The L1A1 Armourer

Marine Tank Sergeant's Innovation In Combat Saved Day In Fallujah (Popaditch, Silver Star)
San Diego Union Tribune ^ | Nov 9, 2007 | Steve Liewer

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Nick Popaditch didn't like what he saw ahead of his tank in Fallujah, Iraq.

It was late afternoon April 6, 2004, two days into an offensive to retake the city and avenge the four U.S. contractors whose burned bodies had been hung from a train trestle. Popaditch commanded a pair of tanks sent to relieve an infantry unit.

A tanker truck, probably booby-trapped, was blocking an alley. Insurgents had strung a spider's web of electrical wires across the entrance to a nearby courtyard.

Popaditch knew he was moving into the kill zone of an ambush. He wouldn't turn back and abandon the grunts who needed him, but to bull forward meant suicide.

So he called for an airstrike. An AC-130 blew up the tanker truck, the power lines and an insurgent post packed with weapons.

With those obstacles cleared, Popaditch received permission to push forward with the gunship overhead �?an untested tactic at the time. Together, his tanks and the AC-130 cleared block after block of insurgents and relieved pressure on the embattled infantry platoon.

�?We were) just inflicting a devastating number of casualties on the enemy, and we did it in a way that no one had ever done before,�?Popaditch said.

The thrill of victory soon gave way to gruesome injury. As Popaditch stood in the turret of his tank during a battle the next day, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded next to his head.

�?I saw) a really bright light, like a flash, and then nothing,�?he said. “It was like getting hit in the head with a sledgehammer.�?

Popaditch continued to guide the movements of his tank and called for a medical evacuation despite being blinded and temporarily deafened.

Shrapnel from the blast fractured his skull and lodged around his eyes and nose. Physicians couldn't save his right eye, and they barely salvaged the left.

For his innovative combat tactics and leadership even when wounded, Popaditch received the Silver Star, the military's third-highest award for valor.

Though legally blind, Popaditch has learned to use the 8 percent of sight he has left. He's aided by tools such as a video screen that enlarges printed materials and a pair of what he calls “telescope glasses.�?

But as much as he loves the Marine Corps, he found he couldn't stay in.

“I didn't want to be a straphanger,�?he said. “The military is not an adaptive world, and it shouldn't be.�?

So in 2005, Popaditch left the Marines for college. He's now a junior at San Diego State University. Inspired by his time as a Marine drill instructor, he is aiming to become a high school teacher

“You do a lot of teaching when you're a DI, along with everything else. (At a high school), you may be teaching algebra or the War of 1812, but it's all teaching,�?said Popaditch, 40, who lives in Linda Vista with his wife, April, and son, Nick Jr.

His Marine Corps career began nearly 22 years ago, when a recruiter talked him into enlisting after high school graduation. Popaditch quickly took to the life of brotherhood and discipline, even though he describes himself as having been bookish and shy as a boy growing up in Indiana.

He commanded a tank in the Persian Gulf War. By the time of the Iraq war, he was serving as a gunnery sergeant �?an elite enlisted class that is revered in the Marine Corps.

Popaditch's tank platoon was among the first few to cross the Kuwait-Iraq border and reach the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in March 2003.

A news photographer snapped a picture of him smoking a victory cigar in his tank turret in front of a statue of then-President Saddam Hussein just as it was being toppled. The photo became a symbol of the heady early days of the war.

Popaditch's unit returned to Twentynine Palms in July 2003. He then volunteered to go back to Iraq the following winter. His battalion took responsibility for the Fallujah area a couple of weeks before the attack that wounded him.

Popaditch now speaks frequently to military groups, and he has joined SDSU's student veterans organization.

What will he do when he graduates? Maybe smoke a cigar.

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