Army Navy Game Reunion for Wounded Marine, Journalist

After three tours in Iraq, Sgt. Rey Narvais, left the Marine Corps to open up an executive protection firm in Virginia and connect with his wife and two children.

One of those tours included the historic 2003 Iraq invasion, when Art Harris rode with Narvais' Marine unit as an embedded CNN reporter with the 2nd LAR (Light Armored Recon) unit in bloody Nasirya, one of the most pivotal and bloody batttles of the Iraq campaign.

Eighteen Marines died there, most of them in a friendly fire incident by an errant Air Force A-10, a story Harris broke for CNN.

Nothing "friendly" about so called Friendly Fire that happens in every war, often eclipsing the valor and success of a battle won by smarts, high tech and true grit as the Marines demonstrated. They kept 5,000 fedayeen pinned down, calling in air strikes like one Harris captured on tape here, a Hellfire missile whooshing from the belly of a Cobra attack heliciopteri that took out a machine gun nest in a mosque.

What were they thinking? That America's sense of fair play would give them free passage to hide out under the bogus cloak of religion? Or that dressing up as women and using their own as human shields would make them bulletproof? Oops, wrong again.

As they always do, Marines did what they had to do to get the job done and let me Harris and other reporters as up close and personal as they wanted, which was alongside as they raided a so called milk factory, dodge RPGs and take out sniper after sniper along the Euphrates.

All this to provide cover for Army convoys to race safely around the city to Baghdad and buy enough time for the special ops teams to lay out a plan and successfully rescue Lynch..

Ever since Harris got to tag along and interview Narvais moments after he took an AK 47 round through the windshield of his Humvee, he'd been looking for a unique way to thank the young warrior for keeping him safe enough to cover the unit's heroics.

Harris was lucky and so was Narvais, shattered glass cutting up his face; his eyes were saved by night vision goggles.

Narvais was awarded a Purple Heart after his boss handed over the enemy round that hit the steering column and landed in his lap, proof he'd been shot by bad guys. It's all on the video shot while riding with his unit.

.Then Harris received an invite and two tickets to the Army Navy Game courtesy of SECNAV Ray Mabus, an old friend he'd covered from his rise through Mississippi politics to governor, and later as a top Dixie Democrat early on campaigning for President Obama and now a SECNAV crusading to convert the Navy to biofuels.

Suddenly, Harris had a way to say thank you, inviting Rey to the Superbowl for American heroes, the Army Navy Game. "He seemed more shocked when SECNAV handed him a rare SECNAV a medal than the night Narvais dodged a different destiny, looking out for me and another journalist as part of the embed program that allowed us to give viewers a riveting front row seat to war," says Harris, a former Navy officer.

"Even after I broke the unit coffee pot, they forgave me," he says. "We got them another one, but it's impossible to describe the bond created when you're getting shot at and no one's had a shower for 30 days," says Harris.

"It got so bad, you could recognize each other by their scent," said Narvais.

Lucky for all, he'd cleaned up pretty well for Saturday.'s game.

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