Bruce McQuain from Blackfive joined us once again for Someone You Should Know, our weekly tribute to the troops. Bruce spent 28 years in the U.S. Army and he is a veteran of the Vietnam war. He brings a perspective and understanding to these stories that we could never match.
This week Bruce told us about Marine Cpl. Javier Alvarez,
From Stars and Stripes
Alvarez struggles to tell his story. His speech is filled with pregnant pauses, disjointed phrases and unfinished thoughts.
It’s the cost of saving the lives of six Marines. It is his price for his Silver Star.
“I know my hand was burning,” he recalled. “Or, it felt like that. So I lifted up my arm to see what happened, and my hand was completely missing. There was just like ragged bone sticking out, with my sleeves from my uniform black and red from blood,” he said.
Alvarez knew this was coming. This was his third deployment in three years. He joined weeks after 9/11. He was among the first Marines into Iraq in 2003. He survived Fallujah without a scratch. When his wound comes, he thought, sitting around is not an option.
“It just shut down and not function, that’s not going to help my squad out,” he told himself. “I had already thought about that pretty intensely”
Alvarez’s story is yet another tale of heroism born on the morning of Nov. 16, 2005.
Marines of 2nd Platoon, Fox Company, were on their 12th day of Operation Steel Curtain, a dangerous mission to clear houses in Anbar province, when two dozen insurgents made a last stand.
By the time the explosion tore apart Alvarez’s hand, two Marines were dead. By the end of the day, 16 men were wounded, five of them mortally.
“It seems like it might be slow motion at some points, but then you find that it’s all happening in a heartbeat. It’s seconds, Alvarez said.
More than three years later, Alvarez has a lifetime to live with his wounds. He wears a brave face.
The Someone You Should Know radio collaboration began as an extension of Matt Burden’s series at Blackfive. Bruce does an incredible job with the series every week. The Pundit Review Radio Podcast RSS feed can be found here.
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On Boston’s Talk Station WRKO since 2005, Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week we give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to the radio every Sunday evening from 8-10pm on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.