Christian Girardot doesn’t mince words.

“The first five months we were in Iraq, we got our asses handed to us. We lost a lot of good men,” Girardot said. “I wasn’t even old enough to buy alcohol over there and I was there two weeks in and had already had a near death experience. When I got back and took my gear off, it finally hit me that these people are out to actually kill us.”

During that first 15-month deployment Girardot’s unit lost 16 soldiers, with more than 100 wounded, many of them missing limbs.

Girardot, who had enlisted in the Army two months after graduating from high school, trained as a forward observer — a specialist who uses radio communication to coordinate air support fire, determine target coordinates and fire mortars. He served two tours in Iraq (2007-08 and 2009-1

See Full Page