Guard unit lost no lives in area likened to 'hell'
But not all came home from Iraq intact. The cost of 23 Purple Hearts awarded over 14 months included lasting injuries, physical and mental.
By Associated Press
Published June 1, 2004
NORTH MIAMI - War sent 126 soldiers from a Florida National Guard company to Ramadi, Iraq, a place one described as "the worst place on earth." But after 14 months of rocket attacks, ambushes and explosions, they all made it back to South Florida.
Part of the Guard's 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment, Charlie Company came home with 23 Purple Hearts, more than any other company in the 12,000-member state military force.
The battalion also did not have a single combat death.
North Miami-based Charlie Company had one man absent when it returned in March: Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who was convicted this month of desertion.
The company, posted to a remote scrap yard in Ramadi, was a daily target of a guerrilla network that made bombs from cell phones and toy cars. It had to keep the peace, search vehicles and houses, confiscate weapons, get the infrastructure working and hire and train police.
Ramadi has more residents than Miami, packed into a smaller area. The Guardsmen found it to be a hot, dusty, smelly city of open sewer lines and strewn garbage, a place where fruit merchants and bomb makers were often the same.
"If hell physically exists, if there is in fact a hell ... it is Ramadi," said Edouard Gluck, a battalion photographer. "It's the worst place I've ever been to on the face of the earth, and I've been to a lot of places."
Still, the 1st Battalion and Charlie Company were known for their good luck.
On June 14, a bullet penetrated the flak jacket of Spc. James Bissett as he sat in the rear of a vehicle. It hit his cross and his dog tag and went no farther, though the impact cracked Bissett's sternum. He was the first in Charlie Company to earn a Purple Heart.
An explosion at an intersection a month later was one of the company's worst experiences. Spc. Ramiro Mayorga lost several fingers. Sgt. Jason Recio lost a leg below the knee. Sgt. Jose Mateo took shrapnel to the left knee, left arm and head and lost hearing in both ears.
The engagement changed the way Charlie Company looked at the war.
"That was the first time we had very major injuries," said Spc. Esteban Lora, a Miami-Dade College student. "The whole "I'm Superman' mentality, "I'm invincible,' that went away."
The last man from Charlie Company to be wounded in battle, on Feb. 19, was its leader. Capt. Tad Warfel was searching a hospital with his men when someone hurled a grenade from an upper floor. The blast caught him in the right arm.
When the company flew home, it was down from 126 men to 95, mostly because of injuries.
Mateo, a former auto technician with shrapnel up and down his left side and bulging discs in his neck, is battling depression and post-traumatic stress.
"It's okay," Mateo said. "I'm alive, you know? We're all alive."
