MY HERO: My Marine Cousin Survived Suicide Bomber in Fallujah. Three Other Female Warriors Didn’t

I am a stranger to war, but four brave Americans related to me and bearing my surname have served our country.

My great-great-great grandfather Sgt. Christian Saalman was a Union soldier who died of scurvy and thirst at Andersonville, a Confederate prison at Camp Sumter, Georgia.

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My great-uncle was Maj. Otis Saalman, a POW for three years in the Philippines, where he experienced and survived the horrors of Japanese prison camps, prison ships and the Bataan Death March.

While Otis was incarcerated, his wife, Lt. Agnes Saalman, was in the Army Nurse Corps and served on the front-line during the Battle of the Bulge. She was among those who liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne Frank was among the estimated 50,000 people who perished.

And then there is my cousin Sally Saalman, a Marine who was wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Fallujah, Iraq, on June 23, 2005. Two female Marines, a female Navy Seabee and three male Marines were killed. Sally and six other women were among those flown to a burn center in Texas. In all, 11 of the 13 wounded were female.

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It was one of the most devastating incidents in the history of women serving in the American military.  

The attack occurred after a traitorous Iraqi interpreter provided coordinates to insurgents, who dispatched a suicide car bomber to target a truck used by the Women’s Search Force, a 19-strong Marine unit tasked with searching female civilian at checkpoints across the city.

“He hit us right in our fuel tank,” Sally, then a 21-year-old corporal, told me. “It catapulted most of us out of the truck . . . it was tumbling and throwing flames and people everywhere . . . we flew about 150 or 200 yards. 

“I remember my boots going up in the air, and blacking out. I was like, ‘OK God, I am not ready to go yet,’ and I remember telling Him, 'I want to be with my family and I want to finish my career in the Marine Corps.’”

A staff sergeant’s familiar voice returned Sally to consciousness: “Saalman, wake up. You’re OK. You’re alive.” 

Amid the carnage, ammunition began exploding in the heat as the surviving Marines tried to pull survivors from the wreckage before it was consumed by the flames. They were shot at and returned fire as they scrambled for cover.

“It was like the movies,” Sally said. “If you ever watch a war movie, there’s an explosion, and then it’s like a numbing sound and it’s mute and then it’s all like a buzzing noise or a ringing noise in your ears and slowly fades back into place where it’s loud again.” 

Cpl. Ramona Valdez, 20, and Petty Officer 1st Class Regina Clark, 43, a Navy Seabee, were dead, along with male Marines Cpl. Chad Powell, 22, and Pfc. Veashna Muy, 20. 

She was able to reach another truck.