Role In Securing Ramadi Earns Leftwich Trophy

[livvy]

Maj. Jonathan Smith, center, receives the Leftwich Trophy for Outstanding Leadership from Maj. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser and Ross Perot at the 2008 Marine Corps Association Grounds Awards Dinner in Arlington, Va., on Dec. 5.


Role In Securing Ramadi Earns Leftwich Trophy

By Dan Lamothe - [e-mail]
Posted : Friday Dec 12, 2008 18:30:30 EST

When Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, got its assignment to deploy to Ramadi, Iraq, in November 2006, its Marines didn’t think it would be easy.

It meant working independently from the battalion, patrolling sections of what was then a boiling cauldron of tension and insurgent violence, said then-Capt. Jonathan Smith, the company’s commander, who in December was named the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Leftwich Trophy for Outstanding Leadership.

“Every three weeks, you’re switching battalions, you’re switching neighborhoods, you’re working for different leaders,” said Smith, now a major. “Each of the , even in the city, were very different.”

With a steady hand, Fox Company played a key role in securing sections of the city that had never been under coalition control, coordinating with two Army battalions and one Marine battalion along the way, Marine officials said.

The Leftwich Trophy annually honors a Marine captain in the ground combat arms who serves as a company or battery commander in the fleet. The award is named after Lt. Col. William Leftwich Jr., a Navy Cross and Silver Star recipient who died in Vietnam in 1970. The trophy was commissioned by billionaire H. Ross Perot, a Naval Academy classmate of Leftwich.

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