Navy Cross receipent helps wounded Marine warriors

September 7, 2010 · By Jerry Castillo

One of the most highly decorated Marines during the war in Iraq had to drink to fall asleep. He once tried to kill himself.

This was after Jeremiah Workman’s tour in Fallujah, where on Dec. 23, 2004, he demonstrated such extraordinary heroism that he was awarded the Navy Cross, an award for valor second only to the Medal of Honor.

He led three assaults into a house where insurgents had trapped other Marines. Injured by grenade shrapnel, he helped save many of those Marines and kill 24 insurgents.

Retired Staff Sgt. Workman, now 27, originally is from Richwood, Ohio, and was a high-school football player. He tells these biographical details to current and retired Marines, including the ones he has spoken with in Ohio over the past few days.

“I wasn’t broken before I went in,” he tells them. “I’m you.”

He still goes to counseling, he says, and he still takes medicine for post-traumatic stress disorder. If a football player from Richwood High School, not to mention a Navy Cross recipient, admits that he needed help after a deployment, maybe other Marines will admit it, too.

To read more visit:
Hero helps ‘broken’ troops
Thursday, September 2, 2010  02:59 AM
By Jeb Phillips
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH