Marine Who Fired First Saw Ambush

His name is Virge. He is 24 and married and will be a father any day now. He loves football and he loves the Marines, and he has a wide smile and eyes as blue-green as the Caribbean.

He is also the Marine who fired first--and gave the order for his men to fire too--on a group of Haitian police officers Saturday night in the only violent encounter involving U.S. troops since the military landed a week ago. The clash left 10 Haitian policemen dead.

The actions of Lt. Virgil Palumbo, attached to Echo Company, 2nd Battalion of the 2nd Marine Regiment, in front of the crowded police headquarters in Haiti’s second-largest city heightened the debate over the proper role of U.S. troops here.

Palumbo and his men, in a series of interviews here Monday, insisted that they were being set up for an ambush by the Haitian police Saturday night. And they believe they did what was right to protect themselves and a crowd of bystanders--and, indeed, the honor of the United States.

“This is going to sound corny and all, but you know what?” Palumbo said. “I love my country.”

At this northern city’s seaport and airfield Monday, other Marines were preparing to go home. By today, most of the 1,600 Marines here are expected to be gone, replaced by 3,000 fresh soldiers from the Army’s 10th Mountain Light Infantry Division in Ft. Drum, N.Y.

But Palumbo was leading his men on a one-mile patrol through the city, one of his last. In doorways and alleys, as they have done all week, the people of Cap Haitien watched them as they paraded past.

Palumbo had never seen such poverty as Haiti’s, although he grew up in the smallest of coal-mining towns in western Pennsylvania. He is the son of the high school principal in Windber, and now he was walking past children, teen-agers and young adults whose parents could never afford to send them to school.

“You look in their eyes and you could see a lot of hope,” he said, waving to some of those lining his patrol route. “People want to help themselves out of their misery. I can’t say enough about these people. Just great people.”

Many people in the last few days, including several eyewitnesses, have contradicted the Marines’ version of what happened outside police headquarters here Saturday night. Some claim the Haitian police fired first when they felt threatened by the presence of the Marines. Others said the Marines were lying in wait, or had come to the police building spoiling for a fight.

Some relatives of the dead policemen even say they were told by others who escaped that a Marine translator told the crowd to lie on the ground and then the troops started shooting at the police, who were inside the station.

Still others believe that even though the police are hated here, the dispute could have been settled without gunfire.

But Palumbo and his squad of 14 men tell it differently. They had been standing guard in front of the police headquarters for two hours when, in the last light of dusk, Palumbo said, he saw trouble.

Two Haitian policemen came out of the front gate, and it looked as though they were pretending to be arguing. One pulled out a pistol and the other an Uzi submachine gun. Palumbo, who was just five yards away from them, said they suddenly turned toward him.

He said he raised his M-16 and shot them both in a series of loud bursts. “I just reacted,” he said. “We were threatened. My men were threatened. Without a doubt, I can prove we were set up in an ambush and that they knew exactly what they were doing.”

He ordered his men to fire, he said, just as he saw two Haitian police attaches, or armed auxiliaries, in the crowd pulling guns too and opening fire at his unit. Above him, a Haitian police officer leaned out a window and fired on the Marines below, Palumbo said.

On the ground, the Marines had no cover. Some split to the left, others to the right. Palumbo held the middle position--what he called the “kill zone.” He and his men all fired, from their hips or their shoulders or on bended knee.

Only one American--Jose Joseph, a Navy translator--was injured. And even as he was being treated by Navy Medic Andres Espinosa for a wound to the left leg, he continued to translate commands to the crowd into Creole.

Palumbo insisted that his men stand their ground--exposed--and not seek cover. He feared that if they moved they might bring some of the bystanders into the line of fire.

And the fighting was fierce. Machine gunner Lance Cpl. David Grogan fired 150 rounds in 15 seconds. Seaman Peter (Doc) Flynn heard bullets plinking to his right and to his left, and another shot that whizzed just overhead.

Travis Moldenhauer fired one magazine of 30 rounds, then dropped to one knee and emptied a second magazine.

Staff Sgt. Todd Arnold said simply, “Every 15 seconds seemed like an eternity.”

Palumbo called the cease-fire. In the darkness before him, he thought he saw a dead Marine lying on the street. On hands and knees, he crawled toward the figure.

“But when I got up there,” he said, “it wasn’t a Marine at all. It was a bush. And you can believe I was relieved.”

Around the Marine encampment for the next few days, there was talk among the men of bravado and great heroics and medals for valor. But Palumbo was thinking about what his wife was going to say about his being in that life-or-death situation.

“She’s going to chew me out when I get home,” he said, cracking another wide smile. “And when my wife gets done beating up on me, boy, then they can give me a Purple Heart.”

Palumbo is married to Bernie, his sweetheart from high school, where he was a football player, as he was later at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. In a week or two, the couple expect the birth of their first child.

“We already know it’s going to be a girl, and we named her Dana,” Palumbo said. “I found out the day I left home in late July. I really wanted to know that. That way, if anything happened, at least I would have known.”

Showdown in Haiti

The Marines involved in Saturday’s gunfight say they were being set up for an ambush by the Haitian police. Here’s their version of the events:

1) At 5 p.m., 14 U.S. Marines show up at police station to begin two-hours of guard duty.

2) Between 5 and 7 p.m., a crowd of Haitians forms across 20th Street.

3) At 7 p.m., two Haitian policemen step out the front door and begin to argue. They pull guns and turn toward Lt. Virge Palumbo. He kills them both. With no cover, Marines split right and left and begin to fire on other policemen in the building.

4) Two Haitian police attaches in the crowd pull guns and open fire on the unit.

5) The gun battle leaves 10 Haitians dead and at least five wounded.

Source: Times staff