Catcher Cuts the Rope
Article published Dec 1, 2004
Montanan hurt in Fallujah describes fighting
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
The split seconds are still frozen in Catcher Cuts The Rope's memory.
An enemy soldier in a burned-out house in Fallujah, Iraq. The pinless grenades dangling off his vest. Five bullets fired. A pause. A deafening explosion.
The shrapnel dug deep into his arms and legs.
Bleeding and scared and in searing pain, Cuts The Rope, a Marine corporal from Fort Belknap, pushed the button on his radio and yelled.
'Come get us. We're hit bad. We're hit bad,' " he said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon from Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. "That's all I could say."
He pulled himself to a couch, listening to his men cry in pain and hoping he wouldn't bleed to death.
"It was unbelievable," Cuts The Rope said. "I've never hurt that bad in my life."
Cuts The Rope and his squad had been in Fallujah since early November, when the U.S. military launched its attack on insurgents in the city. Members of Alpha Company had been under heavy fire every day as they fought from block to block, house to house, room to room.
Two days before Thanksgiving, two squads took fire. One of his good friends was killed and, later, Cuts The Rope and a handful of fellow Marines were seriously injured when a man blew himself up 6 feet away in a war-torn house.
"It was terrible," Cuts The Rope said. "I think a lot of people that have never experienced combat before expect something out of a movie. I'm not going to lie. It was rough."
Cuts The Rope, 32, grew up in Hays, spent five years in the Army and then got out in 1997. He joined the Marines after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I knew there was going to be a war. I thought I'd give a hand," he said.
After training at Camp Pendleton, Cuts The Rope was stationed in Hawaii three years ago. As the fighting in Iraq grew more severe, his battalion moved from Kuwait to Iraq in early October.
On Nov. 8, Cuts The Rope was part of a major offensive into Fallujah meant to drive out or kill insurgents in the city of 300,000. The main job was to secure the city and cut off supply routes.
Cuts The Rope said he'd seen combat before, but the urban warfare in Fallujah was a beast of its own kind. Eating, sleeping and fighting in the city, the Marines faced a daily barrage of grenades, homemade rockets and AK-47 rifle fire from rooftops, balconies and windows.
Last Tuesday, his eight-man squad was clearing a building when word came over the radio that another nearby squad was taking fire from a rooftop. A Marine from Pennsylvania, Mike Cohen, had been fatally wounded.
"He was just really kind-hearted, one of those guys that gave a damn," Cuts The Rope said.
The Marines called in extra fire support, began treating the wounded and tried to push forward.
They cleared three more buildings on that block before running into trouble on the fourth, a two-story house that had been hit by tanks. When Cuts The Rope and his Marines arrived, the rooms were aglow with furniture burning from early strikes.
By then it was dark and night-vision goggles weren't effective in the dust and smoke, Cuts The Rope said. The soldiers moved through the house with flashlights and guns drawn, searching each room for enemy combatants.
Just when they thought the house was safe, the Marines saw blood on the wall near a small room beneath the stairwell.
One of the Marines threw open the door and sprayed the corner with gunfire, killing one man inside, Cuts The Rope said. Then seconds later, another insurgent ran out of the room with grenades on his vest.
"I shot him five times and he didn't go down," Cuts The Rope said. "And then he explodes."
Metal shrapnel peppered the Marines.
When other Marines arrived, they made sure there were no other insurgents in the house and then began evacuating the wounded. Cuts The Rope remembered how his lieutenant picked him up beneath the arms and dragged him to a vehicle outside.
"All I can remember saying to the lieutenant is 'please don't drop me sir, please don't drop me.' And he said 'I won't,' " Cuts The Rope said. "Marines take care of each other."
Cuts The Rope underwent surgery at Camp Fallujah and was then taken by helicopter to Baghdad, where he received further treatment. Within 24 hours, he was in a hospital in Germany, where he underwent surgery again. By then, it was Thanksgiving. Cuts The Rope ate with fellow soldiers from the Army, Air Force and Marines.
"It was the best damn Thanksgiving I've ever had," he said. "I was just thankful to be alive."
Cuts The Rope arrived at Bethesda on Monday night and soon found out that one of the medics treating him was from Kalispell.
"That just made it extra special," he said.
He's scheduled to fly to Camp Pendleton on Thursday and later back to Hawaii, where he'll be able to spend Christmas with his wife and son, who turns 1 on Christmas Eve. He expects a full round of physical therapy to repair damage to his arms and legs.
His son's traditional name, The Rainbow After The Storm, has become particularly meaningful, he said.
"I can't believe what I went through and what all those young men went through," he said. "There's got to be a better way for countries to settle their differences."
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