Navy Cross
Aubrey L. McDade Jr.
Gunnery Sergeant, United States Marine Corps. 1999 to 2019.
On a night in Fallujah he crossed a machine gun kill zone three times to save the lives of three wounded Marines. What he does now, in books and in person, is help other people push through their pain.
11 November 2004
Second Battle of Fallujah
Machine Gun Squad Leader, 1st Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines
In the opening seconds of the engagement, three Marines were seriously wounded as the well positioned and expecting enemy pinned others down. On contact, Sergeant McDade rushed from the rear of the platoon column toward the kill zone and immediately deployed a machine gun team into the alley to provide suppressive fire on the enemy. After several attempts to reach casualties in the alley were met with heavy, well-aimed machine gun fire, he showed total disregard for his own safety by moving across the alley and successfully extracting the first of three wounded Marines from the kill zone. Aware of the fact that there were still two wounded Marines in the alley, Sergeant McDade dashed through the heart of the kill zone two more times, each time braving intense enemy fire to successfully retrieve a Marine.
His quick thinking and aggressive actions were crucial in saving the lives of two of the three casualties.
I wasn't just going to let them sit out there like sitting ducks. They needed me, and I went.
The record
Twenty years, and after
Fort Worth, then out
Born in 1981 and raised in Fort Worth and Houston, through poverty, addiction and violence at home. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in November 1999, straight out of Western Hills High School.
Twenty years in
Three tours of Iraq as a machine gun squad leader, then a Drill Instructor at Parris Island. He retired in 2019 as a Gunnery Sergeant.
The Navy Cross
Recommended for the Silver Star for the night of 11 November 2004, and upgraded. The Navy Cross was presented at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island on 19 January 2007. Four days later he was the guest of the First Lady at the State of the Union.
The harder fight
He came home with traumatic brain injuries, PTSD and migraines. That recovery, not the medal, is what he speaks about, and it is where the work with young people started.
On the shelf
Available now
The work now
LIFE Changer 365
A nonprofit mentoring young people who are fatherless or in foster care, aged 12 to 21, across North Texas. It works the way he was taught to work: discipline, commitment, honesty, leadership.
- LLove
- IInvest
- FForgive
- EExample