Media Credit: Peter Franklin Knox Nunnally, a second-year law student was deployed three times to Iraq as a platoon commander in the Marines.

Media Credit: Peter Franklin Hunter Hayes, a history and premed junior, served eight months as a medic for a Marine unit in Iraq.

Editor's note: This is the second part in a series of stories on students who are serving or have served in Iraq.

The stories law student Knox Nunnally and history and premed junior Hunter "Doc" Hayes tell about their deployment to Iraq are the stuff of this generation's history books.

Having just graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, Nunnally was in basic training on Sept. 11, 2001. Hayes had enlisted in the U.S. Navy just days before.

"When 9/11 occurred, a switch got flipped and all of us and our instructors realized that instead of just training for maybe going on a cruise to South America or whatever, we were training for the war," Nunnally said.

Nunnally was on Christmas leave in 2002 when his unit was called back early to mobilize for the invasion of Iraq. He left for Iraq in late January, and said he and his colleagues scared that chemical or biological weapons would be used against them.

"As a young junior officer, I was responsible for 28 guys," Nunnally said. "And of course, I'm also worrying. I have the trust of these 28 young Americans, and I don't want to have to write home to some mother that I made a mistake or I screwed up because of some tactical decision or something on my part, this guy got hurt or killed."

As part of a Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Nunnally was among the first soldiers to cross the border into Iraq.

"People always ask me what it was like in the invasion, and there were brief big fire fights and stuff like that, but ... we'd intercept these villages and towns, and especially in the south [the Shiite people] would just rush up to vehicles bringing us tea, handing us bags of bread, hugging us, kissing us, trying to get us to come in and have tea with them," he said.

Nunnally was deployed to Iraq twice more, once in 2004 and again in 2005.

One week into his second deployment, Nunnally was in Fallujah when he became the first Marine officer to get "fragged," or hit with mortar shells, after attack from enemy fire.

On March 31, 2004, the burned corpses of four American Blackwater Security Consulting contractors were hanged from a bridge on the Euphrates River in Fallujah. A day earlier, Nunnally prohibited them from crossing the city at the east-side check point his battalion was guarding. The men he described as "kind of cocky" crossed through the western side of town that did not have a checkpoint and entered Fallujah the next day.

"For about two months, it was the most insane," he said. "If you stopped anywhere around Fallujah for longer than 30 minutes, we called it going 'static.' If you stopped for 30 minutes, you took mortar fire."

As Fleet Marine Force Corpsman, Hayes was deployed to Iraq in August 2004 with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines as a combat medic.

"We definitely took heavy casualties when we got there, but it cleared up significantly about halfway through deployment," Hayes said. "Most of the time we just sat there, and we ran missions, and everything was peaceful and fine. And we're talking about a huge area, a bad area, that was horrible prior to us getting there."

Most of the time, his battalion was hit with indirect fire, mortar rounds, rocket rounds or snipers and occasionally had to withstand night ambushes.

"We were 24/7. I mean, whenever somebody got hurt, we were there," Hayes said. "Even with civilians."

Hayes told the story of how he and his medic team for three days, and without sleep, monitored a 22-year-old Iraqi woman who was hit with shrapnel.

After meeting at a party, Hayes realized that he had treated a friend who graduated from the Naval Academy with Nunnally. The Marine later died with Hayes.

Both Marines said they are frustrated with media coverage of the war in the news, television and movies.

"There's no recognition of the good things that are happening," Nunnally said.

Both Nunnally and Hayes said the U.S. is making progress in Iraq and should not leave.

"Al-Qaida has dumped so many resources in Iraq, and if we beat them, and when we beat them, it's going to be a huge blow to them," Hayes said. "And if we pull out right now, they're just going to come in like flies."

Nunnally and Hayes are members of Vets for Freedom, a national organization of combat veterans from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which advocates for the importance of succeeding in the conflicts. Both are in ready reserve and can be redeployed to Iraq.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools