26-Year-Old Surprised by Wife’s Pregnancy News After Shipping Off with Marines. That Gave Him ‘Something More to Live For’

NEED TO KNOW

• When Mike Tabura shipped off to Iraq in 2004 with the Marines, he called his wife to announce his safe arrival. She told him: “I’m pregnant!”

• Tabura was 26 and soon deployed for Operation Phantom Fury in the bloody second battle of Fallujah

• ““Having a pregnant wife added another stressor. We had to be hypervigilant,” he says. “I needed to be on top of my game”

Editor’s note: For Veterans Day, PEOPLE is publishing a series of stories looking back at the service members and families affected by the two battles of Fallujah, in Iraq, in 2004 — combined, they marked some of the bloodiest fights in recent American history.

When Mike Tabura shipped off to Iraq in 2004 to serve with the Marines, he called his wife, Noemi, to announce his safe arrival.

Instead, she interrupted: “I’m pregnant!”

Tabura was 26 years old. Two months later, the Navy hospital corpsman — a medic — headed out from camp into Fallujah to join in the second major battle for the city during the Iraq War, called Operation Phantom Fury, which began in November of that year.

The U.S. saw the city as a strategic axis and a major insurgent stronghold. The start of the campaign there had been sparked by an event in March 2004, in which four American contractors were killed, their bodies mutilated.

Getting into Fallujah, “it was the wild, wild west,” Tabura says. “Insurgents everywhere [were] shooting at you with small arms or sniper rifles to rockets and mortars.”

And with his wife’s news, Tabura knew he “had something more to live for,” spurring him to strengthen his focus under extreme stress.

“Having a pregnant wife added another stressor. We had to be hyper-vigilant,” he says. “I needed to be on top of my game, for my Marines and myself, so that we could all go home in one piece to our families.”

But he really didn’t have a lot of time to ponder his approaching fatherhood. As the “doc” of his platoon, Tabura was entrusted with their care on the battlefield.

The domain of the corpsman is both dangerous and celebrated: Healers who carry weapons, they are beloved by the Marines they protect.

“Corpsmen share the hardship of battle and the kinship of Marines, and they keep us alive and fighting,” says retired Col. Keil Gentry, a Fallujah veteran and director of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va. “When a Marine yells, ‘Corpsman up!’ they know that doc will come running.”

The Navy Hospital Corps was created by an act of Congress in 1898. The modern role for these medics is to serve alongside Marines and sailors on every ship and in every conflict.

Famously, John “Doc” Bradley fought in the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 — still the bloodiest in Marine Corps history, with nearly 7,000 killed.

He was awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism and was involved in the first flag raising on Mount Suribachi. Bradley’s service was memorialized in the bestseller Flags of Our Fathers, later adapted into the 2006 war drama directed by Clint Eastwood.

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Tabura was raised in Hawaii, in Waianae, on the western shore of Oahu. He says his upbringing helped prepare him for Fallujah.

A latchkey kid, he was walking home alone from school by the first grade, going inside and making himself a snack and starting on his homework. “My childhood wasn’t the best environment,” he says, “but I feel that tough times make tougher people.”

He fell into his medical career during a trip to a shopping mall. Just an average community-college student stung by a recent breakup, Tabura was feeling a bit adrift. A recruiter spotted him and pulled him into their office in the mall. “Have you ever thought about joining the Navy?” the recruiter asked.

“I hadn’t,” Tabura says now, “but I knew I wanted to be in the medical field.”

Soon enough, he found himself signing the papers to become a corpsman “to serve with the Marine Corps as a prestigious fighting force.”

In Fallujah in 2004, one of the missions of his unit was to help clear the city of weapons. “The insurgents would hide caches throughout the city, whether underground or in buildings,” Tabura says.

The Marines also worked on clearing the vicinity, house by house, to ensure no insurgents were concealed — dangerous, close-quarters work.

Corpsmen like Tabura saved many lives during Phantom Fury, or tried to, but Reinaldo Aponte’s effort stands out. In November 2004, the 21-year-old hospital corpsman was assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. On Nov. 25, Lance Corporal Bradley Faircloth, 20, was hit by a 20-round burst from a machine gun while clearing a building.

Three Marines pulled him from the building and — to the shouts of “Corpsman up!” — Aponte responded.

Faircloth had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. Aponte began CPR, breaking ribs and cartilage. He couldn’t save Faircloth and eventually had to be pulled off. “Doc Aponte still lives with the shame he feels for failing his Marines,” says Gentry. “His fellow Marines and Faircloth’s mother, Kathleen, continue to try to help doc heal.”

Luckily, Tabura says, his platoon didn’t experience any major casualties. Except one.

On the 28th of December 2004, Tabura’s medical team was back at camp when they got a call that someone had been injured. “I rushed and was the first one on the scene,” Tabura says.

It was Corpsman Pablito Pena Briones Jr., who’d taken a gunshot to the head. Tabura tried to provide life-saving measures. Briones was transported to the shock trauma platoon, “but he didn’t make it,” says Tabura. “I think about him all the time. I was angry. And he was only 22 years old. That’s one of my scars from the battle.”

Tabura’s enlistment turned into a 27-year career. “I thought I was just going to do my five years and get out,” he says, “and here I am today. Serving with my Marine Corps brothers and sisters is a true honor.”

As the enlisted medical advisor with the 1 Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton in California, he plans to retire in 2028 after three decades of service.

His deployments have included two long stints onboard the USS Roosevelt, 13 months in Afghanistan and a three-year unaccompanied tour in Washington, D.C.

And that baby he wife surprised him with, years ago?

Along with her 19-year-old brother, Michael, Mikaylah, 20, is now a California college student.

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