North of Route Fran were the roughly 1, men of 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, preparing themselves for the assault. Route Fran itself was a wide, four-lane highway. There were enough large buildings on either side of Fran that the marines could never hope to cover every window. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. The marines started to cross—one platoon running at full speed, the others firing away, filling the sky above with bullets.
Insurgents on the other side opened up as well, one of them hitting Sergeant Lonny Wells, a year-old father of four children. The round tore through his leg and he pitched forward, falling to the ground. Wells, his mother later recalled, had wanted to join the military since he was young.
Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Shane, whose platoon had been providing covering fire, put down his rifle. Nevertheless, he ran out to the fallen marine, grabbed him by the drag strap on his body armor, and, along with one other marine, began tugging him to safety. After Shane took a few steps, a bullet slammed into his lower back, and he fell to the ground. Now there were two injured men facedown in the middle of the open highway, bleeding onto the wet pavement.
They all must have known that the two injured men were now bait, that insurgents were waiting to fire on anyone else foolish enough to try to save their brothers. Naturally, marines being marines, two more of them ran out.
Thanks to them, Shane would live, but they were too late for Wells. He bled to death. This is a common sort of war story. Every war provides them—young men and women risking and sometimes losing their lives in ways that provoke a kind of entranced awe.
