N.H. Marine posthumously awarded Navy Cross

(Boston Herald) - On March 22, 2009, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines were under heavy enemy fire when Cpl. Michael W. Ouellette was hit by an improvised explosive device that tore off his lower left leg and left him riddled with shrapnel — but that didn’t stop him from returning fire and barking orders to ensure his squad found their way out of danger.


“He thought his men were more important than coming home,” said his mother, Donna Ouellette yesterday. “I’m proud of him. He didn’t have to do that, but I know if he had to do it over again, he would. Even if he knew the outcome.”


Ouellette died of his injuries as he was transported out of the battle zone. He was 28.
 Yesterday morning at the Marine Reserve Support Center, Secretary of the Navy Raymond E. Mabus presented Ouellette’s family with the Navy Cross, the second-highest honor given. Ouellette was the 26th recipient of the Navy Cross during the war on terrorism.


“There was an expression at Iwo Jima that extraordinary valor was an ordinary event. And you see these acts of extraordinary heroism and extraordinary valor by people like Cpl. Michael Ouellette,” Mabus said. “There are a lot of Marines here today who are alive because of what Michael Ouellette did.”


Born in Manchester, Ouellette was a 1999 graduate of Manchester Memorial High School. He traveled across the nation and attended the Culinary Arts Institute of California before enlisting in the Marines in 2005.


Ouellette served three tours — first in Ramadi, Iraq, as a squad automatic rifleman, then as a fire team leader with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and finally as a squad leader in Helmand Province.


“He was a leader, a mentor and the greatest influence in my life so far,” said Cpl. Jesse Raper, who served two years alongside Ouellette and pulled the conscious but severely injured Marine out of the crater from the IED blast. “It’s unfortunate that it took something like this to be able to meet his family.”


Yesterday, his siblings remembered Ouellette as a student of Nietzsche and Socrates and an excellent chess player and cook.


“My brother would be embarrassed by all this,” said sister Stephanie Ouellette. “He was very low-key and laid-back. More than anything he would be proud of the men he served with. This medal is as much about those guys as it is about him.