JOHN LAWRENCE: On his first deployment, he and his best friend were both shot. They were what they call “doorknockers”—it’s when you get intel that there’s bad guys in a certain place, then you go try to apprehend them, either by knocking on the door, which usually doesn’t work, or by breaking down the door.
So they were in the process—a lot of the houses over there are compounds, with an adobe brick wall around them, and that’s what this was—and the gate was closed, so they were scaling the wall, and there were three bad guys in the compound.
And his team leader, he was shot and killed inside the wall, and Paul and Mark were at the top of the ladders shooting over the wall into the compound, and they both ran out of ammunition at the same time, so they were replacing their magazines.
SHERRI LAWRENCE: Paul was at the top of the wall, and he was actually shot in his calf muscle by friendly fire on one side of the wall, and in his other calf muscle by enemy fire on the other side of the wall, because he was straddling the top of the wall.
And so he jumped down, he grabbed one of the guys that had been injured and he pulled himself under a Humvee, and pulled that other person—other teammate—under the Humvee with him.
He ended up spending six or nine months recovering from those injuries and that jump down off the wall—he actually pinched a nerve in his neck and his upper shoulder area—and they did not want him to go back over for a second tour. They lost their team leader that day, in that firefight, and another person, like I said, was also injured.
So, Paul said, “I’m going back with my team—we're already down, you know, two men; I can’t leave my team any more short-handed than they already are.” And so he did a lot of physical therapy, and he ended up going for his physical to be released to go back to active duty, and—I believe he was seeing a physician’s assistant, and the physician’s assistant said to him, “You know, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back to full-time active duty, you know, you still have this pinched nerve in your neck, I think you need to let it rest some more.”
And so, the story goes—and the story’s from one of his buddies—the story goes that Paul looked at the physician’s assistant and said, “If you don’t sign my paperwork to let me go back over, I’ll go down the hall and find somebody else who will.” And so, that's just the type of person that he was. He was very loyal to his friends and family—he was a protector, he was very much a patriot, and when he said he was going to do something, he did it, so.
He was released to go back over, and when his team went back over, they actually landed at an airport, and they hadn’t even been in Iraq six hours, and their convoy that was leaving the airport—he was with his Special Forces team again—his convoy loaded up their supplies from their flight over, and they were heading out to camp. They hadn’t even made it to camp yet.
And the team leader had told one of Paul’s teammates to grab a rifle and get up in what they call the “crow’s nest” of the Humvee, and then the team leader went to a vehicle further up in the convoy to ride or drive. And Paul looked at his teammate that was told to go up in the crow’s nest, and said, “You know, you have a baby on the way. You have a wife and a family. I don’t have any kids—let me take the crow’s nest.”
And his teammate said, “Are you sure? I was told I need to be up in the crow’s nest.” And Paul said, “No, let me take it, I got it," and Paul took the rifle and climbed up in the crow’s nest. And they were in an unarmored Humvee at the time, and the convoy ended up running over at least one roadside bomb, and Paul took shrapnel through his ear canal into his brain.