We\u2019re walking along a dusty gravel road in the valley between two West Virginia ridges when the Iraqi War hero that I\u2019m interviewing suddenly notices something troubling.<\/p>\n
\u201cI planted a bamboo shoot beside that stream and arranged some rocks as a memorial to a fallen soldier who was a friend of mine,\u201d says James. L. McCormick, his voice tightening a little. As I look down toward the stream, I can see a hole where the bamboo has been ripped out and the stone memorial has been kicked apart.<\/p>\n
McCormick has seen a number of friends fall, but many more foes drop. He won his first Bronze Star and a Purple Heart for leading attacks on enemy bunkers during Desert Storm as a scout squad leader. Then he was awarded two more Bronze Stars and two more Purple Hearts for his service in Iraq. And the retired Army captain has also been nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star, the nation\u2019s second- and third-highest military awards for valor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis guy is the Audie Murphy of the truck drivers,\u201d says Rich Killblane, the U.S. Army Transportation Corps historian based in Fort Lee, Va. \u201cNo truck driver has been in as many ambushes as he has, and all the big ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, McCormick has bought a 15-acre farm a few miles east of the Ohio River for his own peace of mind and to help his fellow vets. He calls it the \u201cRaising Cane Farm,\u201d and for erosion control on steep hillsides, he plants as much bamboo as he can afford at nearly $20 a plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI provide jobs for some vets out of my own pocket,\u201d he says. \u201cOthers just come out here to walk and relax. And we bring a bunch of guys out here for the deer hunting each fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking care of his fellow vets remains important to McCormick. \u201cI\u2019ve told a bunch of my battalion commanders that just because you retire doesn\u2019t mean that you can retire your responsibilities,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Those responsibilities weigh heavily on McCormick, especially when someone desecrates his memorial to a fallen comrade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m about half tempted to mount an ambush, catch this guy red-handed if he returns, and whip him with the bamboo he was attempting to steal,\u201d says McCormick, trying to laugh off a growing sense of outrage.<\/p>\n
Killblane says McCormick was no one to mess with. \u201cBefore he turned his life over to Christ, if he threatened to kill you, he probably would have,\u201d he observes.<\/p>\n
Killblane is writing a book about convoy ambush case studies that teach convoy commanders how to fight ambushes and a history of convoy operation during the war in Iraq. He says McCormick was one of the most instinctive warriors he has seen. \u201cHis philosophy was to punish the enemy to deter him from attacking any more convoys,\u201d he says. \u201cOf all the ambushes I\u2019ve researched, it\u2019s McCormick who stands out the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
The days leading up to Easter Sunday, 2004, prove Killblane\u2019s point.<\/p>\n
First, McCormick and his gun truck crew ran into their first ambush on March 22 when they turned back into the kill zone. That was when the lieutenant was wounded in the calf earning his second Purple Heart Medal.<\/p>\n
Despite his protests, McCormick was sidelined while his platoon left on a mission without him.\u00a0 Then on April 7, after the radical young cleric Muktada al Sadr called for a jihad against coalition forces, McCormick and picked up an all volunteer crew to provide security for a convoy hauling supplies to Baghdad International Air Port (BIAP), where the convoy ran into an L-shaped ambush with a sniper positioned on an overpass in front of them.<\/p>\n
McCormick was hit in the chest, with his body armor absorbing the blow. Still he was knocked backward off his feet, while a second round hit his machine gun ammunition belt, sending shrapnel into his hand, says Killblane.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemembering what a Vietnam veteran told him, when insurgents approached, McCormick fired a flare at them and they scattered thinking it was a rocket,\u201d Killblane says. \u201cThat gave him enough time to re-load his machine gun, and then he splattered the sniper who was then about to shoot his driver.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next day, Good Friday, all hell broke loose as the enemy ambushed any convoy trying to get in or out of BIAP. The next day, all convoys were shut down but the 1st<\/sup> Cavalry Division, which drew its supplies from BIAP was running critically short.<\/p>\n On Easter Sunday, McCormick and his crew volunteered to escort a convoy hauling critical ammunition to the Green Zone, just eight miles away, but about noon a sea of insurgents began storming their compound with the intent to breech the wall and kill the hundreds of truck drivers parked behind it.\u00a0 \u201cWhen his Humvee gun truck mounted the ramp overlooking the wall, all he could see were Iraqis in black.\u201d says Killblane. \u201cFor five to ten minutes, McCormick and his crew held off the attack by themselves and then for the next forty minutes only a dozen truck drivers defended the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirty minutes after repelling that attack, McCormick and his emotionally exhausted crew provided security for an ammunition convoy running a gauntlet eight miles to the Green Zone. Since the commander broke his convoy into four smaller convoys, the gun trucks had to make the dangerous run four times.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were driving thin-skinned (not armored) trucks, and they got hammered while other armored gun trucks turned tail and ran,\u201d says Killblane. \u201cOn the next run, they got ambushed again, but McCormick turned his gun truck into the enemy and it seemed to work because there was less gunfire on the next convoy, and the fourth run was almost incident-free.\u201d By the end of the day, four of the five crew members in his gun truck had been wounded and would still follow him anywhere, says Killblane.<\/p>\n For the ambush going into BIAP, McCormick was awarded the Bronze Star. McCormick later earned another Bronze Star, but has been nominated for the Distinguished Service Cross for his action on Easter Sunday and the Silver Star for his leadership during 40-minute firefight on January 30, 2005. \u201cLt. McCormick\u2019s warrior spirit and leadership under fire saved hundreds of lives, protected critical military cargo and inflicted heavy enemy casualties upon a ruthless and determined enemy,\u201d said the citation nominating McCormick for the Distinguished Service Cross, which is still pending review.<\/p>\n \u201cHis actions were probably the most heroic of any truck driver in Iraq,\u201d Killblane says. \u201cHe was grossly overlooked.\u201d<\/p>\n After he left Iraq, McCormick says he spent a year and a half in the VA\u2019s poly-trauma unit in Huntington, W.Va.\u00a0 \u201cI couldn\u2019t do anything for myself,\u201d he explains. \u201cI slept with a loaded revolver and drank heavily and smoked like a freight train. I had panic attacks and I couldn\u2019t find anything to bring me down, so I did a lot of heavy drinking. When I had nightmares, they terrified my wife, and she\u2019d go out and sleep on the couch.\u201d<\/p>\n Buying the farm between Huntington and Point Pleasant helped.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a place where vets can come and realize that we\u2019re finally at peace,\u201d he says. \u201cThis place has so much more healing power than anything you get out of a bottle, either alcohol or pills.\u201d<\/p>\n But McCormick\u2019s 13-year-old son Jimmy had been watching him closely. \u201cYou\u2019re really upset about that memorial, aren\u2019t you Dad?\u201d he asked, just as I was leaving.<\/p>\n McCormick emailed this resolution to me the next day: \u201cI said yes it did son, very much so, because we planted it for all fallen troops and to see that just brought back a wave of bad memories on how people died that I personally knew. To me when I saw it, I could hear the crying and see the death all over again. It was simply a violation in the worse way to me, and since it is well know what we do out on the farm I couldn’t help but see it as an intentional slap in the face of not only me but every Gold Star family I know.<\/p>\n \u201cMy son is very much in tune with his feelings and looked at me and said. \u2018Let\u2019s plant another one, Dad, in the same spot and let me do something to honor your friends.\u2019 He walked the length of that stream picking out all the stone to lay the walkway, he planted the plant again and asked me to help him with the cross, and truly he did most of that as well. I asked him what if someone tears it up again. He said well then we will just come back and build again only this time bigger. On Sunday, he bought flower seeds and next weekend we will plant them around the outline of the cross, again his idea. Got to love that boy.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re walking along a dusty gravel road in the valley between two West Virginia ridges when the Iraqi War hero that I\u2019m interviewing suddenly notices something troubling. \u201cI planted a bamboo shoot beside that stream and arranged some rocks as a memorial to a fallen soldier who was a friend of mine,\u201d says James. L. 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