Times staff writer

At first, little seemed amiss April 7 as Cpl. James "Eddie" Wright’s Bravo Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, escorted a 15-vehicle convoy of Humvees and seven-ton trucks loaded with fuel.

The men had spent the afternoon at Camp Fallujah, 1st Recon’s base, readying for the convoy and patrol. Their vehicles kicked up dust as the convoy pulled out of the walled camp and began its 10-mile trek.

They hoped for an uneventful ride to a supply point where they would hunt for enemy mortars. But the men of 1st Recon were also prepared for the worst to happen. It was early April, and they were in the Sunni Triangle, a hotbed of anti-American insurgency where a week earlier four American civilians were murdered and mutilated in Fallujah.

Their instincts would prove to be right. By the end of the afternoon, a platoon would lose its commander, a corporal’s heroic actions and cool headedness after losing his hands would earn him a Bronze Star, and a crew of Marines would lay down withering fire against insurgents who expected to walk away from the ambush they’d planned.

These are the actions of 1st Recon’s men, based on interviews in Iraq and supporting documents detailing the ambush.

Danger nearby

As the convoy rolled, enemy fire broke the quiet not far into their ride along the east bank of the Euphrates River. Gun vehicles quickly split off from the convoy and raced to flank the gunmen, hidden on the west side of the river.

The sun hung low in the western sky shortly before 4 p.m. as they passed two nondescript gas stations and large farm fields, crisscrossed by irrigation canals and ditches, that mark much of central Iraq. Then trouble met the men again. Volleys of lead rained on them as enemy machinegun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars exploded around them.

It was an ambush.

Wright, in the lead humvee, and the other men turned their weapons to fire at the enemy across the field. "They launched everything at us right away, at the lead vehicles," recalled Gunnery Sgt. Daniel J. Griego, 37, 2nd platoon’s platoon sergeant.

Within 30 seconds, RPGs disabled the two lead Humvees, immediately wounding Wright and six others. In the continuing barrage, the platoon commander ran his shot-up vehicle and led a small team in a charge across the field, firing weapons and directing fire at enemy forces as they raced across the fields, climbing two 10-foot berms and wading chest-high through a muddy canal.

"It was the fight of fights," said Capt. Brad Richardson, 34, Bravo’s commander who helped coordinate close-air suppressive fire and evacuation.

The flanking attack

On seeing his platoon commander’s full-blown charge, it didn’t take seconds for Sgt. Leandro F. Baptista to act.

On vehicle and then on foot, Baptista, 24, twice charged his three-man team at enemy machinegun positions in the kill zone, leading his team over 10-foot berms and a canal and toward enemy fire in a flanking move to quell the fire that threatened Morel and the five Marines who were racing toward the main enemy force. His team fired at insurgents fighting from established positions. The Miami native spotted more than 30 "bad guys" who "were well dug in, and they had us with machineguns and with their numbers."

An explosion nearby kicked up some dirt, and sent him to the ground. "It was a grenade one enemy had pulled out," he said. At one point, he spotted an IED and quickly removed a wire to disable it.

A cluster of nearby bushes shook alive, sending bullets at his men. He grabbed his M4 carbine and "went by myself and started clearing it," Baptista said. His men followed, his gunner "shooting over my right shoulder" at the enemy fighters. "The farther I walked," he said, "the more enemy I engaged."

At one point, 11 insurgents lurked nearby, hidden along the berm. Baptista’s two men fired at six gunmen on one side, and "I cleared about five of [them]," he said. One of the enemy fighters "was putting up pretty good resistance. These guys were pretty close-quarters action." They were just yards apart.

But Baptista and his team held their own, fighting to silence the machineguns and despite RPGs and bullets that ripped nearby from an enemy surprised by the Marines’ counteroffensive. "You don’t have time to think about fear," said Baptista. "If you put your mind to it, that’s going to be a barrier, something in the way."

A trained sniper, he was part of the flanking force and accounted for four confirmed kills that day. He shot at more, though, in the assault charge, using his .50-cal Sasser sniper rifle and M4 carbine.

Unlike last year’s battles, often fought at blurred distances, this was a point-blank battle. The Bravo men battled the insurgents, raking enemy positions with rifle fire, tossing grenades by hand over berms and sometimes taking pinpoint shots as they ran, sometimes crawling and climbing up and down the berms just yards from enemy fighters with AK-47s and PKN machineguns.

As Morel continued in the charge, the gunny provided cover as two fighters went down by precision shots. One sported a red bandana. "When I looked at them, I didn’t see faces," he said, "I saw whole bodies."

Shortly after, he killed another two, again at 500 yards away, but enemy fire was pinning down some of his men.

Griego moved on an instinct that told him: "Don’t leave them to fight another day."

Several enemy getaway vehicles, which were seen near a gray house across the fields, were on the move. Using his sniper rifle, Griego fired two shots to disable a blue truck 1,200 yards, and then a white sedan, before he learned that Morel had been shot.

The heavy barrage of fire continued and threatened the evacuation of Morel, along with the six initial wounded, and Sgt. Daniel J. Lolota’s team pinned but still fighting in the kill zone.

Meanwhile, the lead humvee, with flat tires and three men in critical need of medical attention, worked its way out of the kill zone. In that humvee, team leader Sgt. Eric M. Kocher had been shot in the arm, the vehicle’s gunner was passed out in his hatch after being shot through the leg, and both of Wright’s hands were blown off and his leg bled profusely from an open fracture.

Wright would later receive the Bronze Star for calmly directing the men in his humvee to render first aid to his bleeding limbs and for helping direct fire to enemy machinegun emplacements as the humvee made its way out.

Morel, Wright and the five other wounded were later flown to the combat surgical unit as 2nd Platoon, joined by a quick-reaction force from 3rd Platoon, got orders to return to Camp Fallujah.

A charge, a fall, then renewed vigor

In the field, Morel’s charge had clearly surprised the enemy hunkered around their machineguns as the five-member assault force lobbed hand grenades over the berm.

Sgt. Willie L. Copeland, 26, ran ahead of Morel for cover fire with his M4. An RPG had shot off the squad automatic weapon from the hands of one Marine in the Humvee in an explosion that left their ears ringing for several days.

As they battled the nearby fighters with rifle fire and grenades, Morel was struck in the chest and lower back by fire, hit under his armpit where body armor didn’t protect.

Copeland, saw Morel go down and immediately hopped over to give first aid. He told one Marine to make the call: "Eagle 2-0 Actual was down."

He dragged Morel into a nearby irrigation ditch as RPGs hit near the berm. He took off his combat gear, vest and blouse to treat the wounds, which were severe, and tied a compression bandage around his chest. With his hands, he covered Morel’s bleeding wounds as Mendoza opened bandages from a first-aid kit. "He was conscious at that point," he said. Richardson arrived and tried to help him move Morel, but his wounds were too serious.

For 15 minutes, Copeland stayed with Morel, exposed in the field, until an armored Humvee arrived to take the wounded officer to the main road. Copeland rejoined his team to provide cover fire for the rest of the platoon fighting in the fields as a pair of Super Cobra helicopters blasted at the gray house that was a source of some of the insurgent fire.

Later, when the dust settled, the platoon tried to move on, slowly.

"We understand that we lost somebody," said Griego. "What can we do? We killed 26 of them."

Copeland chimed in: "Twenty-six to one is good odds, in my mind."

A former underdog leads the charge

The counter-ambush charge was a bold move, in daylight, by the men to seize the enemy's momentum from the ambush and strike back when they might have expected the Americans to run.

But Morel opted to close in with the enemy, likely to draw fire away from his wounded men so they could be treated and evacuated. That is what Mike and Molly Morel knew and expected of their son, who they said would put the care and concern for his men before himself.

"He was very protective of his men," said Mike Morel, who spoke by phone from his home in Martin, Tenn. Once last year, he asked his parents to send him pistachios in Okinawa so he could give them to his young Marines, who couldn’t afford the pricey nut. This year, he gave away his priceless minutes on company satellite phones for his men to call home.

The family is mourning the loss of their son, their "hero," a third-degree black belt who loved to hunt ducks and deer. They recall the small freckled, bespectacled teenager with red-orange hair who was often picked on by other boys. But his heart remained kind as he fought for the underdogs, his parents said, even when the men in his reserve unit during college had nicknamed him "Tracer."

"The red hair and freckles, he was a prime target for the boys," his mother recalled. "He had to learn to defend himself."

Mike Morel said his son believed in his duty to help the Iraqi people. "The people over there were the underdog, and he was trying to help them," he said.

Brent Morel, who left behind his wife, Amy, had aspired to make the Corps a career, perhaps reaching the four-star rank. "He loved what he did," Molly Morel said. "He knew he needed combat experience to move up" and he was "tickled" at his assignment to 1st Recon.

"He wanted to be able to look his men in the eye and say ‘I went through the same thing you went through,’" she said.

A sobering dose of combat

Richardson, Bravo’s commander, said he’s "humbled" by the actions of his men that day.

"We totally closed with the enemy. They didn’t expect it," he said. "It was our destiny. They thought we would run."

The men had faced at least 40, maybe 60, enemy insurgents and killed at least 26, uncovered a cache of RPGs, ammunition and a surface-to-air missile and disabled a daisy-chain of improvised bombs. By nightfall, fighting adrenaline and exhaustion, they returned to camp to patch their wounds, review their actions and prepare for their next mission that came the next day.

Griego said he’s never been more proud of his men as on that day, even as they suffered their first major losses, including their platoon commander.

Morel’s charge and Baptista’s unhesitating flanking move. A wounded Sgt. Eric M. Kocher protecting his team, crippled in a damaged Humvee, with covering fire while under fire. A young Cpl. Eric C. Isaac, who ran exposed to fire over berms carrying an Iridium phone to get clear signals for Richardson, under fire, to call for medevac and close-air support.

Their actions have become part of history. "You always hear about people doing things [in combat]," he said.

"This is the first one that you’re actually fighting up close and personal," he said. The 17 firefights he fought in last year "were much different, all at distances of 300 to 1,000," he said.

But this time, he added, "the enemy didn’t expect us to fight. We immediately flanked them and changed the battlefield."