Sergeant’s dedication recalled in Silver Star ceremony

[leobold1]

Sergeant’s dedication recalled in Silver Star ceremony - Military News, Marine Corps News, opinions, editorials, news from Iraq, photos, reports - Marine Corps Times

By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Mar 6, 2007 7:03:12 EST

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Two years ago, on the Marine Corps’ 229th birthday, Sgt. Jeffrey L. Kirk rounded up leathernecks from other squads in a counterattack against insurgents holed up in a Fallujah building.

Three times, they dodged enemy grenades and automatic fire as they fought their way into the building. At one point, Kirk, who was wounded during the fighting, charged in one room, killing an insurgent to silence the enemy machine gun he was operating, in the opening days of the offensive to retake the city.

Kirk’s actions that day, say his wife and friends, showed his true mettle in the ultimate crucible of combat and earned him a Silver Star medal, the nation’s third-highest award for valor in combat.

He survived that day’s battles but didn’t live to take the striking medal, with its gold points and red-white-and-blue ribbon, in hand. He died a month later, killed in another combat fight in Fallujah.

But during a March 5 award ceremony at Camp Pendleton, on a sun-splashed parade deck at San Mateo, dozens of relatives, friends, veterans and the men of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, stood and remembered Kirk’s heroics.

“Nothing would have meant more to him than to accept it in front of the men who knew him and trained with him and fought against the enemy with him,” his widow, Carly Kirk, told the crowd. “I also know that two years down the road, there are a lot of new Marines in 3/5.”

“Besides being a great man, Jeff was, beyond a doubt, a truly great Marine, and he deserves to be remembered,” she said.

Carly Kirk read a portion of the last letter he wrote to her. As she shared a piece of him — as if he, in his own words, sought to console her if the worst were to happen — relatives and friends dabbed at their eyes. Some cried.

He wrote: “I hope that if I do go, then I went with honor and courage. I hope I died leading my Marines against the enemy, and not from a random bomb or a sniper. I will regret not being able to hold you again, and that you can be sure.

“But there’s some fine Marines under my charge,” he wrote, “and I want to go knowing that I did my best for them. Honor and courage — they deserve it and I hope to give it to them.”

Carly Kirk said her husband had turned down a nomination for a combat meritorious promotion to staff sergeant, thinking that his plans to exit the Corps after the deployment would rob another sergeant of the promotion allocation. He went to Iraq with an extension so he’d complete the deployment with the battalion. “He told me it wouldn’t be right to have trained with them, build them up and then send them off with someone they didn’t know or leave them with the job only half-finished,” she said.

His dedication to the men and their mission didn’t stop even after he was wounded during the Nov. 10 battle. For three weeks, she recalled, he kept telling her “how badly he wanted to get back out to his boys.” In daily telephone calls or online instant messaging, he told her, “he needed to be back out there to be out with his men. He was such a pest and annoyed the doctors so much.”

Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, who commanded 1st Marine Division at the time, cited Kirk for “brave actions and bold leadership” that day.

“He took point and led a daring third attack on the enemy. He quickly destroyed the remaining insurgents” and led Marines from the building, saving the lives of many Marines, Natonski wrote in a letter read during the ceremony.

Several of those Marines spoke about that tight-knit bond of brotherhood.

One of those Marines was a fellow squad leader with Lima Company’s third platoon, Staff Sgt. Kenneth Distelhorst. “I am living proof of his heroism,” Distelhorst told the crowd. “Without his quick reaction … I wouldn’t be here speaking to you.”

Distelhorst, 28, was wounded during the Nov. 10 battle and evacuated from Iraq. But before he left, he recounted, he shared a conversation with Kirk.

“I was able to thank him, and his reply was, ‘Whatever, dude,’” the staff sergeant recalled.

Former Sgt. David Hawley, a team leader who fought with Kirk in Fallujah, recalled how he learned about leadership and tactics from him as they forged a close friendship that grew in war.

“We hunted and we killed the enemy together,” Hawley said.

“Jeffrey will always be my role model and my inspiration,” he said. “Jeffrey is the reason why I am alive today.”

Cpl. Reynaldo Leal’s memory of his friend is forever captured in a black-and-white photograph he took of Kirk two months before his death. The framed photograph joined the traditional fallen warrior memorial of combat boots, service rifle, helmet and dog tags.

In the photograph, Kirk is sketching in a notepad, an artistic hobby the two men — sergeant and brand-new private first class — shared as Marines.

Leal, 23, recounted how, as a brand-new rifleman, he was “scared” at the prospect of facing combat in Fallujah that first time. But he found in Kirk a squad leader with compassion.

Sure, he was a boot, but “I felt a little bit more at ease going into that city,” he said.

“Sergeant Kirk was a great Marine. I would follow him everywhere,” Leal said, nodding toward the Marines in formation on the parade deck. “Before you have come great men.”