Purple Heart medal awarded

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Four months after he was wounded by a sniper’s bullet in Iraq, Marine Sgt. James T. Carpenter received the Purple Heart medal Friday.

“It’s an honor to serve the country and the men I work with,” Carpenter, a Clark County firefighter and Marine reservist, said after Capt. Bryan Diede pinned the medal on his camouflaged duty uniform during a ceremony at the Armed Forces Reserve Center at Nellis Air Force Base.

Said Diede: “It goes to show you that anybody over there can be wounded. It’s good to see he’s up and around again.”

The certificate, signed by Lt. Gen. J.N. Mattis, commander of the Marine Corps Forces Central Command, notes that the Purple Heart was established by Gen. George Washington at Newburgh, N.Y., on Aug. 7, 1782.

Scars from what was probably an AK-47 rifle bullet that ripped through Carpenter’s abdomen will be a constant reminder of that afternoon on March 11 when he walked through the streets of Fallujah.

“It’s a day I’m never going to forget,” he said.

As a platoon sergeant, he was nearing the end of his seven-month tour with a Marine unit out of Saginaw, Mich., when the sniper attack occurred.

He was one of four Marines and 12 Iraqi soldiers on foot patrol when shots rang out.

“When I made my left-hand turn, I heard a shot behind me. When I turned back around the corner, I saw two Iraqis lying on the ground,” he said in an interview while recuperating at his Henderson home in March.

“My guys yell at me, ‘Carp, get up here,’ … but I told them, ‘We’ve got contact here,'” he said.

One of his Iraqi comrades had been wounded.

“As soon as I turned the corner to go down and get him is when I got hit in the gut,” Carpenter said in the March 23 interview.

“I did not go down,” he said. “As soon as I got hit, my partner was behind me. I go, ‘Hey, I got hit. I’m hit. I’m hit.’ And he goes, ‘Well, lay down.’

“I said, ‘I’m not layin’ down. We’re in a kill zone.’ So we ran back about 20 yards and then I went behind a car,” he said.

Moments later, in the safety of a courtyard wall, his partner checked the wound and started dressing it.

“Being a paramedic for 10 years, I kind of did my own little assessment on me. I think I’m still alert. I’ve got pulses. I’m bleeding a little bit. I didn’t know if it was my gut or not, but I figured it’s low enough that there’s nothing vital down there. I figured I’d be OK. I figured I might be missing something, but I didn’t think I was going to die.”

Carpenter said Friday he was fortunate to have survived because the wounded Iraqi soldier died three days after the attack.

“I’m blessed. I’ve got to give God credit,” he said.

His wife, Tonya Carpenter, who is the Review-Journal’s online director of content, was at the ceremony with the rest of their family.

“I’m just proud of him,” she said, while holding their 3-year-old son, James.