Thursday, Sep. 10, 2009

Columbus Marine dies in Afghanistan

Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson Jr., 3 others, died Tuesday in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Navy medical corpsman James Layton of Riverbank, Calif., had been administering first aid to wounded Marine Lt. Michael Johnson of Virginia Beach, Va., when both were killed Tuesday under a volley of insurgent bullets in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province.

“If we leave this house, the people in the house in front of us will shoot us,” were the last words that Marine Staff Sgt. Aaron Kenefick of Roswell, Ga., was heard calling into his radio before it went silent.

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson Jr. of Columbus, Ga., died alongside them.

Layton was 22; Michael Johnson, 25; Edwin Johnson, 31; and Kenefick, 30.

The four men, identified by the Navy and Marines on Thursday, were at the front of a column that had been heading on foot into the small village of Ganjgal in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.

Gunnery Sgt. Johnson and Staff Sgt. Kenefick were assigned to 3rd Combat Assault Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.

1st Lt. Johnson was assigned to 7th Communications Battalion, 3rd Marine Headquarters Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.

Gunnery Sgt. Johnson and Staff Sgt. Kenefick were assigned to 3rd Combat Assault Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.

1st Lt. Johnson was assigned to 7th Communications Battalion, 3rd Marine Headquarters Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Okinawa, Japan.

They were on a training mission with Afghan forces, who were to search the village for weapons and then meet village elders under an agreement to establish government authority there. Insurgents had set up positions in the village and in the mountains on either side and apparently attacked as the men reached the first compound.

Nine Afghans, eight of them security forces and one an interpreter for the Marine commander, were killed. Three Americans and 19 Afghans were wounded.

Layton, a petty officer third class, apparently had been applying medical aid when he and Michael Johnson came under fierce attack, Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., told McClatchy Newspapers. He and others said they’d found the wrappings of bandages and other medical gear strewn around Layton and Johnson.

A McClatchy reporter who was embedded with the Marine unit was farther back in the column, about 250 yards from the front, when the ambush began.