Marc was down, one leg folded awkwardly under him and his gun off to the side. I took three bounds down the stairs and saw my best friend, slumped at the bottom, staring vacantly at the ceiling. “Man Down! We need a fucking corpsman down here now!” Re-engaging the enemy, the Team had just cleared a structure when, as Lacz describes, “a loud burst of enemy machine-gun fire ripped into the first floor below us…and blew out the glass from the window in the downstairs hallway.” Hard after the dreaded cry was heard anew, “Man down!” The voice, Lacz records, was desperate and urgent. It’s a reflex as old as war they kill yours you kill more of theirs…a frontal assault. It took a few minutes to flip our collective switch from demoralized to calculated blood rage. The second chapter of our duo-core, “All Stop,” takes up after the successful evacuation of Job back to the combat operations post. His wife was pregnant with their first child. ![]() “The summit was amazing,” he said, “even for a blind man.” Job would die in 2009 following a twelve-hour surgery to repair his eye socket, reportedly from a preventable complication. Rainer in 2008 as part of Camp Patriot’s climbing team. Among many other achievements, he summited Mt. ![]() With the same courage he displayed in earning numerous combat decorations for valor, Biggles would go on to conquer blindness. Despite their severity, Job would survive his wounds, though he was rendered permanently blind. Unable to assist from his own location, Dauber describes how Marc Lee, a Team 3 machine gunner, immediatly began burning through hundreds of rounds in a purposeful rage-single-handedly providing cover fire for Biggles’ medevac. Over the radio, Lacz heard a cry from the other rooftop, “Man down! Man down!” A bullet had had ricocheted off Biggles’ rifle, and drove into his face. Suddenly one or several enemy shots shattered the relative calm. Providing overwatch-sniper protection-they gave a security umbrella to the American warfighters clearing the streets below. Lacz and his squad set up on one roof while Kyle and his were on another. On August 2 nd, during a major push, Team 3 had secured a pair of buildings. While particular details conflict between the two books-probably a result of the fog of combat-the primary narrative is tragically the same. The sequence is already familiar to anyone who has read American Sniper, for Kyle was on the rooftop where Biggles was hit, and he played a primary role in what followed. It describes the downing of one of his team members-Ryan “Biggles” Job-and the fateful events consequent to it. In many ways, “Man Down” is the first of what could be called the two-chapter core of Lacz’s book. The Punishers played a pivotal role in a pivotal battle. Together, and only together, he and his brothers-including Kyle, Mike Monsoor, Ryan Job, and Marc Lee, among many others-were responsible for securing key locations under extreme combat, and pacifying them. Telling the story of the 2006 Battle of Ramadi, Lacz makes plain just how much such an alloy was needed. These commitments, tested on the anvil of war, become one-a composite stronger than its constituent parts. Just so, Dauber and his Team members share the same commitments: to their cause, to their nation and loved ones, most especially to one another, and to bringing violent death to evildoers. Bearing a white skull emblazoned on his chest, the Punisher “delivers justice to his targets in the form of violent death.” The Punisher’s unwavering commitment to the fight, however much it seems to be without end, is grounded by his time in the service. Taken from the Marvel gun-toting vigilante of the same name, the Punisher, once a Force Reconnaissance Marine, avenges the violent loss of his loved ones by waging a war against evil. “Punisher” points to the moniker given to the legendary unit in which Lacz served-along with Chris Kyle, a legend in his own right of The American Sniperfame. ![]() He fought like a warrior hero, in a company of heroes. While you won’t find him mentioning it in his book, he earned a bronze star for valor, and two Navy and Marine Corps Commendation medals. Lacz served with Naval Special Warfare Group ONE, SEAL Team THREE, as a sniper, breacher, and corpsman on two combat deployments in Iraq. “August 2 was a bad day.” So begins Kevin “Dauber” Lacz’s chapter “Man Down” in his combat memoir The Last Punisher.
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