round that was deliberately detonated at their most vulnerable moment — while they assisted a fellow soldier.

Divel, Bartholomew and Cabell survived their wounds. McMullen succumbed to his on Jan. 10, 2006, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

I met a friend of his at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait on March 2.

“At the time I didn’t think much about what he did. But the more I think about it, it fits his personality. In the Salisbury Fire Department he was the same. He wouldn’t complain about things, he would just do it. His call sign was “Squirrel” because if you look at his picture he kind of looks like that,” said Sgt. Ben Ford, 28, of Baltimore, who met McMullen at the beginning of their deployment last year and said they had spent every waking, and sleeping, hour side by side.

Ford told me in an email that at 1 p.m. on March 19 he planned to present one of McMullen’s uniforms to the Salisbury Fire Department so it could be displayed there with replicas of his Silver Star, Purple Heart and Army Commendation medals, the first awards McMullen had ever received in the Army.

McMullen was one of eight soldiers and airmen killed since September while working under the 143rd Transportation Command, driving thousands of miles from points in Kuwait and back to deliver supplies to soldiers on duty in Iraq.

The other service members:

• Sgt. Andrew Wallace and Spc. Michael Wendling, C Company, 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry, Wisconsin National Guard, were killed by an IED in September.

• Spc. Bernard Lawrence Ceo, Spc. Brian Conner and Spc. Samuel Boswell, 243rd Engineer Company, Maryland National Guard, were killed in a vehicle accident in October.

• Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jason Norton and Staff Sgt. Brian McElroy, 3rd Security Forces Squadron, Elmendorf Air Base, Alaska, were killed in January by an IED.