A historic battle, a heroic soldier.

Byline: Carolyn Lamberson The Register-Guard

It was a battle, he said at the time, that he'd waited for all his career.

When Marine Staff Sgt. Dennis Nash led his platoon through Fallujah, Iraq, in November 2004, his mission was to help U.S. forces gain a foothold in a city known as the birthplace of an insurgency.

In the end, his actions above and beyond the call of duty earned him a high U.S. Marine Corps honor, the Bronze Star.

Nash, a 1993 Springfield High School graduate who enlisted the same year, was platoon sergeant of Company C, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, based out of Camp Lejeune, N.C. He served twice in Iraq, most recently from June 2004 to the end of January 2005. The Bronze Star is for his actions on Nov. 9, 2004, when the Marines and Army continued their large-scale assault on Fallujah.

`They're calling it one of the most historical (Marine) battles in 40 or 50 years," said Nash, now with the Marine recruiting office in Beaverton. `There was such a long buildup for that, we kind of knew this was going to be not only a big fight but a historical one as well.'

The battle, also dubbed Operation Phantom Fury or Operation al-Fajr (`Dawn'), began on Nov. 7 with a combined Marine, Army and Iraqi force of about 10,000. Intense fighting lasted less than two weeks, but the operation continued until the end of January 2005, when Iraqis headed to the polls for the first parliamentary elections.

ABC News reported in December 2004 that 71 U.S. personnel had been killed and more than 400 wounded. Officials estimated that as many as 1,200 insurgents were killed.

Fallujah remains a dangerous place. Earlier this month, 10 Marines were killed by a roadside bomb there.

The Bronze Star is awarded for valor in combat, said Sgt. Mike Freemen, public affairs officer with the Marines headquarters in Portland.

`You have to do something special to earn it," Freeman said. "You have to do something above and beyond what your peers are doing there."

The award citation, which was issued on Oct. 20, lauds Nash for a series of actions that day.

The events, as described by Nash and in the Marines' summary of the award, provide a vivid look at the intermittent but intense combat that has characterized U.S. military operations since occupying Iraq.

Nash's platoon of about 40 Marines - divided into three squads - came under intense enemy fire a couple of hours into their push into the city on Nov. 8, 2004.

On Nov. 9, Nash and the 1st Squad had crossed a major road when they were cut off by enemy fire.

Nash ordered the 2nd and 3rd squads to take cover on their side of the road. The 1st Squad found itself pinned up against a wall, and Nash led his Marines safely into a building.

From the building's roof, Nash spotted an enemy sniper on a nearby building, hit him with an M-16 round and called in an airstrike to destroy the building, which contained as many as five more insurgents. He also spotted in an open field some enemy mortar tubes, which had been used to fire mortar rounds at U.S. forces.

`We knew that if we moved past them and left (the tubes) there, (the insurgents) would just jump back on them and start using them against us again,' Nash said. `So I volunteered to take a team out there and get these mortar tubes and recover them so we could destroy them, so they couldn't use them against us.'

While in the field, Nash spotted a Marine from another squad who had been killed in earlier action. The man's unit had been unable to retrieve his body because of intense fire.

`As soon as my team saw him, well, I wasn't going to leave him there, so I decided that we needed to recover him and get him back to his unit,' Nash said. `Then we came under pretty heavy fire ourselves in the same open field."

When Nash and his team returned the Marine's body to his unit, the officer in charge warned Nash not to go back into the field.

"He's like, `You're not going back out there.' I have a squad in the opposite side of the field up in a building, and I told him, `I need to go. I have Marines out there,' and away we went.'

Coming back across the field, the Marines again came under heavy fire. Nash said he's surprised no one was hit.

`The insurgents use white tracers, so you can see them in the air," Nash said. "I've had people that were up on that rooftop tell me, `I don't know how you did it, because it looked like there was literally an outline of bullets around you as you were running.'

During the run, one of Nash's men tripped and fell.

"I thought he got hit," Nash said. `I immediately turned around, went to go back and grab him, and one of my squad leaders was already helping him up, so we grabbed him and assisted him across the field and got back into our building. Rounds were impacting around our feet.

"I don't know how the heck none of us got hit. ... Lucky day, I guess.'

The efforts of Nash and his platoon were well documented. Los Angeles Times reporter Patrick McDonnell and photographer Luis Sinco were among the few members of the media to enter Fallujah in the early days of the battle. McDonnell and Sinco were embedded with Nash's platoon.

"I've been waiting for this fight ever since I joined the Marines," McDonnell quoted Nash as saying before the battle. "This battle is going to be written about in history books. ... The terrorists who want to fight us are in that city, and we're going to get 'em."

Nash said he enjoyed the relationship he forged with McDonnell and Sinco.

`Because I was the platoon sergeant, as I briefed them a couple days before we went in, I told them, `Hey, if things get hairy or if we come under heavy fire, just stick next to me no matter what happens,' ' Nash said. `Of course, the first time we get in a firefight, that didn't work. I looked around, and Patrick McDonnell was on the other side of the road away from cover.'

McDonnell was separated from the group and being shot at by insurgents. `I said, `You gotta cross,' and he was a little shook up. I said, `You have to cross on three. We're going to cover you.' ' Nash and his Marines then laid down a blanket of fire.

`Patrick McDonnell, who's probably 50 or maybe a little bit older, he comes flying across that road,' Nash said. `He got to this side and I said, `I had no idea you could run that fast.' '

McDonnell recounted the episode in `Their War, My Memories," a piece he wrote for the Dec. 4 edition of the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

Nash said he now has reservations about not being back in Iraq with his fellow Marines. But he said his current assignment in Beaverton keeps him in his native Northwest. The 30-year-old lives in Ridgefield, Wash., with his wife and four daughters.

`I love being back in Oregon. I love the Pacific Northwest," he said. "I've been stationed up in Washington twice and now I'm here in Oregon, so I've definitely found a way to get back to my roots.'

Those roots are deep in Oregon - he was born in Springfield - but not in one particular place. His father was a logger, so the family moved to follow the work. Nash spent time in LaGrande, Klamath Falls, Eugene, Junction City twice, Redmond, Springfield three times, and Sisters.

Most of his schooling was in Junction City, where his brothers, Jim Nash and John Majer, live, and in Redmond, where his parents live. He attended Springfield High School for his senior year.

As for the Bronze Star, it's an honor he's proud of, but he doesn't take sole credit.

`I felt privileged and proud that I was recognized for our action that day, and I say `our action' because it definitely was not an individual act,' Nash said. `There's no way it would have been possible, nor would I have had a chance of making it through those things, without the Marines around me doing their jobs.'

CAPTION(S):

Staff Sgt. Dennis Nash re-enlists in a bombed-out mosque in Fallujah, Iraq, some time after the battle for which he would be awarded a Bronze Star.