Appreciating veterans

On Nov. 4, 2004, Sergeant Benny Alicea and his squad were conducting door-to-door sweeps in Fallujah, Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In the course of an ambush, Alicea was hit by shrapnel in the hips and butt. Wounded and bleeding, he moved to protect three wounded soldiers lying in the middle of the road. With bullets whizzing all around him, he fired until he was out of ammunition, scavenged for more and then continued firing at insurgents. When a Bradley Fighting Vehicle arrived to their position, the still-bleeding Alicea loaded the other wounded into the tank.

On Feb. 20, 2007, Staff Sergeant Jason Fetty was on his 10th month as security detail at a new medical center in Khost City, Afghanistan. Spotting an unfamiliar, suspicious individual in a white lab coat among the crowd, Fetty commanded the man to stop. Instead, the man grabbed Fetty. Fetty concluded that in his current location any shot would result in accidently hitting civilians. Using his weapon to create distance between himself and the man grabbing him, Fetty maneuvered the struggle over to an empty clearing between nearby buildings. Free of the crowd, Fetty forced the man away, fired warning shots at the ground and then shot the man in the leg. Noticing the scuffle, other soldiers fired upon the man. Fetty’s suspicions that he was a suicide bomber proved correct when the man exploded. Fetty survived the blast because, like a Hollywood action hero, he dived out of the way at the very last moment. Despite being hit with shrapnel, Fetty saved the crowd from the blast.

On March 1, 2006, Specialist Richard Ghent was on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq, as the gunner on a Humvee. Insurgents ambushed his vehicle with a grenade, which landed inside the vehicle. The blast threw Ghent out of the vehicle and severely wounded the other Humvee occupants. Though also wounded, Ghent sensed the threat of the insurgents finishing off his crew. He drew out his only weapon at hand, a 9-millimeter pistol, and charged across open ground at the insurgents. He managed to drive them away and held the position until he was relieved by a nearby patrol.

On Sept. 18, 2006, Corporal Clinton Warrick, a combat medic, was at a police station in Al Huria, Iraq, when the station came under fire from all directions. A pickup truck carrying a 200-pound bomb smashed through the gates and detonated. The explosion knocked Warrick unconscious, buried him under rubble and set his legs on fire. His platoon leader used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire and dragged him out of the rubble. When Warrick regained consciousness he realized that he needed morphine in order to prevent him from going into shock. The morphine was buried in the rubble of a burning building. Warrick realized that if he wanted to prevent shock from killing him he’d need to stay active, much like in the plot of the movie “Crank.” With burns across his body and in pain without badly-needed pain medication, he proceeded to continue with his job as a combat medic, saving the lives of others until he was forced to be evacuated.

All these men fought in the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan. They all survived. These men risked their lives in order to save others from danger. In a nutshell, that’s what American soldiers do, and thanking veterans for that is what today is for. Veterans, no matter how they served, take on great personal risk to protect civilian life or aid others in that task. Whether as infantry on the ground or as mechanics on bases, they give years of their lives to that cause. For that, we should consider them heroes, regardless of whether or not they directly experienced combat.

We owe veterans our gratitude. We owe them high-fives and fist bumps. We ought to show them that we are all personally appreciative. We ought to because they’re all awesome.

Christopher Troein is an economics major from Windsor, England. He can be reached at ctroein@princeton.edu.