Staff Sergeant William Olas Bee
The Marine in one of the most iconic images from the War on Terror
ABOUT MARINE SERGEANT BILL BEE
Bill Bee is the Marine in one of the defining photos from the War on Terror. He wasn’t wearing a helmet or Kevlar vest when a Taliban sniper round hit a wall inches from his head in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in 2008. The terrifying moment he reeled back and collapsed to the floor when the bullet hit the sandbank and a cloud of dirt and stone burst inches in front of his face was captured by Reuter’s photographer Goran Tomsevic, broadcast on TV networks and published in newspapers around the world.
THE SHOT
The Pentagon rushed to share the photo as a show of bravery and valor among US troops at a time when public support for the war was at its lowest point. To this day it is still used to portray the sacrifice made every day by heroes during the United States’ longest war. But the story of the man in the image has never been told.
To his fellow Marines, Bee is just the “dumbass who wasn’t wearing his gear,” in one of the most dangerous places on earth, the town of Garmsir in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, but for many others he signifies the ultimate patriot who acted selflessly and recklessly to protect the lives of his fellow Marines in the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s Alpha Company.
THE PHOTOS
For Sergeant Bee it was a moment where he almost lost everything - his wife Bobbie, his unborn son Ethan, his friends and the military career he’d worked so hard for since signing up a few months before 9/11. As he lay on the floor with bullets flying around him, Bobbie felt a sudden jolt that something horrible had happened and went into false labor with their unborn son Ethan.
Sergeant Bee’s life changed forever when he was thrust into the limelight. He had come a long way from the trailer parks and cornfields in rust belt Wooster, Ohio where he spent his childhood choosing whether to devote his life to God and become a pastor or follow his World War II Veteran grandfather and cousins to fight for his country.
HIS STORY
Many people remember the images vividly but don’t know the real story of the Marine who staggered backwards and collapsed to the floor of his tiny mud compound. In his four tours in Afghanistan, Sergeant Bee shot and killed a four man RPG team with an anti-tank rocket at three hundred yards, met future Defense Secretary General James Mattis and rose to become one of the most trusted squad leaders in Helmand - before his career was brought to a premature end.
During the War in Afghanistan’s biggest international military operation in Marjah in 2010, multiple IED’s embedded in the walls detonated beside him in a hut just nine days before he was supposed to return home. He was assisting a young Marine clear a rifle when the explosive device went off, wounding half his squad and killing two fellow Marines. It was to be his third traumatic brain injury and landed back in the US on a stretcher. Rather than return with the rest of Alpha company in celebration of a completed operation, he instead began meeting with doctors and nurses waiting to assist him on his long road to recovery. In a few seconds he lost what he felt most passionate doing, and from that pivotal moment it seemed like the country he served started to forget him.
For troops like Bee, returning home is as traumatic as the fighting. He was awarded the Purple Heart in 2016 for his injuries after years of campaigning by his wife and has since helped other veterans who have struggled to transition back to civilian life as a counselor and now works assisting in the training of Marines through the use of autonomous robotic targets.
At the time he suffered from crippling PTSD, ritually swallows a list of powerful medications to control his wide-ranging physical and psychological issues, and had been virtually abandoned by the government who should be caring for him, until Wills Robinson came into his life and helped expose the shortcomings of Veteran’s healthcare. He has tried to kill himself more than once, would fly into violent fits of rage and suffer flashbacks of his time as a Marine in the most savage region of the Middle East.
He still has a tendency to go internal for months at a time without talking to his family or friends, waits months between appointments with the VA, and avoid crowds whenever possible. Until his treatment in Texas he had only been able to go out in crowded areas without panicking rarely, and put up with the mob of tourists at Disneyland because his son adores it. Despite his injuries and the fact he can longer be a Marine, he hasn’t been given medical retirement by the Department of Defense.
The pitfalls in his care are a tragic reminder of the fragmented healthcare system in the US and a poignant reason why only 70 percent of veterans do not use the VA. It took journalist Wills Robinson sharing his remarkable story to get the help he desperately needed. He wrote the first article on Sergeant Bee for DailyMail.com in 2015.