ASSOCIATED PRESS STORY

A Marine will receive the Navy Cross on Friday for helping his comrades fight their way out of an ambush in Afghanistan despite sustaining a traumatic injury to his right leg, officials said Tuesday.

Lance Cpl. Brady A. Gustafson, a machine gunner from Eagan, Minn., “enabled his fellow Marines to fight their way out of a complex ambush” July 21 while deployed to the town of Shewan in Farah province, Marine officials said in a statement. He is assigned to Twentynine Palms., Calif.-based 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, the hardest hit battalion in the Corps in 2008 with at least 20 Marines and sailors lost in combat.

A Marine official said Gustafson was wounded after a rocket-propelled grenade hit his mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, piercing the armor. A second MRAP also was hit, but Gustafson scrambled to his turret, firing several hundred rounds at the enemy to allow the burning MRAP to escape.

“Gustafson identified the enemy positions and engaged them with machine gun fire, and thus afforded the Marines involved time to escape the ‘kill zone,’” said a statement released by the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms.

Gustafson will receive the medal — the second-highest award in the nation — in a ceremony at the base.

Farah province has been a focus of Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Afghanistan, the contingent of Marines deployed to southern Afghanistan to quell violence and provide training to Afghan police. Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, replaced 2/7 as the SPMAGTF’s main combat unit in late November.