MARINE CORPS AIR GROUND COMBAT CENTER, TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. -- The shrapnel burning in his legs most likely came from a hand grenade, he figured, considering the fighting was so up close and personal that day in Fallujah. He couldn’t really be sure. It might have been from an rocket-propelled grenade, mortar, or who knows what other kind of homemade bomb some insurgent had put together in his basement. The media and military called these tools of death improvised explosive devices, but it didn’t really matter to him what label they were given or even what exactly it was imbedded inside of him, piercing his flesh.
All that mattered was that he stayed with his men and continued the fight.
Thus began the story of Lance Cpl. Justin Snyder, 21 at the time, and just barely old enough to have a beer. He was squad automatic weapons operator with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, based out of Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay, and he was in the most fierce close-quarters battle that the Marine Corps had faced since Hue City in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
Hawaii seemed a far away place. His home and family in Las Vegas, further still. While other American youths his age were paying money to have pieces of ornately designed shiny metal stuck through their noses, tongues, and belly buttons as the latest youth rite of passage back in states, Snyder was getting paid to have rusty metal fragments tear through his flesh in a far different rite of passage that Marines have been experiencing since 1775.
“I’d always run my mouth about, ‘If you’re an able-bodied young American, then you should join some branch of the service,’” said Snyder, a fire-team leader with Charlie Company, 3rd Platoon, as he sat with an M203 grenade launcher attached to his M-16A2 service rifle in the frigid high desert of Hawthorne, Nev., during a recent training exercise as 1/3 gears up for yet another combat deployment, this time to Afghanistan. “Basically, I was all talk, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and here I sit. That’s that.”
Sometimes, though, that isn’t always merely that.
“I’m not sure Lance Corporal Snyder truly understands the impact and importance he has to not only his squad and platoon, but also to his company, his battalion and to the entire Marine Corps as a whole,” said 1st Sgt. Gerard Calvin, first sergeant, Charlie Company, 1/3, and a native of Richmond, Va. “He is a ‘Been there; done that; got the T-shirt Marine,’ and just watching the way other Marines gravitate to him speaks volumes for the respect he commands just by his presence.”
According to Calvin, even though Snyder’s rank of lance corporal may be considered a junior rank, there is nothing junior about this Marine.
“Circumstances have turned him into a seasoned vet,” said Calvin, who is preparing to make his third combat tour to Afghanistan. “You can see the intensity and confidence in his eyes, and the Marines around him are drawn to that. Even as a lance corporal, he is a proven leader of Marines. Any leader worth his salt, and I don’t care what their rank is or how long they’ve been in the Corps, can learn from Marines like Lance Corporal Snyder.”
Gunnery Sgt. Paul Davis, company gunnery sergeant for Charlie Company and an Iraq veteran said he couldn’t agree more.
“Lance Corporal Snyder knows what the unknown is like,” said the Laurens, S.C. native. “On its face, that statement might not seem to make sense, but believe me, to those who have been under fire, it does. He has proven that he will keep attacking with rounds whizzing by his head, and that even when wounded, he will keep going. He is an example to all Marines that intestinal fortitude is as powerful a device as any weapon issued to us. I’m proud to have him in Charlie Company, and I am proud to serve with him.”
For his part, Snyder, despite his combat experience and numerous accolades, said he would never rest on his laurels.
“I lost a lot of good friends, good Marines, in Fallujah,” said Snyder. “I feel like I have a responsibility to make sure as much as our guys come back from Afghanistan as possible, hopefully all of them, while still getting the job done that we are being sent over there to do.”
Because of his past experience in Afghanistan, Snyder said the mountain combat training 1/3 received earlier at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Bridgeport, Calif., and the desert field operations they are currently conducting at Twentynine Palms during the combined arms exercise phase of their training, is so important.
“I’m out here putting what I know to use and also learning a lot of new things,” said Snyder. “You’ve always got to keep learning in the Marine Corps. The day you stop learning is the day it’s time to pack your bags and get out.”