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thedrifter
10-26-04, 07:20 AM
Youth's field honors Marine killed in Iraq


Associated Press
October 19, 2004


WARSAW, Ind. -- A youth football field has been dedicated in memory of a Marine who was the first person from Indiana killed in combat during the war in Iraq.

More than 150 people attended the dedication Sunday of the David Fribley Football Field at Richardson-DuBois Park.

Lance Cpl. David Fribley, a 1996 Warsaw High School graduate, was among nine Marines killed in an ambush near An Nasiriyah, about 230 miles southwest of Baghdad on March 23, 2003.

The football field, built with donations and volunteer labor from the community, is now home to the Young Tigers football team in the city about 40 miles west of Fort Wayne.

"We're just tickled to death to have a home of our own," said Dave McCool, assistant commissioner for the Tigers. "To actually have a place to call our own is just awesome."

A special area marked by three poles flying the American, Indiana and Marine flags surrounds a monument honoring Fribley, who was 26 when he died.

The black stone monument is engraved with a message that Fribley had written before his death. "Semper Fi," it begins. "The greatest gift one can give to another is the gift of service. The following is my gift to you."

While some said that Fribley avoided the spotlight, he would have been proud, said his father, Garry Fribley.

"I'm just in awe," he said. "I know David would be just ecstatic."

And maybe just a little embarrassed, said his brother Steve, a senior airman in the Air Force.

"He loved to be the best, but he didn't want people to make a huge deal about him," he said.

Garry Fribley said he and his wife, Linda, have always encouraged their children to follow their dreams.

"What David wanted to do was make the Iraqi people free," he said. "This was the right thing to do."

Since February 2003, 28 Indiana military personnel have died in Iraq-related operations.

http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/187581-4456-009.html

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 07:20 AM
Marines paying reparations in Najaf



Washington, DC, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. Marines distributed more than half a million dollars to people in Najaf Monday who were caught in a major battle in August, the military announced.

That brings to $1.9 million distributed in Najaf as "solatia" or sympathy payments to people who were injured or lost family members in the cross-fire of U.S. forces and the militia of cleric Muqtada Sadr. The Marines are also paying those whose property or businesses were physically damaged.

Payments began Sept. 30. More than 2,660 Najaf residents have been paid. Payments will continue until every valid case is addressed, according to the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The city is also receiving millions in reconstruction work as a result of the battle, according to the Marines.

Najaf is one of the holiest cities for Shi'ite Muslims in the Middle East. It is host to the shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammed.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041025-043017-9188r.htm

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 07:22 AM
Warm welcome for Marine who lost eye <br />
<br />
PORTER COUNTY: Iraq attack ended Ben McClanahan's service of duty early. <br />
<br />
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS <br />
Times Staff Writer <br />
<br />
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Tuesday,...

thedrifter
10-26-04, 07:23 AM
Injured Marine well on the road to recovery

By Jeremy Rue

ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER

With only two more surgeries to go, United States Marine Lance Cpl. Derek Riedel is on the road to a full recovery.

Riedel was injured in Iraq on April 4, when a Humvee he was walking behind ran over an anti-tank mine that was buried in the sand. The blast sent him flying and caused two pieces of shrapnel to rip into his body. Once piece went in his nose and created a hole, shattering his septum and all the bones in his nose. The second piece of shrapnel went into his leg near his groin, creating a large hole about four inches across and two inches deep.

Riedel arrived in Selma in June, and has undergone several surgeries to repair the damage. He is expected to make a full recovery and return to active duty.



His next surgery is on Oct. 27 where doctors will be working on his groin and leg. Riedel keeps a sense of humor though his ordeal.

"The skin that healed is attached to the muscle. So they're going to go in and just kind of fillet it, like a fish," he jokes.

After that surgery, he will wait 14 days for a recovery and get another surgery on his nose. He's lost 75 percent of his smell, but is hoping doctors will be able to get it down to about 50.

"Right now I put more cologne on then normal, just because I don't smell it," he said. "I'll walk out of my room and my mom will be like, 'oh my gosh'."



The Selma Rotary Club featured Riedel as a guest speaker during their weekly meeting on Oct. 12. He spoke to members of his remarkable recovery. He has also been assisting at the Marine Recruitment office until he gets back to full strength, and says he'll most likely be back to full service 60 days after his last surgery. He's not certain if they will send him back to the middle east, but he's heard talks of possibly being sent to Afghanistan in the middle of next year.

His enlistment is scheduled to be up in October 2005. After that, Riedel plans on joining the U.S. Marshals and eventually working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been a dream of his for a long time.

Since being back in the United States, Riedel had the opportunity to meet up with his unit when they returned to Twentynine Palms in September. He was able to shake the hand of the corpsman who first tended to his injuries and saved his life.

"I made sure I was down there when they got back," he said. "I had to hold back a lot of tears when I first saw them, because there was five or six people there who were the last people I saw when I was injured."

With the election year in full swing, Riedel says he feels even if the presidents change, it wouldn't have any effect on the situation in Iraq.

"I think were definitely in it for the long run," he said.

"For right now I'm just trying to relax, get in exercise when I can, kind of take it easy for now. Oh but I'll definitely be back in full service."

This reporter can be reached at jrue@pulitzer.net

http://www.selmaenterprise.com/articles/2004/10/19/news/news03.txt

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 07:24 AM
Security Operations Continue in Fallujah
Submitted by: Security Operations Continue in Fallujah
Story Identification #: 200410195443
Story by - American Forces Press Service



FALLUJAH, Iraq (Oct. 18, 2004) -- Troops from Multinational Force Iraq continued increased security operations Oct. 17 to isolate anti-Iraqi forces in Fallujah. Officials said the operations were designed to disrupt the enemy fighters' ability to "plan, coordinate and execute criminal acts against the Iraqi people and government."

Iraqi security forces and U.S. Marines with the I Marine Expeditionary Force continue to man positions outside the city and have established vehicle checkpoints. Since Oct. 14, the combined force has conducted coordinated actions to locate, isolate and defeat terrorist groups, officials said. The effort is part of an operation to stop terrorists from conducting attacks throughout Iraq.

During operations Oct. 17, Marines returned insurgent small-arms, fire, mortar and rocket-propelled-grenade fire. The Marines engaged with small-arms fire, crew-served weapons, main tank guns, and artillery. The attack originated from positions and buildings in eastern and southern Fallujah, U.S. military officials said.

Insurgents then fired accurate and sustained small arms fire that escalated to heavy machine-gun and indirect fire during a firefight lasting just over nine hours.

After close-air support was requested and several precision-guided munitions were dropped, insurgents were seen putting their mortar tubes into a taxi and pickup trucks then driving to a mosque. Witnesses saw them entering the mosque. Marines did not fire upon the mosque.

The strikes successfully took out the buildings in which insurgents were located. Other strikes interdicted mortar teams and anti-Iraqi forces, officials said. Multiple fighter aircraft, expending various types of precision munitions, were used on more than 10 insurgent positions. The air strikes began late morning and continued into the afternoon.

"MNF-I is committed to assisting the Iraqi Interim Government in stabilizing the country and setting the conditions for a revitalized and independent Iraq," a spokesman said.


http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/69219276A31EAB5285256F32003578FE?opendocument

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 07:25 AM
Craig Marine loses eye in Fallujah explosion
Michelle Perry

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Cory Hixson, 21, of Craig, who is serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, lost his left eye during a five-hour battle in Fallujah, Iraq, this weekend.

According to his father, Jim Hixson of Craig, Hixson's unit had been checking on enemy pickups they had attacked and were returning to their vehicles when a mortar round exploded on the ground near Hixson.

Jim Hixson, who also served as a Marine, said that a mortar round is fired out of a tube and explodes when it hits the ground. A piece of shrapnel caught Hixson in the eye.

He was transported to a hospital in Baghdad before being taken to Germany, where he is undergoing treatment. Doctors there attempted to save the eye in surgery but were unsuccessful.

"He's supposed to be leaving Germany soon and coming back stateside," Jim said. "I'm hoping we'll get to see him at the end of this week or the beginning of next week."

Hixson soon will travel to Balboa Hospital in California for further treatment, including possible reconstructive surgeries.

A lance corporal, Hixson is a squad automatic weapon gunner, known as a "grunt," with the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines I Company. His brother Greg, who also is a Marine deployed to Fallujah, still serves there.

"They got to see each other and they got to hug each other," Jim said. "Cory's pretty down on it, pretty depressed, but he'll be all right."

Jim said he's shaken up by his son's injury but is thankful the incident wasn't worse. Hixson's mother, Linda Nichols, agreed.

"I've been in shock the last three days," she said. "I've had trouble sleeping.

"I guess that's what kept me going, is knowing he's alive. It could have been a lot worse. He could have lost a leg, or his life."

Linda said Cory was worried about what was going to happen to his gear, which is still in Iraq, and to his job in the Marine Corps.

Jim and Linda don't know what to expect.

Right now they are looking forward to seeing Cory and still worrying about Greg as he continues to serve overseas.

Michelle Perry can be reached at 824-7031 or at mperry@craigdailypress.com.


http://www.craigdailypress.com/section/frontpage_lead/story/14289


Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 08:05 AM
U.S. May Increase Troops In Iraq <br />
USA TODAY <br />
October 26, 2004 <br />
<br />
WASHINGTON - Concerned that they won't get enough new troops from allies to help provide security for Iraqi elections in January,...

thedrifter
10-26-04, 08:40 AM
October 25, 2004 <br />
<br />
Time limits on murder, rape cases re-examined <br />
<br />
By Deborah Funk <br />
Times staff writer <br />
<br />
<br />
The Pentagon advisory panel that suggests changes to military law recommends erasing...

thedrifter
10-26-04, 11:04 AM
Deploying Troops Getting Priority for Laser Eye Surgery
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2004 -- Many people choose laser eye surgery because they think it will make them more attractive or save them from having to grapple to find their glasses all the time.

But for an increasing number of servicemembers, laser eye surgery isn't a cosmetic or convenience issue. It's about saving lives on the battlefield.

"The bottom line is that if you're in the middle of a fight and you can't see the enemy before they see you, you're dead," Army Lt. Col. Scott Barnes, an ophthalmologist at the Warfighter Refractive Eye Clinic at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Barnes said that motivation has spurred special operations and 18th Airborne Corps soldiers at Fort Bragg to flock to the clinic at Womack Army Medical Center "in droves," hoping to get laser eye surgery before their upcoming deployments.

"We're operating full speed ahead," said Barnes. He said the clinic is giving priority to combat troops on deployment orders.

Fort Bragg isn't alone. Throughout the military services, there's a growing recognition that eyeglasses can be a battlefield liability.

Dirt, grime and lack of convenient hygiene facilities make contact lenses impractical in combat zones. On the other hand, eyeglasses break and fog up when subjected to the rigors of combat, like jumping out of airplanes, diving underwater, or crawling through dirt and sand, Barnes said. Some soldiers complain that they interfere with night-vision goggles or gas masks.

Fearing that their eyeglasses might break, Barnes said many deployed troops find themselves stashing extra sets in pockets, rucksacks -- wherever they can quickly retrieve them if they need to.

And although the military runs mobile eyeglass fabrication labs to replace broken eyeglasses, Barnes said they simply can't be as responsive as the 24- hour commercial eyeglass shops that dot American shopping centers nationwide.

Barnes said some troops question what might happen if they are taken prisoner and their captors take their glasses away from them. "How can you have any chance of escaping if you can't see?" Barnes said they ask.

"The threat of having to go without glasses can be a psychological factor for a soldier who is dependent on his glasses," Barnes said. "It boils down to the fact that eyeglasses can be a liability."

Barnes said he'd like to be able to provide laser eye surgery for any soldier who wants it, but that limited time and resources force him to give priority to troops most likely to see combat. "For those guys on the front, in the heat of the battle, it's important for them to be able to be free of their glasses," he said.

The military has come a long way since 2000, when DoD first began allowing people with two common forms of laser eye surgery to enter the military with a medical waiver. People who'd had corrective eye surgery were previously ineligible for military service.

That move was based largely on groundwork laid by the Navy. Naval Medical Center San Diego launched the military's first refractive-surgery program in 1993, primarily serving Navy SEALS who had problems losing contacts or eyeglasses while parachuting or in the water.

Now all the services offer laser eye surgery for their members, although rules vary about who's eligible to receive it and what military jobs they're able to fill. Laser refractive surgery is now permitted for all warfare communities within the Navy and Marine Corps. Officials said more than 10,000 laser procedures having been performed at Navy refractive-surgery centers to date. In addition to Naval Medical Center San Diego, other Navy facilities offering laser eye surgery are Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Va., and the National Naval Medical Center, in Bethesda, Md. The surgery is also available at naval hospitals in Bremerton, Wash.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Camp Lejeune, N.C.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The Air Force Warfighter Photorefractive Keratectomy Program went active at the end of 2001. Currently, qualified Air Force people can get the surgery at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Texas; Travis Air Force Base, Calif.; the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colo.; Keesler Air Force Base, Miss.; and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

The Army's first Warfighter Refractive Eye Clinic, at Fort Bragg, opened its doors in May 2000 and has conducted about 16,000 of the surgeries, Barnes said.

The Army now operates four other clinics at Fort Campbell, Ky.; Fort Hood, Texas; Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany; and Tripler Army Medical Center, Hawaii. In addition, Barnes said the Army conducts laser eye surgery at two centers where it also teaches the procedure: Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Wash. Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio is expected to add the service within the fiscal year, Barnes said.

The most common types of laser eye surgery offered are photorefractive keratectomy, or PRK, and laser in-situ keratomileusis, often referred to as LASIK.

Barnes said 80 percent of his patients chose PRK, a procedure that requires a slightly longer healing time but has less risk of complication.

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 12:04 PM
Bombings Across Iraq Kill At Least 8
Associated Press
October 26, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bombings struck four coalition and Iraqi military convoys and a provincial government office Monday, killing at least eight people, including an American soldier and an Estonian trooper in the Baghdad area.

Coming a day after the bodies of nearly 50 Iraqi military recruits were found massacred, the bombings occurred as a U.N. agency confirmed that several hundred tons of explosives were missing from a former Iraqi military depot in an insurgent hotspot south of Baghdad.

The revelation raised concerns the explosives fell into the hands of insurgents who have staged a spate of bloody car bombings, although there was no evidence to link the missing explosives directly to the attacks.

On Monday, a roadside bomb in western Baghdad killed one U.S. soldier and wounded five, the U.S. military said.

An Estonian soldier died when a roadside bomb exploded at a market just outside Baghdad as his patrol went by, the Estonian military said. Five other Estonian soldiers were wounded.

A car bomb also exploded near an Australian military convoy 350 yards from their country's embassy in Baghdad, killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding nine people, including three Australian soldiers who suffered minor injuries, Iraqi and coalition officials said.

"This is the first time that ... Australian vehicles have been attacked by direct enemy action," an Australian Defense Force spokesman, Brig. Mike Hannan, said in Australia's capital, Canberra.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Defense Minister Robert Hill expressed doubt that Australian forces were specifically targeted. Downer said the convoy had not been traveling along its normal route.

Two Islamic groups posted Web site claims of responsibility for the attack on the Australians. One was posted in the name of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, renamed Al-Qaida in Iraq. The other claim was made on behalf of the Islamic Army of Iraq. It was impossible to determine if either claim was genuine.


Al-Zarqawi's group, formerly known as Tawhid and Jihad, has been blamed in numerous suicide car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including deadly twin bombings inside Baghdad's highly secured Green Zone, which houses the U.S. and Iraqi leadership.

The Islamic Army of Iraq has claimed responsibility for the August abduction of French journalists Christian Chesnot, 37, and George Malbrunot, and other kidnappings.

In near-simultaneous attacks Monday in the northern city of Mosul, suicide car bombers struck provincial government offices and a military convoy, the U.S. military said. Three government employees were killed and one injured at the offices and an Iraqi general was slightly injured in the attack on the convoy, a government spokesman said.

Insurgent attacks across Iraq have increased by 25 percent since the holy month of Ramadan began two weeks ago. Attacks on U.S. and coalition forces averaged 56 a day last month - down from a high of 87 in August.

On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said 377 tons of conventional explosives suitable for car bomb attacks had vanished from a former Iraqi military installation about 30 miles south of the capital.

The agency based in Vienna, Austria, said it had been informed on Oct. 10 by Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology that the explosives were missing from the former Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad.

Al-Qaqaa is near Youssifiyah, an area rife with ambush attacks. An Associated Press Television News crew that drove past the compound Monday saw no visible security at the gates of the site, a jumble of low-slung, yellow-colored storage buildings that appeared deserted.

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 01:47 PM
Battle tested and scarred

By Ron Harris
Of the Post-Dispatch

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. - Coming home was different this time.

"We're thankful for being home, but there's really no celebration," said Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Matthew Lopez.

Lopez and the members of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines returned home to their base here last week from their second tour in Iraq, this time in a hellhole near the Syrian border called Al Qaim. Not everyone returned with them.

Killed during their nearly seven months in Iraq were 17 Marines from 3rd Battalion, three Marines from 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, a Special Forces soldier and an Iraqi-American interpreter whom everybody fondly called "Mo." Additionally, injured casualties were high. As many as 70 percent of the men in some platoons were wounded.

There were smiles and tears of joy when the Marines got off the buses at the base's baseball field, hugs from relatives, friends and other Marines. A band played. Brightly colored "Welcome Home" banners lined the road that brought them from March Reserve Air Base about 80 miles away near Riverside. And motorists blew their horns to greet the Marines as their buses rolled by.

But there would be no joyous parties like last September when they returned from Iraq the first time with no fatalities to enemy fire.

"A lot of them are thinking, 'I didn't bring back my best friend,'" said Weapons Platoon Commander Lt. Dan Carroll, who lost five Marines, four in one day. "When you think about that, you don't feel like getting hammered."

There was heavy drinking, but amid tears to drown out the pain for the comrades who didn't return with them.

It was a dramatically different war for these Marines this time.

In March last year, they were among the first U.S. forces to push out of the desert of Kuwait into Iraq. Within less than a month they had raced through sandstorms, rainstorms and Iraqi forces into Baghdad, where they took over the Ministry of Oil and later a water treatment facility.

After weeks in Baghdad, they moved south to Karbala, where they quickly stamped out any enemy opposition. With the help of eager Iraqis, they began building schools and roads, training hundreds of Iraqi police and security forces, dismantling Iraqi artillery.

When they returned to the United States after nine months, the battalion had not lost a single Marine to enemy fire, and there were fewer than a dozen war-related casualties.

Six months later, they were back in Iraq, guarding the Syrian border and patrolling the hostile towns of Husaybah, Karabilah, Ubaydi and Sadah. This time, there were no friendly smiles from residents, no helping hands, no soccer games with the local kids, no strolls through downtown without their Kevlar helmets and flak jackets.

The unit began taking casualties within its first 24 hours there. There were roadside bombs, mortar attacks, ambushes, snipers, land mines, relentless patrolling and sporadic firefights, the last one less than 12 hours before the battalion's final departure.

The worst and best day would be April 17, when the Marines crushed an assault by hundreds of Iraqi fighters in the town of Husaybah. But they also lost five Marines that day, including Lima Company Commander Capt. Richard J. Gannon, in the early moments of what would be a 14-hour battle.


Those experiences have left the men of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines a changed group, hardened and battle-scarred. Seven months of constant warfare have left them with lingering memories that they'd prefer to forget and that brought them together as a family in a way that goes even beyond blood.

The months of life-and-death pressure have changed the way they see and hear things, even back in the United States. To battle-trained eyes, building cranes for a split second appear to be artillery pieces. A dirt mound on the side of the road causes the heart to skip momentarily. Is there a roadside bomb in it?

"I still stare at the ground looking for things when I drive a truck," said Lance Cpl. Francisco Villegas, 29, who came within six inches of stepping on a roadside bomb.

This last tour - with experiences of dead comrades, Iraqi children who spit and threw rocks at them, Iraqi residents who calmly walked by as their wounded friends lay bleeding and screaming in the street - also drew out of them ugly sides of themselves that they didn't know existed.

In the end, many began to refer to all Iraqis with racial slurs.

"I'm not a prejudiced person, but I can't believe the names I used to call those people," said Lance Cpl. Joe Risner, 21, of Aurora, Colo.

For many of the Marines, there was a turning point, a moment when their feelings about the people they were there to help hardened, often to the point of hatred.

For Lance Cpl. Shawn Haufey of Appleton, Wis., the turning point was the death of his good friend John Van Gyzen, killed when a French-made rocket slammed into his vehicle.

"When I lost John, things just turned bad," said Haufey, 22, while leaning against a rail on the second-floor walkway outside a room at the Motel 6. "We had these Iraqi workers doing work on the base. One of them took my cooler for two months. It was no big thing. He brought it back. But I flipped out on the guy. I damn near strangled him to death. All of my frustration came out on that one guy."

"I left there with a bad taste in my mouth. I'm a neutral guy, but when it comes to Husaybah, to hell with them. I hate that place. . . .

"Give them a bunch of weapons and let them kill themselves, and we'll just come in and clean it up."

As he spoke, his friend Risner sat nearby outside his room, sharing a chair with his fiancee, Amber Howell.

"I feel the same way," he said. "I would just blow that place to hell and back."

Lopez, 41, the battalion commander, empathizes with his men.

"I can definitely understand the Marines developing that kind of hatred," he said. "I can definitely understand their dislike for the people."

Unlike their first stint in Iraq, the Marines look back on their second tour in frustration and anger. Most interviewed felt they accomplished little, if anything - other than staying alive.

"I feel like I wasted my time, caring about something that doesn't have any meaning anymore," Risner said. "I felt like I was wasting time and the taxpayers' money."

They were frustrated in part because they kept losing friends and there was seldom any enemy to fight. Instead, there were roadside bombs, land mines, sniper attacks, ambushes.

"The frustration and the anger is that there is very little payback, very little retribution for our brothers," said Gunnery Sgt. Matthew Carpenter, 33, a platoon commander who lost one Marine.

Despite the Marines' frustration, they were successful, Lopez said.

"We accomplished a lot of civil-affairs projects, $4 million worth," he said. "We built 15 water treatment facilities, so now everybody has fresh water. We repaired or built 56 schools. We had a problem with infant dysentery. We solved that, and we built two police stations.

"But we had to put an Iraqi face on everything we did in order to protect the people we were working with."



Hard to explain

For many Marines, there will be difficulties returning to the United States from Iraq.

"There's some really hard things there and things they don't want to remember," Lopez said over coffee, bagels and eggs at breakfast with his wife, Lynn, in a small downtown restaurant the morning after he got back.

Carpenter saw manifestations of it even before the battalion returned from Iraq.

"Fights would break out over nothing," he said. "Anytime something like that would happen, we'd talk and the guys realized that everybody is going through the same thing.

"We're all going to struggle with this. We lost of lot of good people, and there are a lot of young widows. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of Capt. Gannon. When I got off the plane, I almost started bawling."

Already some chafe at the Bush administration's claim that "major combat operations" ended in May of last year.

"That's part of the problem with so many leaders who don't have combat experience," said Lopez, who was shot in the back during an ambush. "When I'm getting shot at, that's major combat. When I'm losing guys, that's major combat."

With so many casualties, each Marine wrestles with his own memories. Some of them still have pieces of shrapnel embedded under their skin.

Villegas, who returned last month to be with his wife for the birth of their daughter, lost four close friends and a company commander in one day: Gary F. Van Leuven, Ruben Valdez, Michael J. Smith, Christopher A. Gibson and Gannon. Another friend, Jacob Lugo, was killed after he left.

"At least one time a day, I'll cry," he said last week, as he sat in a hangar waiting for his fellow Marines to land. "I'll be going somewhere on the base, and maybe something will remind me of Van Leuven and I'll be crying.

"And you start thinking, 'What if I didn't come back early? If I had been back there, maybe the squads wouldn't have had to be switched. Maybe I would have made a difference and Lugo would still be alive.'

"Why did it have to be them? Why couldn't it have been me? They were young. I'm pushing 30. They never really got to start their lives. Smith, he had a wife; he never saw his kid. Gibson had a baby right before we left. Lugo and Valdez got married right before we left."

Carroll struggles with the memories of the five Marines he lost.

"The thing that bugs me is these guys were kids," said Carroll, only 27 himself. "That's what really bugs the hell out of me. You give a 19-year-old or a 20-year-old a gun, and he ends up dead."

Corpsman Tivey Matthews, 25, has flashbacks that reflect a longing for lost comrades.

"Sometimes, I see a young guy and he looks just like Van Leuven, or I'll hear somebody's voice and it sounds like Valdez," he said as he nursed a small pizza the day after he got back.

For the most part, the Marines will wrestle with their demons away from their families. A number of the Marines asked that their families not meet them upon their return this time because they simply couldn't bear talking about Iraq with anyone other than Marines.

Yes, they will talk to their families and friends about parts of their experience but not about everything.

"There's going to be stuff I'm never going to tell" my wife, Carpenter said. "You can't explain it to people who weren't there."

At a poolside gathering at the Best Western hotel shortly after Marines from Weapons Company arrived Tuesday, families and friends watched almost helplessly as young Marines guzzled beer and cried as they tried to come to grips with the past seven months.

"Some of them are having a really hard time," said Debbie Williams, mother of Lance Cpl. Derek Lucero, 21. "What are we supposed to do? How do we help?"

To make it through, the Marines say, they will mostly rely on each other.

"There's going to be guys who are going to have problems adjusting, but no head shrinker is going to help them get through it like the other Marines, like their Marine family," Carpenter said.



continued........

thedrifter
10-26-04, 01:47 PM
What's ahead?

Lopez said it's now time to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

"If we can't turn the corner on turning security and governance over to the Iraqi people, we will continue to be frustrated," he said. "And these elections, we can't look at them and that governance through Western eyes. The true meaning of democracy is letting the Iraqi people decide what kind of governance they want. It will be up to the Iraqis to decide what kind of democracy they want."

In the near future, he said, insurgency will continue, criminal activity will continue, tribal conflicts will continue.

"I told the Marines we were there to begin a process and turn it over to other Marines," he said. "Ours was a snapshot in time."

Though they've been back for only a matter of days, the Marines are already preparing themselves mentally to return to war in seven months. The rumor is that they'll go to Afghanistan next time.

Such news is hard to take for the families who have already had to endure the long waiting and worrying through two deployments.

"I don't think I could make it through a third one," said Yvonne Villegas as she prepared dinner for her Marine husband, Francisco, and their two children, ages 3 and 2 weeks.

As C.J. Risner pondered the thought, while standing near her son on the walkway at Motel 6 last week, she burst into tears and retreated into the hotel room. After regaining her composure, she came back out.

"They've had two chances to kill my son," said Risner, whose son's life was saved by his flak jacket when he was shot in the chest. "The idea that we're going to give them a third chance doesn't sit well with me."

Reporter Ron Harris
E-mail: rharris@post-dispatch.com

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 03:23 PM
October 21, 2004 <br />
<br />
Misconduct incidents decrease <br />
<br />
By Gordon Lubold <br />
Times staff writer <br />
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Fewer junior Marines are getting into trouble for drug use, homosexual behavior and other misconduct,...

thedrifter
10-26-04, 03:29 PM
Fighting the wounds of war

By Rick Jervis
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published October 26, 2004

BAGHDAD -- The injured never stop coming, and their wounds tell the story of the war.

A surge in head injuries attests to an increase in roadside bombs, which spray shrapnel under the lips of Kevlar helmets. Severe burns reveal insurgents are frosting homemade bombs with jellied gasoline. An Army helicopter filled with wounded Marines is a sign that car bombs, which pack a bigger explosive punch, are rising.

The staff of the Army's 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad watches the war through its streams of patients. Its three intensive care units and 70 beds often overflow. The luckier soldiers suffer dime-sized shrapnel wounds. Many have lost limbs or eyes. Others need skulls reconstructed, their brains so bruised they don't recognize their spouses.

"It's been non-stop," said Maj. Patrick McAndrew, evening nurse supervisor. "The things I've seen here I've never seen before. . . . It's more lethal now than it's ever been."

Since the war started in March 2003, more than 8,000 U.S. troops have been wounded--roughly seven for every death. And about half of the wounds have occurred in the last six months.

The 31st Combat Support Hospital is in the former Ibn Sina Hospital, a private hospital built by Saddam Hussein for the exclusive use of his family and closest friends. It's located inside the heavily fortified Green Zone and admits about 10 patients a day, though that number changes according to insurgent activity, officials said.

Many of the staff of 200 have worked at military hospitals in the United States, treating car wreck victims or heart attack patients, and are making their combat debut. Besides adjusting to the harsher wounds caused by rocket-propelled grenades and land mines, staffers have to live and work through the steady stream of mortars and rockets lobbed at them in the Green Zone.

"It's tough," said Maj. Patricia Born, a clinical staff nurse. "When people go to the hospital and they're at the end of their lives and they're dying, that's one thing. But seeing all these young people dying is a lot different."

Roadside bombs claim toll

The No. 1 cause of injuries to U.S. troops in Iraq are roadside bombs, known as "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs, hospital officials said. The homemade contraptions consist of a variety of shrapnel--including nails and 155 mm artillery shells--and are detonated either remotely by a cellular phone or by a triggerman at the end of a wire.

The roadside bombs shred and shatter the arms and legs of troops, said Capt. Maxwell Hernandez, a critical care nurse at the hospital. The upward projectiles also fire chunks of shrapnel under Kevlar helmets, causing head wounds, he said.

The force of the bombs also cause unusual blunt trauma, he said. Two weeks ago, the shock wave from an IED caused a lung concussion in a soldier, making the lungs bleed and preventing oxygen from properly entering the bloodstream, Hernandez said. The soldier died a week later.

"First time I've ever seen that," said Hernandez, who works as a nurse at the Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas.

Severely injured troops are treated in the emergency room, then moved to one of three intensive care units, where they are stabilized and airlifted to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for further treatment and eventually returned to the United States. On a recent afternoon, Kevin Worth, a critical-care nurse in one of the ICUs, enjoyed the quiet of a near-empty ward, following a frantic 80-hour week, he said.

On one of those days, a Black Hawk helicopter deposited eight wounded Marines whose Baghdad checkpoint had been hit by a car bomb, he said. One was dead on arrival, two others died in the emergency room, and one walked in with brain matter leaking from his left eye, he said.

"It was like a scene out of a horror movie," Worth said. "They just kept coming out of the back of the helicopter. . . . Stuff like that really sticks with you."

After the Marines were stabilized or sent to the morgue, the talk among the staff wasn't about the injuries but of the Marines' glazed expressions.

"They all had the same look in their eyes: this far-off stare," Worth said. "I'd never seen it before."

One of the few people occupying an ICU bed in Worth's ward that recent quiet afternoon was Cpl. Donny Daughenbaugh, a 23-year-old Marine with Echo Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines based in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. Daughenbaugh was on a night foot patrol through Mahmoudiya on Oct. 12 with his platoon when a car sped past, screeched to a stop and opened fire with an AK-47, he said.

A bullet hit him in the face.

"I felt my face get hot," Daughenbaugh said through clenched teeth, his jaw wired shut. "There was so much blood. I knew I was shot. I'm trying to radio in, tell them I'm hit. But I can't hear myself. It doesn't sound like me at all. So I just raised my hand."

The bullet had barreled in through his left cheekbone and lodged between his skull base and his top vertebra, fracturing the jawbone and missing vital nerves and the brain by millimeters, hospital officials said. A metal plate repaired his jaw, but the bullet was left in place, too close to the brain stem to move. He will recover, officials said.

Daughenbaugh, a union carpenter from Des Moines, kept pictures of his wife, Sarah, and 17-month-old daughter, Gabriele, in a plastic bag on his bed as he recovered from surgery and waited for his flight to Landstuhl. He said he looked forward to reuniting with his family but would prefer going back to Mahmoudiya.

"It's just bad people trying to stop us from doing our job," he said.

Downstairs in the physical therapy room, another Marine from Daughenbaugh's unit did painful leg lifts, lunges and other exercises, stretching and strengthening muscles surrounding shrapnel wounds.

Staff Sgt. Michael Connolly, 26, a platoon sergeant with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, said his platoon was on a recent foot patrol in Latifiyah, a rural village near Mahmoudiya known to harbor insurgents. He had just climbed onto a roof to join some Marines when a mortar whistled in and landed on the roof, about 15 feet from him, he said. He covered his face in the split second before the mortar exploded, he said. Shrapnel sprayed his thighs, wrists and shoulders.

"I know I'm extremely lucky," Connolly said. "None of my wounds are permanent. I just want to heal up and get back out there."

Hospital officials said they use information from the wounds of troops such as Connolly and Daughenbaugh to learn more about the enemy. Injury information is logged and shared regularly with military research centers in the U.S., such as the Institute of Surgical Research at Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio, and Program Executive Officer Soldier in Ft. Benning, Ga., to improve equipment and armor according to enemy tactics, officials said.

But as the U.S. military tries to outpace the enemy, insurgents also are quickly adapting to U.S. initiatives and altering their modes of attacks, hospital officials said.

In March and April, when battles flared in insurgent hotbeds such as Najaf, most of the wounds were from gunfire, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, officials said. But as rebels learned that U.S. body armor and helmets protected soldiers from those attacks, they stepped up IED attacks, they said. When the military added more armor to their Humvees, insurgents used more car bombs, officials said.

Lately, hospital officials have noticed a sharp increase in attacks on lower extremities and head wounds, indicating more roadside bombs. There also has been an increase in severely burned victims, pointing to roadside bombs laced with jellied gasoline, said Col. Jack Chiles, chief of physicians.

"They're getting very good," Chiles said. "It's like a virus. They're very sneaky, very clever."

For the first time since the Vietnam War, hospital workers are treating more head wounds than chest and abdomen injuries, a trend attributed to enhanced body armor and an enemy using more roadside bombs, officials said.

Answering the trend, the 31st hospital is the area's only center that has a neurological team able to take CT scans and perform head surgeries on the premises. The team of eight--two neurosurgeons, two neurologists, two scrub technicians, a circulating nurse and anesthesiologist--is headed by Lt. Col. Jeff Poffenbarger, a former Green Beret and chief of neurosurgery at the Brooke Army Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston.

The team performs about one emergency craniotomy a day, though they once performed six in 24 hours, Poffenbarger said. The procedure peels back the scalp and exposes the brain to stem the bleeding and bring down the swelling. The skull, sometimes shattered, is reconstructed, often using Titanium plates and screws, he said.

High cost of survival rate

Unlike in the U.S., where the survival rate from emergency craniotomies is about 5 percent, Poffenbarger's team is saving about 33 percent of its patients, though all of them incur some form of brain damage, including slurred speech and blindness, he said.

Though encouraged by his team's survival rate, Poffenbarger said the extent of the injuries he deals with daily affects him. Sometimes he has to pull baseball-sized shrapnel from the eye sockets of soldiers, he said, or reconstruct a skull that has been shattered like an eggshell.

"This is raw, dirty, gut-checking business," said Poffenbarger after a recent shift, his brown Army boots streaked with blood. "These are 19- and 20-year-old Americans. And they're really badly injured. It's something that really stays with you."

McAndrew, the evening nurse supervisor, said he also gets rattled by the injuries he sees coming through the trauma center. To combat the stress, he tries to work out each day at the hospital gym and stays away from violent movies, preferring Chris Farley comedies.

"I chuckle when I hear on the news that it's going to get worse: How much worse can it get?" he said. "It's frustrating to see guys come in, day in, day out, with those injuries. You ask, `Jeez, what are we doing?'"


Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 05:24 PM
Bush and Kerry Spar Over Iraq
Associated Press
October 26, 2004

PHILADELPHIA - Sen. John Kerry cited the Iraq war and a huge cache of missing explosives Monday as proof President Bush has "failed the test of being commander in chief." The Republican slammed his rival as "consistently and dangerously wrong" on national security matters.

In a race of ever-escalating rhetoric, the president also accused the Democratic challenger of "the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking" on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he fell silent on the disappearance of 377 tons of high explosives in Iraq, leaving it to aides to explain.

Public polls in the major battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida were so close that both camps had cause for optimism - and room for doubt. And with only eight days to go, there were signs that the field of competition might be widening.

Democrats fretted about and made plans to advertise in Hawaii, which last backed a Republican for president in 1984.

In an endgame advertising shuffle, Democrats also bought airtime for this week in GOP-leaning West Virginia, where Kerry had mostly pulled his money from, and in Michigan, where spending was scaled back this week in a surprising show of confidence given that polls show a close race there.

Polls showed a tightening race in Arkansas, a state the president won four years ago and the Democrats had virtually given up for lost this time. The president's high command was concerned, as well, about New Hampshire, in Bush's column four years ago, trending Kerry's way in the race's final days.

Long-planned events blended with the unexpected in a campaign already marked by unpredictability.

Former President Clinton joined Kerry at a noontime rally in Philadelphia that drew tens of thousands. "If this isn't good for my heart, I don't know what is," Clinton said, looking thinner seven weeks after bypass surgery.

Supreme Court officials announced that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer and is expected to return to work next week. The statement served as a reminder that the next president is likely to have more than one appointment to an aging court that is divided on abortion, gay rights and more.

Word of the disappearance of explosives from a military installation in Iraq was like a campaign gift to Kerry, and he quickly put it to use.

Failure to secure the material was "one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," the four-term Massachusetts senator said in New Hampshire, his first campaign stop of the day.


"Terrorists could use this material to kill our troops, our people, blow up our airplanes and level buildings."

"...The unbelievable blindness, stubbornness, arrogance of this administration to do the basics has now allowed this president to once again fail the test of being the commander in chief," Kerry said.

Bush gave as good as he got. "On Iraq, my opponent has a strategy of pessimism and retreat," he said in Greeley, Colo.

That was mere warmup, though.

He accused Kerry of "throwing out the wild claim that he knows where Osama bin Laden was in the fall of 2001 - and that our military had a chance to get him in Tora Bora."

That was a reference to Kerry's frequent assertion that the administration "outsourced" the job of hunting down bin Laden to Afghan warlords.

"This is an unjustified and harsh criticism of our military commanders in the field," Bush said. "This is the worst kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking."

Beyond Iraq, Bush cited Kerry's opposition to the first Persian Gulf War, his proposal for cuts in the intelligence budget in 1994 and his position on former President Reagan's defense buildup in the 1980s. Together, they show that "on the largest national security issues of our time, he has been consistently and dangerously wrong."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan sought to allay concern over the threat posed by 377 tons of explosives missing from the Al Qaqaa military installation.

He told reporters no nuclear material was involved, and gave reporters an accounting of weapons found, not those lost.

"We have destroyed more than 243,000 munitions," he said. "We've secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed."

At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended May 1, 2003 - and searched the facility but found none of the explosives material in question. That raised the possibility that the explosives had disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate invasion aftermath. The Pentagon would not say whether it had informed the nuclear agency at that point that the conventional explosives were not where they were supposed to be.

With the race in its final full week, the pace of the campaigning picked up - as did the involvement of the courts.

Kerry campaigned from New Hampshire to Wisconsin during the day by way of Pennsylvania and Michigan. Aides mapped a plan for a 72-hour marathon leading to Election Day.

Bush went from his ranch in Texas to Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin as he sought the 270 electoral votes needed for a second term.

The pace of legal maneuvering was picking up, as well, as both parties anticipated a close finish.

In Florida, U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn ruled the state is not required to create a paper record of ballots to be available in case of a recount. In somewhat of an understatement, Cohn said the case "is of great public importance," and promised to issue a written order quickly to permit an appeal.

Florida was the site of a bitterly contested recount in 2000 that eventually went to the Supreme Court - Rehnquist presiding. A 5-4 court ruling sealed Bush's 537-victory in the state, propelling him to the White House.

Ellie

thedrifter
10-26-04, 06:05 PM
October 26, 2004

Unit made no effort to secure weapons, reporter says

Associated Press


NEW YORK — An NBC News reporter embedded with an Army unit that seized an Iraqi installation three weeks into the war said Tuesday that she saw no signs that the Americans searched for the powerful explosives that are now missing from the site.
Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded with the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade, said her news team stayed at the Al-Qaqaa base for about 24 hours.

“There wasn’t a search,” she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel. “The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around.

“But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away.”

On Monday night, NBC reported that its embedded crew said U.S. troops did discover significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and RDX explosives.

The NBC report came after the U.N. nuclear agency told the Security Council on Monday about the disappearance of the 377 tons of high explosives, mostly HMX and RDX, which can be used in the kind of car bomb attacks that have targeted U.S. forces.

Iraq blamed “theft and looting ... due to lack of security.”

The disappearance raised questions about why the United States didn’t do more to secure the Al-Qaqaa facility 30 miles south of Baghdad.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said coalition forces were present in the vicinity of the site both during and after major combat operations, which ended on May 1, 2003. He said they searched the facility but found none of the explosives in question or weapons of mass destruction.

“The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility, but found no indicators of WMD,” Whitman said Monday.

That raised the possibility that the explosives had disappeared before U.S. soldiers could secure the site in the immediate invasion aftermath.

However, Iraq’s Ministry of Science and Technology told the IAEA the explosives disappeared sometime after coalition forces took control of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.

The NBC team accompanied the 101st Airborne at Al-Qaqaa the following day — on April 10, 2003.

Lai Ling told MSNBC that there was no talk among the 101st of securing the area after they left.

She said the roads were cut off “so it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.”

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-472769.php

Ellie