And that’s what Fonseca did: he got to work. Fonseca quickly established a casualty collection point - an area of relative safety, or as safe as you can make it, where the wounded can be treated. The injured had been pulled from the wreckage, and incoming fire rained down. With his weapon in hand, Fonseca grabbed his medical supplies and rushed to the still-smoldering vehicle.
Marines assigned to Combat Services Support Battalion 18 (CSSB-18) work to retrieve a destroyed Amphibious Assault Vehicle following the Battle of Nasiriyah in Iraq. “My brothers needed me, so I was going to be there for them.” “The job of a Corpsman is to go through hell and back for your Marines,” Fonseca said in a November 2004 Department of Defense news release. Then the call went out, as it has on battlefields many times before and since: Corpsman up! What at first seemed a straightforward mission, quickly devolved into violent chaos as all hell broke loose.ĭuring the operation, an amphibious assault vehicle, called an ‘amtrac’ in the Corps, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and five Marines were wounded. While assigned to an Amphibious Assault Vehicle Platoon with Charlie Co., Fonseca’s unit was tasked with seizing a bridge into the city of Nasiriyah. By the day’s end, 18 Marines from Charlie Company had fallen, and more lives would be lost before the battle was over, nearly a week later. But the Marines and sailors of Fonseca’s unit, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, persevered, though it came at great cost. The Battle of Nasiriyah was, in a word, brutal. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Luke Cunningham) Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Luis Fonseca was the Navy’s most decorated active duty hospital corpsman, and received the Navy Cross as a hospitalman apprentice for extraordinary heroism while serving with the First Marine Expeditionary Force in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom Mar. The battle, a major one at the outset of the war, pit roughly 5,800 Marines and sailors against a hybrid force of Iraqi troops who relied on a combination of conventional units, from infantry to armor and artillery, and irregular tactics to sow discord and hammer the American forces with salvos of rockets and mortar-fire quickly following an ambush.
Not for accolades or to take a position from Saddam Hussein’s Army, which had yet to fully dissolve and transition into an insurgent force - one that would harry the U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq for years to come - but to save the lives of Marines.
That day, Fonseca ran through a wall of lead.
Petty Officer 1st Class Luis Fonseca, the most decorated active-duty Corpsman in the Navy, has retired.įonseca said farewell to the service during a ceremony on May 14, about 18 years after his acts of heroism on Mafor which he was awarded the Navy Cross for valor, an award second only to Medal of Honor - when he was a 23-year-old seaman apprentice on his first deployment to Iraq during the Battle of Nasiriyah. Feature image: A photo composite showing Petty Officer 1st Class Luis Fonseca overlaid onto an image of a damaged vehicle during the Battle of Nasiriyah, Iraq in March 2003.
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