"...Nine years ago, two US Marines from very different walks of life met for the first time when they were put on guard duty at 7:30 in the morning.
Just minutes later, the pair of Marines guarding a gate in Ramadi, Iraq, were staring down a large blue truck packed with 2,000 pounds of explosives. They could have sought cover, like an Iraqi policeman on the scene who ran away and lived.
Instead, Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter and Cpl. Jonathan Yale stood their ground. Their split-second choice saved the lives of 50 people.
In 2010, then-Lt. Gen. John Kelly — who now serves as Secretary of Homeland Security — told their story to a packed house just four days after he had lost his own son, Robert, to combat in Afghanistan.
He spoke of the 9/11 attacks, the enemy that America was fighting, and praised the brave men and women who had volunteered to go overseas since then. Then he moved to the remarkable story of these two Marines, which he told the crowd, showed the “quality of steel in their backs.”
Here’s what he said:
...What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal.
Read on and be proud to have lived in a world with men such as these.Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”“No sane man.”“They saved us all.”...
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