Emporian John Ritchie faced a magnesium fire and approaching insurgents last month when his Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighter unit was called to the scene of a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan.
Ritchie, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, was deployed to Camp Dwyer in the Helmand province of Afghanistan on Sept. 13.
On Oct. 26, the collision between an AH-1 Cobra helicopter and a UH-1 Huey brought Ritchie and his unit out at 2:30 a.m. to meet the Quick Reaction Force and head to the crash site. The QRF escorted the ARFFs to the scene.
“When we got there, they were still on fire,” Ritchie wrote in an e-mail to his fianceé, Catrina Bolen, in Emporia. “I was manning the turret on one of the P-19s, so I got up on the turret and put out the fire that was around the Cobra.”
The flaming helicopter was the first actual fire he’d had to face, John Ritchie said.
“Anyway, then we went to the other bird. There was a magnesium fire going. Magnesium burns really hot and bright, and it reacts to water (makes it burn even hotter),” he wrote. “The other crew was just raining water down on it trying to drown it out, but it wasn’t working and they didn’t have Halon on their truck.”
Ritchie’s crew did have Halon, and used it to put out the fire on the Huey.
“We also had to cut the helicopter gun mounts for the 50 caliber machine guns because we couldn’t leave those behind, and that took a while,” he said.
When the mission was over, the troops got word that a platoon-sized group of insurgents — 30 or more — was preparing to attack.
“So we all loaded our rifles and waited until everything was done at the crash site, and we got our escort back to base,” Ritchie wrote. “Apparently they were less than a mile away from us when we finally left.
“When we were leaving, another Cobra helicopter gunship started tearing them apart with its guns.”
Ritchie said his group got back to base unharmed and rested for a time. They’d already been awake and working feverishly for four hours, without considering the added threat of the insurgents nearby.
“And we also didn’t know when we went out how many people were on the aircraft or what type of aircraft we were dealing with,” Ritchie wrote. “We sure as hell weren’t expecting TWO helicopters because that’s so rare.”
News reports tallied four crew members killed and two injured in the crash.
The contents of Ritchie’s e-mail were serious enough to catch his father off-guard momentarily.
“After I knew he was okay, I felt pretty proud,” Don Ritchie said.
His son’s routine work is standing guard for aircraft as they take off and land.
The overnight mission was two and a half to three miles from base, what John Ritchie described as “outside the wire.”
The objective man could have confidence that his son would do well; still, the situation his son had come through provoked a different feeling in the subjective father.
“I knew that he was trained well, so I knew that he would do his job professionally,” Don Ritchie said. “Just as a dad, (I was) just concerned, just relieved that he was okay. You know it’s just part of his job. I know that fire-fighting is dangerous.”
John Ritchie, now 19, entered the Marines through an early enlistment program while he was still in high school, his father said. He graduated from Emporia High School in 2008, and in October of that year graduated from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, Calif; in March 2009, he graduated from the Department of Defense Fire Academy in San Angelo, Texas.
John’s mother was the late Charlene Ritchie.
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Posted by methusla (anonymous) on November 10, 2009 at 2:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)
OOORAH, Marine, Semper Fi and God Bless !
Posted by reddog (anonymous) on November 11, 2009 at 12:18 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Thanks for your service. It sounds like to me you spent 10 years there one night.
Posted by spectator (anonymous) on November 11, 2009 at 7:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Thank you, Marine. Semper Fi.
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