Dick Raymond's Poem for the Marine Corps birthday, 10 November

"THEY STOOD THEIR GROUND" 

                A True Fidelity

"To walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert

and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing."

                                            – Sentry’s General Order No. 2

*In In Ramadi, Iraq, at dawn on 30 August 2010, two Marine sentries, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jonathan Haerter, 1^st Battalion, 9^th Marines, on duty as entry point guards, held their post against an oncoming truck they quickly saw was a mechanized bomb, directed at their barracks. They immediately opened fire, causing the driver to halt the truck only 50 feet from their guardpost. Moments later its 2000 pounds of explosives were detonated, killing the Marines, but sparing the lives of more then 50 other Marines and Iraqi police in the barracks. The two sentries never took one step back to save themselves, continuing to fire until the bomb went off. Each was awarded a posthumous Navy Cross. They were 21 years old.