Ex-bounty hunter became Iraqi bounty

Bleeding on a roof, he made ‘peace with God’

By: Dick Brinster
   Editor’s note: This is part of a series on local veterans of the Afghanistan invasion or the war in Iraq.

   Michael Sarbu was a bounty hunter before joining the Marine Corps, but on his second tour of duty in Iraq he became the bounty.
   Now, a dozen surgeries and a year after being seriously wounded, he’s recovering from a bone graft performed Monday to a badly damaged left knee and leg and has hope of walking normally again. Regardless, the East Windsor resident doesn’t curse his fate, because for a few minutes last April 17 he thought he’d never see another day.
   "I made my peace with God," the 31-year-old infantryman said by telephone from his room at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. "I was beginning to think it was all over."
   He recalls lying on the roof of a military building in Ramadi, bleeding profusely from an AK 47 bullet fired by an insurgent. The projectile shattered most of his knee and the bone above it before tearing through the femoral artery.
   Fading in and out of consciousness, Lance Cpl. Sarbu believed no one could reach him because the camp was still under fire.
   "Initially, I probably didn’t even realize I was shot because my adrenaline was flowing," he said. "Then I tried to get up and realized I couldn’t."
   Several minutes later, after a suicide bomber’s vehicle breached the complex and hit the building, Cpl. Sarbu was pulled from the roof. Initial surgery was performed inside the building to stabilize him, and then began the long ordeal he hopes will end next month with his discharge from the Marines.
   "The next thing I really remember was waking up the next day in a hospital in Germany," he said.
   A nurse there tried to call his mother, Pat, in East Windsor, with whom Lance Cpl. Sarbu lived before he went to boot camp in the fall of 2003.
   "She didn’t have her cell phone that day, but they got in touch with my father and talked to him," said the soldier, whose second tour in Iraq began only a month before he was wounded.
   "Big Mike" Sarbu, a project manager for a heating and air conditioning contractor, was on a job site where the cell reception was poor and had trouble at first understanding how seriously his son was wounded.
   "The statement I remember hearing was, ‘I’m calling you from a hospital in Germany, and your son has been . . .’ " Mr. Sarbu said. "Later, after I got a better connection and calmed down, I was told what happened."
   He reached his ex-wife with a message extremely difficult to deal with, especially because their son’s prognosis was very uncertain at that time.
   "On April 18, 2006, I received the second-worst call a parent could get," she said, while adding, "My heart goes out to all those families whose own heroes lost their lives protecting this country and helping others."
   The next day, however, Lance Cpl. Sarbu was to speak for himself, and assured his parents he was out of immediate danger.
   Still, a year after she, her ex-husband and their 21-year-old daughter, Kristen, first learned of the wounding of Michael, Ms. Sarbu is dealing with her emotions.
   "I still break down from time to time just thinking about it," she said, but added that her son has helped sooth her own pain with his attitude. "He has been a very quiet hero."
   Lance Cpl. Sarbu, who also saw action in Iraq for eight months in 2005 after deployment a year earlier to Haiti, says he often thinks about the devastation people must experience over the deaths of loved ones. But he says the soldiers understand the risk that goes with the commitment.
   The Marine Corps has a long history of emphasizing just that to the men it calls "the few, the proud," and for the last 62 years one of the most famous photos in American history has been the hoisting by foot soldiers of the Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
   His leg is filled with plates and screws, but Lance Cpl. Sarbu doesn’t question the philosophy of the Corps and is proud of his role.
   "We are the infantry, the cream of the Marines," he said.
   Now, Lance Cpl. Sarbu, who says bounty hunting wasn’t all that exciting, is hoping to become a private investigator. The 1994 graduate and former soccer player at the Peddie School in Hightstown also hopes the bone graft will permit him to discard the cane that now aids his walking.
   His mother also is hopeful, and despite everything that’s happened doesn’t question her son’s decision to enlist even though she was unhappy when her ex-husband took Michael to see a recruiter in 1994.
   "I flipped out," she said, recalling her reaction at that time. "I said, ‘The Marines? Are you nuts?’
   "But the second time (when he joined), I knew he was mature enough to make a decision on his own."
   Ms. Sarbu says she still can’t figure out how she got a Republican for a son.
   "I never was much of a liberal," her son responded with a laugh. "I believe in the death penalty, and an eye for an eye."
   During his long recovery, Lance Cpl. Sarbu has taken a measure of comfort from the fact that his family has remained 100 percent supportive of his decision to become a soldier even after he was wounded. His father is in total agreement.
   "Michael took up the challenge," Mr. Sarbu said. "He’s fighting terrorism over there, and those men are protecting everybody here in the United States."
   His son wishes those opposing the effort in Iraq would understand that and become more informed about the American commitment to establishing a democracy there.
   "The people who say they oppose the war, but support the troops, I don’t believe they have any idea what this war is about," he said. "But I don’t have any bitterness toward them.
   "I do have bitterness toward people who had a son or daughter and supported them going into the war, and after they were killed or injured cursed the war and the president."
   Lance Cpl. Sarbu says there is very little discord among the troops in Iraq, and claims the average Iraqi citizen is grateful for the American presence and the commitment of the United States to rid the country of the insurgents.
   "We’re there to do our mission, and you can tell by the way most people react to us that they’re glad to have us," he said.
   He concedes that it’s terrible when troops are killed, but points out that far fewer Americans are dying in Iraq than in World War I, World War II or Vietnam. Lance Cpl. Sarbu insists that people who question the invasion of Iraq are being somewhat short-sighted about the dangers presented by any adversary who would make America its prey.
   "Anybody who feels it’s unnecessary for us to be over there should just remember what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001," he said.