Youngstown Marine gets Purple Heart for service in Iraq

YOUNGSTOWN — Marine Corps Sgt. Stephen A. Carouthers III will be presented the Purple Heart by Glenn Buzzard, a fellow Marine, and two-time recipient of the Purple during World War II.

The ceremony will be 7 p.m. Tuesday at a meeting of the Tri-State Detachment of the Marine Corps League at ITAMS Post 3, 113 S. Meridian Road.

Carouthers, of Youngstown and formerly of East Liverpool, is being decorated for wounds suffered in Iraq on Aug. 24, 2005. Buzzard was wounded on Saipan and Iwo Jima in the South Pacific.

Carouthers, now 27, was on a mission near Ramadi in the Al-Anbar Province resupplying his unit with rockets and explosives during Operation Sidewinder when his vehicle was hit by an IED (improvised explosive device).

Carouthers described what happened:

“The enemy saw our convoy enter the first platoon firm base. The enemy placed an IED in the road where we were most likely to exit the firm base. My truck was the second to last truck in the convoy. When the IED detonated, the front of our armored humvee was hit. The entire front driver side of the vehicle was destroyed. The ... blast concussed everyone in the vehicle and disabled our truck. After we finished the mission, the vehicle team I was attached to was examined by our medics. It was at that time I was evacuated to the main base for further care,” he said.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on vindy.com.