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The 21-year-old Marine was part of an artillery gun crew that fought against the Islamic State, and he knew that his unit’s huge cannons had killed hundreds of enemy fighters.

But keeping the number of U.S. troops involved to a minimum meant that each gun crew had to fire thousands of high-explosive shells — far more rounds than any American gun crew had fired at least since the Vietnam War.

A Ukrainian gun crew fired a M777 howitzer toward Russian positions in the Donetsk region of Ukraine.Credit...

We had what were called quad 40s, four 40-millimeters guns lined up side by side, and our gun crew started firing back without any orders.

Unhappy with a safe stateside posting, he became chief of an anti-aircraft gun crew on the battleship Alabama.