On November 17^th Stokes, along with most of 1^st Platoon, was lured into a sophisticated ambush in a couple of adjacent houses. One member of the platoon was killed, Lance Corporal Mike Hanks. Inside one of the houses, Stokes was thrown back six feet by an enemy fragmentation that detonated next to his body. He was trapped alone in the ambush house with the jihadists. “As I got up, rounds started impacting near me down the hall. They fighters kept coming closer, closer…I was firing at the Chechens who were getting closer (foreign fighters in Fallujah hailed from at least 18 different countries; the Chechens were the best trained, most deadly Islamist fighters in the city) …then my magazine went dry! Everything I did was by instinct, so I pulled out a grenade to frag the Chechens. I thought I was going to die; I was out of mags and they were just about to peek around the corner.”

Before the insurgents could kill Stokes, Lance Corporal Kramer bull-rushed a padlocked steel door and burst into the house, guns blazing. Kramer grabbed Stokes and carried him to safety. The Marines destroyed the house with explosives and tank fire, killing the Chechens. Suffering from a concussion, yet lucid, Stokes refused to leave his fellow Marines:

Kramer said “He begged me not to let him be taken out of combat. This is the kind of Marine I wanted beside me during a time like this. In my four years I served, Stokes was the best Marine I served with. Through all of the hard training we had, sleep deprivation, and having to serve under me as his fire team leader, (I was very tough on my fire team) he never complained and only wanted to learn more and make himself a better Marine.” 

Stokes snuck out of the field hospital so he could rejoin his buddies as quickly as possible. A week later, Stokes found himself in hand-to-hand combat with an insurgent, whom he dispatched with a trench knife.

In January 2005, 3/1 returned home. The war took a heavy toll on Sean. I remember how he told me all he wanted to do was work out and kick box. “I need to keep busy.” To take his mind off the war, I recommended he read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and get some counseling. Many members of 3/1 suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. To survive on his paltry 13K annual salary, he took a job at a local cellular phone store. He was determined to stay in the Corps.

A year after Fallujah, Stokes returned to Iraq with 3/1 for his second tour. He volunteered to be a scout and lead Lima Company into battle again. As usual, Stokes was out front.

After returning from Iraq from his second tour, Stokes spent the next few months at Pendleton preparing for his next deployment. Since fighting in Fallujah, he had been promoted to Lance Corporal, and again to the rank of Corporal, with Sergeant right around the corner. He was devastated when he was informed that his enlistment would not be extended. While he debated leaving the Marine Corps and taking a real-estate job, he called me and told me his heart was in the Marine Corps.

I was told flatly by several officers that Stokes’s chances of staying in the Corps after the temporary ten month deployment to Iraq were practically nil. The Commandant of the Marine Corps would have to approve it, and Marines with similar incidents to Stokes’s AWOL were being let go.

One officer stated bluntly, “His only chance is if we get him the medal he deserves from Fallujah. With a combat decoration in his file, there’s a tiny chance he might be able to stay in.” In my 15 years of conducting interviews with more than 2,000 WWII and Iraq veterans, I’ve never seen a stronger case than Sean’s for at least the Bronze Star. The combat version of the medal is awarded to servicemen who distinguish themselves by courage under fire. Stokes clearly went beyond the call of duty and the requirements for the medal, so I wrote a four-page letter detailing Stoke’s actions in Fallujah and why he merited the Bronze Star. It also included a reference for his second Purple Heart, which he should have received for the wounds he hid at the beginning of the battle.

Initially, I never told Sean about the medal recommendation. I did not want the members of the medal committee to think Stokes was in some way trying to influence his own award. As the USS Bonhomme Richard was pulling out of port with the Thundering Third on board, bound for the unit’s fifth combat deployment to Iraq, Stokes called me on his cell phone. “Hey Pat, How are you? We are pulling out. Hope everything is going well with you. By the way, did you ever get a chance to send that letter to the career planner?” I said, “I’ve done something better, something you deserve.” Cryptically, I left it at that. In a final act of selflessness, to spare them the anguish of deployment, he never told them he was heading to Iraq.

Weeks passed and nothing was happening on the medal. I found out that the “award authority” had expired, so the battalion was highly unlikely to approve it. Though the medal was going nowhere, one officer suggested I persevere, in order to create a paper trail. Sean emailed me to let me know he was moving from Kuwait to Iraq the next day, and asked whether I or any of the officers had written on his behalf to the Marine career planner. Out of frustration and because I did not want him to think I failed him, I emailed him Bronze Star recommendation letter I wrote. Stunned, he wrote back: