<p>Amid a heavy firefight between Marines and insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, Dr. Richard Jadick worked to save the lives of seven badly injured Marines caught in an ambush.</p><p>The Navy doctor serving with the Marine Corps unit fought his own fear during the November 2004 firefight and at times couldn't even control his legs. Later, while crammed inside a truck with the injured Marines, a rocket-propelled grenade slammed atop the roof of the vehicle.</p><p>It didn't go off.</p><p>"I can't even describe scared," said Jadick, now a urology resident at the Medical College of Georgia and Augusta Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Centers, recalling that day.</p><p>While the doctor felt fear, others saw tremendous courage and bravery. On Monday, for his courageous forays into the bloody firefight in Fallujah, where he is credited with saving Marines in the midst of battle, Jadick will be awarded the Bronze Star with a combat V for valor at Camp Lejeune, N.C.</p><p>"I had never seen a doctor display the kind of courage and bravery that Rich did during Fallujah," said Lt. Col. Mike Winn, the executive officer for 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, who nominated Jadick for the award. "You just don't see it out of a battalion doctor. He personally saved the lives of 30 Marines."</p><p>There have been 31 such medals awarded to Navy medical personnel attached to Marine units since September 2003, according to the Marine Corps public affairs office in Quantico, Va.</p><p>When Jadick arrived in June 2004 in Iraq with the 1st Battalion, it wasn't his first trip there. The doctor, who had served six years as an officer in the Marines before going to medical school on a Navy scholarship and becoming a Navy doctor, was with another Marine unit in March 2003 in northern Iraq.</p><p>In June 2004, Jadick had volunteered to serve with the 1st Battalion, which had lost its two doctors.</p><p>"It was a godsend to have him," Winn said. "He's still at heart, he's still a Marine. He still acts like a Marine and he still thinks like a Marine."</p><p>In the 14th hour of the battle of Fallujah, a call came in of a Navy SEAL with a sucking chest wound. Jadick marched in on foot with his corpsmen to get him and then called for an armored ambulance.</p><p>Before they could even get out of the city with their first casualty, another call came in about seven Marines injured in an ambush. When they arrived, 30 Marines were across the street, trading fire with insurgents.</p><p>"There were seven guys just kind of lying there" in the street, Jadick said. One died and the others were badly wounded as the doctor went to work.</p><p>"Rich was working on these guys literally right on the street while he's being shot at from all directions," Win said.</p><p>Jadick and his team loaded seven wounded in a vehicle built for four and took off for the surgery center in Camp Fallujah, traveling through the teeth of the heavy fighting.</p><p>"They were just getting slammed by RPG fire in and out," Winn said.</p><p>None of the grenades that landed close to the vehicle exploded.</p><p>"Sometimes, it's better to be lucky than to be good," Jadick joked.</p><p>Later, Jadick set up a forward aid station in a government complex inside the city. Although the complex was walled, there were gaps in the barriers and insurgents could climb into taller buildings surrounding it.</p><p>"The enemy had direct observation and direct fire into the complex. So anytime we were out of our buildings, we had to run," Winn said.</p><p>When there was no room inside, Jadick triaged patients out in the open. Once, he had to stop his duties to point out an insurgent sniper to Marines. Jadick estimates he and his six corpsmen treated about 200 U.S. casualties, along with Iraqi citizens and insurgents.</p><p>"If you can get to a patient before they bleed out, you can save their life," Jadick said. "That's where we placed ourselves, trying to get as close as we could to the injuries so we could change things."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cdec1c)</p>
