Young Veterans Tell Their Stories, Support BRAVE Petition

Oct 24 2008 8:00 PM EDT

Young Veterans Tell Their Stories, Support BRAVE Petition
MTV.com - USA
'[The government doesn't] care about you if you're not on contract,' one veteran says at 'A Night for Vets' concert.
By Chris Harris

NEW YORK — Jeans Cruz sits in a chair at the Nokia Theatre as M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" blares through the speakers of the venue's PA system. He's an unassuming, stylishly dressed guy who smiles at passersby when his eyes meet theirs.

You wouldn't know it by looking at him, but Cruz — who has been out of the service for more than three years — was the man who pulled Saddam Hussein from the dark, narrow hole he'd been hiding in beneath a two-room mud shack on a sheep farm in Iraq.

"When we found the hole, it was covered by what looked like a cinder block, but it was actually made of foam," Cruz recalls, thinking back to December 13, 2003. "I was ordered to toss a flash grenade down into the hole, but I didn't want to. But it was my job — I had to do what I was told."

Looking down into the dark abyss, Cruz — who spent close to two years in Iraq — had no idea what was at the bottom. He feared there would be explosives, and worried the flash grenade — designed to daze and deafen a suspect — would ignite them, killing him and his unit.

"I threw it down there and kissed my ass goodbye," he says. "Then I went down into the hole, and the smell was horrible; there was a hole in the floor he had been using for a bathroom. Saddam had been down there for two straight weeks. When I got down there, he was holding an AK-47, so we handcuffed him and brought him to the surface."

When he returned home from service, he was heralded as a hero. But these days, he's hampered by debt, including medical costs.
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