It's coming up on 15 years since Marine Corps veteran Kelly Mercer saw the hand he lost in Iraq.
It wasn't actually his hand. It was Saddam Hussein's hand. Or really, the statue of Saddam Hussein. Inside is written, "Property of Joel Ruiz and Kelly Mercer."
Cpl. Mercer and Sgt. Ruiz were with the 3rd Amphibious Assault Battalion — or "3rd Tracks" as they're known — which is the unit that helped Iraqi citizens tear down the infamous statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's Firdos Square on April 9, 2003.
Later, as they were driving in the area, they heard gunshots. They scanned the perimeter, and Ruiz, Mercer and two gunnery sergeants got out on foot. That's when they happened across the fallen symbol of the overthrown leader.
"When we're walking, we see it and we're like, 'Oh, God, Saddam is right here.' I was like, 'Y'all, this is a piece of history,'" Ruiz said.
Plans were made to return to the scene after one of the gunnery sergeants noted that the hollowed bronze statue would probably be worth a lot of money.
"It was all Kelly's idea; he was the ringleader," said Erik Walther. "He just decided, 'Hey, let's go cut something off that statue.'"
Cutting off a hand is dangerous
"I got together a couple of guys and went out in the middle of the night. There was an American perimeter around the area but still, it could have been dangerous," said Mercer.
"We're still afraid, because that area — Marines were guarding the entire area, but you could still hear gunshots in the distance and echoing around the city," Ruiz said. "But there was this fear of mortars or snipers. You had this fear that you were still going to die because there was gunfire all around and you had no idea where it's coming from."
The Marines were going to get their trophy come hell or high water, they said. Mercer talked about giving it to a museum or something, and Ruiz said they also had stars in their eyes about how much money it might be worth.
"I was going to take it back," Mercer said simply.
Ruiz said he asked for a hacksaw off another vehicle. They didn't ask him why he wanted it, and he didn't tell them.
"We're only 23, we're basically just high schoolers with responsibilities," said Ruiz, describing their mischievous mindset.
Walther, who at 18 was the youngest of the group, got the first sentry assignment while the others tried to saw the hand off. It was slow going, the Marines said, but the significance wasn't lost on them.
"We're in the dark, and I can feel the coldness of the statue, and we're trying to saw the hand of Saddam off, and it's not working," Ruiz said. "At one point, we were like, 'Should we try to use grenades? No, someone will get hurt.'"
They got hold of a "tank bar," which is a heavy-duty pry bar, Ruiz said. Mercer, who is 6-foot-5, decided to put his weight behind the task.
"When it (the statue) fell, part of it cracked, so I put it in there, and Walther is holding the pry bar, and Mercer is holding on my shoulder and he starts jumping on the pry bar," Ruiz recalled, laughing. "As he's jumping on it, I felt like we were criminals in a good way, like in the movies."
They took turns cutting, prying and standing guard until finally it peeled loose, they said.
"It was about 100 pounds of hollowed-out bronze," Mercer said. "We carried it out and put it on the vehicle."
"And Saddam is just laying there all cold, and it's funny because that symbolized to me that Saddam had passed away, his regime," Ruiz said.
'Property of Kelly Mercer and Joel Ruiz'
Meanwhile, Mercer said Ruiz crawled inside the hand and wrote an inscription with a Sharpie.
"Down where the fingers were, and he wrote, 'Property of Kelly Mercer and Joel Ruiz,'" Mercer said.
Understandably, there was a certain amount of secrecy that came with carrying the 100-pound amputated hand of Saddam Hussein.
"We hauled it around with us for the next month because we thought we were going to bring it back," Walther said. "We showed it to some people once we got back into Kuwait, but I don't think we showed it off when we were in Iraq. We kept it under wraps there."
Then the question came: How to get it back to the U.S.?
Ruiz said he and Mercer talked about burying it in the desert and coming back in 10 years to get it but decided to try their luck. After being told there would be no way they could get it back to the States, they packaged it with some equipment to be shipped back.
Mercer went home a month earlier than the rest of his company, and when they got back, they couldn't figure out where the hand had ended up. It had disappeared into thin air, or possibly a box of surplus equipment, or maybe, some said, to a general's house somewhere.
When he contacted some of his commanders, Mercer said he was told that it was to be shipped back to be displayed at Camp Pendleton. It was signed over to a transport officer who was supposed to have it embarked with the assault amphibious vehicles, but it never arrived. A short investigation into it didn't turn anything up, Mercer was told.
Someone needs to give them a hand
Mercer now lives in Las Vegas, Ruiz in Texas, and Walther in Utah.
"The reason that hand is so important to us is because we literally thought we were going to die out there — 'I'm probably going to die,'" Ruiz said. "That hand represents hope because it allowed us psychologically to think outside the war and envision going home and enjoying our riches, just for a little while."
"When you get to Iraq, the first thing you do is write your family your death letter, and then your will," Mercer said. "Anything that gets your mind off when you're out there helps. Me and Joel were the goof-offs, we'd goof around to get our mind off of being there."
Mercer began the search for the hand again on Facebook recently, asking in a group of Marines whether anyone knew how to make the search more public.
Fellow Marine Corps veteran Sgt. Andrew Patterson, of Madison, connected Mercer with the USA Today Network. Mercer said he hopes the publicity will help bring news of where the hand landed. Someone knows something, he said.
Walther said he hopes that whoever has had their war trophy the almost 15 years that have passed will consider giving it back, or at least loaning it out to a museum where people can see it.
"If they have it and they're taking credit for taking it, that's wrong, they should give credit where credit's due. We're the ones who sweated out there in the dark for hours," he said. "And I'd like to go visit it and take some pictures with it. Get it out there, get it in the public so people can see it."
More than just the novelty of it, Mercer said the history behind the statue and the fall of Saddam needs to be remembered.
"It's a part of history. When people think of the change of the regime there, they think of the fall of Saddam and in their mind they see that statue coming down," he said.
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