Serving in Iraq was the most frightening experience of Lt. Cmdr. Rich Jadick's life.
But fear didn't stop him from saving the lives of more that 90 critically wounded Marines, sailors and Iraqi soldiers in the line of fire.
On Jan. 30, Dr. Jadick traveled to Camp Lejeune, N.C., to receive one of the Marine Corps’ most prestigious awards, a Bronze Star with a Combat ‘V’ for Valor, for his actions during Operation al-Fajr (Arabic for dawn) in Fallujah, Iraq. The U.S. military dubbed the November 2004 operation “some of the heaviest urban combat Marines have been involved in since Hue City in Vietnam in 1968.”
As the lead medical officer traveling with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Dr. Jadick led a team into the heart of Fallujah to ensure resuscitative medicine was available for all Marines in the battalion’s battle space. He credits the actions of his 54 corpsmen with making their venture into one of the last Iraqi strongholds a success.
“The award is obviously a team-driven award – I was just a part of a group of people that did a lot of good things,” he said.
Lt. Col. Mark Winn, the unit’s battalion executive officer during the operation, nominated Dr. Jadick for the award. “Normally, a battalion surgeon just offers medical treatment. But Rich is a former Marine officer, so he was not only a doctor, he was a leader,” he said. “In my 17 years in the service, through the Gulf War and then Iraq, I’ve never seen a doctor get a Bronze Star. He is more than deserving of it.”
His heroism included traveling into the city with armored ambulances to stabilize a sailor with a sucking chest wound—a wound allowing air to pass in and out with each breath. He braved rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire to reach the sailor and provide lifesaving treatment.
Hours later, his team received an urgent evacuation request from a nearby unit under heavy fire. He moved his team to a casualty collection point in the city, where he provided trauma care to seven soldiers.
“I can’t even define scared; my legs wanted to turn around. It was a conscious effort, a mental effort to say, ‘Whoa, alright, keep moving and do what you need to do.’”
As they began to move the wounded to the ambulance, a rocket-propelled grenade careened off the ambulance and another bounced off the wall directly in front of the ambulance. Despite the danger, Dr. Jadick stood on the open hatch of the ambulance until they collected the wounded men. Six of the seven survived.
Fighting in Fallujah intensified as the day progressed. Dr. Jadick, the only physician in the city, formulated a plan to most effectively reach the growing number of U.S. casualties. Most doctors operate field hospitals in a safe area several miles from the battlefield, but Dr. Jadick feared the critically wounded might not survive the trip.
“Rich said that would be too late,” Lt. Col. Winn said. “He convinced me it was the right thing to do.”
Though the U.S. military had not gained a strong foothold in the city, his corpsmen moved into the government complex and set up a casualty collection point. Surrounded by insurgents and snipers, his team managed to secure a small prayer room in which to treat patients.
His corpsmen saw more than 90 combat casualties during an 11-day period, 60 within the first three days of arriving at the government complex. In addition to the U.S. casualties, Dr. Jadick treated countless Iraqis and civilians with no other means of medical support. He credits his young corpsmen with making the effort possible.
“I can’t give these guys enough credit,” he said. “These are kids who didn’t know anything about medicine. Some had never seen blood before, but here they were amputating legs.
“We were so tired, and we just kept getting casualty numbers,” he said. “We’d take care of eight, and 12 more would show up. We worked a lot of hours and they learned how to do a lot of things really quickly.”
Despite the exhaustion, Dr. Jadick was impressed by his corpsmen’s resilience. “At the end of the day, attitudes were always pretty high,” he remarked. “These guys never flinched— none of them.”
Though Dr. Jadick considers the award a high honor for his unit, he also values the recognition his corpsmen received from the Marines, sailors and soldiers they served.
“The ultimate reward is when, for whatever stroke of luck, the guy you’re working on lives,” he said. “Later, you see them talking to your corpsmen and they say, ‘Hey, you guys saved my life.’”
Two months following the battle of Fallujah, Dr. Jadick returned to the United States with his unit intact. The homecoming was sweet for the 54 corpsmen, but particularly for Dr. Jadick: He was finally able to meet his baby daughter, born just two days before he left for Iraq.
“That was the killer, seeing my daughter for the first time,” he said.
Dr. Jadick will remain on active duty throughout his four-year residency at MCG. Though he should avoid deployment until at least 2009, he isn’t hesitant about his future in the U.S. military. “I’ll see what they do with me next,” he said. “Serving with those guys is an honor. I’d go again if they needed me.”
Kim Miller