Todd Desgrosseilliers of Auburn gets high honor before returning to Iraq.
AUBURN – Sheila Desgrosseilliers first heard the stories about her son, Todd – of his courage under fire in Iraq – from a man whose life he saved.
As the two stood beneath the Iwo Jima memorial in Washington, the mother heard how her son had stopped this Marine’s bleeding, pressing the wounds in his shoulder and leg.
“If it wasn’t for your son, I wouldn’t be here today,” he told her.
Sheila wept.
Months later, she heard the full measure of Todd’s heroism, of the bullets and grenades, when a general pinned a Silver Star to his chest.
The citations that were read during the Feb. 10 ceremony at Camp Lejeune, N.C., portrayed Todd Desgrosseilliers as risking his life to shield his men. He weathered grenades and gunfire. And he was wounded twice.
“You think, Wow. This is my son,'” Sheila Desgrosseilliers said, recalling the awards ceremony at the North Carolina base. “I must have done something right.”
During the ceremony, 1,500 Marines stood at attention while her son’s heroism was described in detail.
Nobody in Todd’s family, neither his parents nor his wife, knew how much danger he’d survived.
In battle
The incidents that earned the Auburn native one of the military’s highest honors came in December 2004, during what’s known as the Second Battle of Fallujah.
Desgrosseilliers, then a major and the second-in-command of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, was part of the house-to-house search of the Iraqi city.
On the first occasion, he was leading about 100 Marines when they ran into a group of armed insurgents.
“They were throwing down grenades from the second floor at us, and I grabbed the Marines and then I was unconscious,” Desgrosseilliers told a Marine writer.
Witnesses in the Marine Corps’ official summary described the Mainer as throwing himself between the men and the grenades that landed nearby. He used his own body as a shield.
On the second occasion, two days before Christmas, he led an assault on another group of insurgents, breaking down doors as men shot at him. Minutes later, he risked leaving cover to coordinate a tank attack.
Witnesses described the scene – grenade blasts and the fire of heavy guns surrounding the 42-year-old Marine, who was bleeding from shrapnel wounds – as reminding them of a movie.
“I still get chills down my spine when I hear something like this,” Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin told the Marine Corps writer.
“It makes you truly know what it means to be a Marine,” said the general, who pinned the medal on Desgrosseilliers.
Returning to Iraq
Until the ceremony, all Sheila and Ed Desgrosseilliers heard of those days was that their son had suffered minor injuries.
On both occasions, Todd called his wife, Christina, who then called his parents in Auburn.
“He told us not to worry, that he’s OK,” said Ed Desgrosseilliers. “We tried.”
The couple tried hard. And they had their own insight.
A 23-year veteran of the Navy, Ed knew what it was like to wear the uniform.
“You know that the nature of your duty takes you closer to death,” he said. “Todd knows that, too.”
The 1981 graduate of Edward Little High School had grown up moving from base to base as a kid. After a short time at the University of Maine, he biked across the country, then joined the Marines, earning top marks in his Parris Island class.
By the time the war in Iraq began, Todd had earned two degrees and his commission. And there was never any debate about whether he would fight.
“This man genuinely believes in his heart and soul that he is doing what is right,” said his father.
Todd Desgrosseilliers, now a lieutenant colonel based in California with his wife and three children, is preparing to go back to Iraq as a battalion commander this summer.
Ed and Sheila said they will worry as they did during their son’s previous tour in Iraq, nervous at every phone call or knock on the door.
They will also try to keep in mind what Todd told them.
“He said, This is where I need to be. This is what I am trained for, and this is what I want to do,” recalled his mother.
“How many people get to say that?” Sheila said. “If something happens, that’s what I’ll remember.
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