'I was just doing what I had to do'

Days later, the smell — a terrible mixture of decaying flesh, human waste and dried blood — still clung to his uniform and skin.

More than a year later, the memories — crawling through rubble and gore in the darkness — still cling to his thoughts.

Cpl. Mina Salama said he’ll never forget Nov. 8, 2005.

On that day in Iraq, then-Lance Cpl. Salama, with Battalion Landing Team 2/1, 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was the Arabic translator for a resupply convoy when a radio call came in saying Marines might be trapped in a collapsed building in nearby Husaybah.

The convoy immediately diverted to the town.

Capt. Thomas Parmiter, the senior officer at the scene, said it was unbelievable that the mountain of rubble they found was once a two-story home.

The home, a suspected insurgent safe house, had been bombed the day before, Salama said.

As translator, Salama approached about 25 Iraqis loitering in front of the rubble to find out what was happening.

“They told me there were people inside,” said Salama, 22, a Jersey City, N.J., native.

That was all he needed to hear. He immediately headed for a small gap in the rubble.

“I couldn’t fit inside the hole with all my gear on. I had to take all my flak, helmet, all my protective gear off,” Salama said.

Parmiter remembers grabbing Salama by the collar to stop him.

“He told me, ‘Sir, there are people still alive in there,’ so I let him go,” Parmiter said.

Marines, friendlies, insurgents — Salama didn’t care.

“He just went in,” Parmiter said, adding that the average-sized Marine wouldn’t have fit.

Salama, who weighs less than 145 pounds, crawled in on his stomach, digging a path with his hands.

Though daylight outside, it was pitch black amid the debris. He wormed his way deeper into the dark by the thin stream of a flashlight.

In the darkness, he said he was engulfed by “terrible, horrible smells. I could smell it on me for days afterwards.”

Salama soon found two dead Iraqis. Then he found more. In all, he and two other Marines pulled out five bodies.

The worst was a baby girl, Salama said in a voice tight with emotion. He haltingly continued, “she was about … she was less than 3 years old … and she was dead.”

What kept him going “was a voice I heard. I just wanted to be sure that there was nobody else left in there,” he said.

The voice echoed through the debris, making it difficult to locate. But he kept going and finally found an Iraqi man buried in2 feet of rubble about 15 feet from the entrance.

He and the other two Marines, all wedged in the cramped space on their stomachs, used sledgehammers to pound at debris — debris supporting the rubble above them — to rescue the man.

In a deposition, Sgt. Shane R. Bertrand called it “one of the bravest and most unselfish acts I have witnessed in three combat deployments.”

Once they pulled the Iraqi man out, Salama continued talking with bystanders to see if additional aid was needed. From them, he learned of a young girl injured in a nearby building and coordinated medical evacuation for her as well.

For his actions, Salama, currently deployed to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit on Okinawa, received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.

According to the Navy, the medal is awarded to servicemembers who risk their lives to save others in actions not involving actual conflict with an enemy. President John F. Kennedy was awarded the medal for his World War II actions in saving crewmembers of his Navy patrol boat — PT-109 — after a Japanese destroyer sliced through it in the Solomon Islands.

Though others call Salama heroic, the Marine says otherwise:

“I’m not a hero. I was just doing what I had to do.”