thedrifter
06-13-05, 07:12 AM
Mourning 1, fearing for 2nd
Downstate parents feel pride, pain over son's return to Iraq
By Mike Dorning
Tribune national correspondent
June 13, 2005
DU QUOIN, Ill. -- They keep two plastic ribbons tied to the flagpole in the front lawn: one black for mourning and the other yellow for a safe return.
Dan and Marla Uhles lost one son in Iraq already. Last month, another left to go to war.
Now, as they mourn the loss of one child, they struggle with the choice made by the other.
Drew, a quiet youngest boy who loved to while away summer afternoons fishing for bass and bluegill, died nine months ago--killed by a rocket-propelled grenade that hit his Humvee four days before his 21st birthday. Being a Marine had been his life's ambition since 8th grade, when he tacked a recruiting poster to his bedroom door. But it cost him his life.
The other son, Neil, 25, a stocky former high school football player, made it safely home from a yearlong deployment in Iraq with the Illinois National Guard. He did not have to go back. But against his parents' wishes, he volunteered.
At Drew's burial, after a white-gloved Marine bowed and presented his parents with the lance corporal's Purple Heart, the grieving father turned to Neil and handed him the medal.
"I don't want any more of these," Dan told his son. But, recalled the father, "He just held it. He didn't say anything."
In the months afterward, Dan and Marla sought comfort in e-mail contacts and visits with other parents of soldiers who died in Iraq. Neil, who always had been the family's easygoing jokester, withdrew for a time, often spending hours silently watching television.
Though Neil insists his decision to return to Iraq has nothing to do with Drew's death--he points out that he signed up before Drew's passing--his sister believes this tour of duty may at least bring him a sense of closure.
The death affected Neil deeply. In the days following, he slept in Drew's room and sometimes simply locked the door and shut himself inside, remembers Sean, 31, the oldest of three brothers.
Neil had Drew's initials and the dates of his brother's birth and death tattooed in black onto his forearm. For the rest of his life, he said, he wanted people who came into contact with him to see the letters "DMU" and ask their meaning. "I don't want other people to forget."
But the death did not change his mind about returning to Iraq.
"It made it a lot harder, because I didn't know how to tell my family I still wanted to go back," Neil said in an interview just before he deployed again. "I knew they wouldn't like it."
Families always bear a burden along with the soldiers who go to war. But it is an especially heavy one for those such as the Uhleses whose traditions of military service place more than one member at risk. The loss of the five Sullivan brothers who served and died together on a ship torpedoed in World War II provided an iconic image of wartime tragedy to a generation of Americans.
Neil, a sergeant, now is stationed at the Baghdad airport. Amid a stepped-up campaign of insurgent bombings, the Uhleses anxiously watch the news.
"Every time something happens in Baghdad, we're extremely worried and wonder how close he is to the attacks," Dan said.
Early thoughts of returning
Even before he arrived home from his first tour of duty, Neil was considering another.
The idea came up on the final stage of his Army Guard unit's journey home: a noisy, all-night bus trip in May 2004 from Ft. Riley, Kan., to Sparta, Ill., where the soldiers would be reunited with their families.
Sitting across the aisle from each other, Neil and his friend Micah Hankla warily talked over what lay ahead, Hankla recalled.
Hankla was on his way back to a job at the local Maytag factory. Neil was headed for part-time work and a final semester studying at Southern Illinois University--though he had long since tired of his major, management information systems, and of college studies in general, which were paid for in part by benefits from Guard duty.
Their home, Du Quoin, is an economically depressed southern Illinois town of 6,400 where many of the storefronts downtown lie vacant. Since environmental protections in the Clean Air Act of 1990 rendered the high-sulphur coal mined in the region uneconomical, many high-paying jobs have left the area.
Neither friend was excited by the prospects at home. Then came the idea: Why not go back to Iraq?
Neil would mull it over in the months ahead. Sitting at the wheelchair shop where he took a job that summer doing repairs, he would listen to the radio and find himself thinking back to the excitement of running for cover during mortar attacks.
His 30-minute commute to work seemed numbingly dull. In Iraq, all his senses would be at work whenever he went out on the road for a patrol. There, every passing car and piece of debris was a potential threat that demanded his full attention. Now, on the two-lane highway to Carbondale, there was nothing to do but drive on past.
Danger's rush gone
He missed the adrenaline. Though Neil's job had been to set up and maintain military communications systems, he often volunteered to go out on patrols.
He missed the camaraderie, the off-duty card games and chess matches, the easy friendships and the tent he shared with five buddies.
In Iraq, he was in the best shape of his life. He lifted weights regularly and dropped 30 pounds. He boxed for the first time, surrounded by cheering, shouting soldiers in a makeshift ring roped off in the desert sand. And he won the fight, scoring a victory for his company in a battalion tournament.
Back home, even though he had plenty of free time, he couldn't muster the energy to exercise.
"At the end of the day, I'd be exhausted, just from being so bored," Neil said.
And so, one evening last August, he went over to his parents' house for dinner and announced that he had signed up. Not for his final semester of college, as they had expected, but for another deployment to Iraq with the Guard. His father suggested he go see a counselor.
The Uhles family has a tradition of military service. Dan's father was an infantryman in the Army in World War II. His father-in-law was an artilleryman in the same war and served again during the Korean War.
Dan Uhles, a 56-year-old assistant manager at a supermarket, often tells people that the Air Force saved his life: During his four-year stint, a doctor detected a tumor on his heart and military surgeons removed it. Though he served during the Vietnam era, he was stationed in Korea and never saw combat.
3 of 4 children have served
Of the Uhles children, only one did not serve in the military: Sean, who now is a project leader for a credit bureau in suburban Chicago. A daughter, Melissa, 34, enlisted in the Navy and was in the Shore Patrol. Now she is an investigator with the Illinois State Police.
"I think it all started with my dad," Sean said. "They all wanted to follow what he did, but in their own way."
By 2004, Neil and Drew each had completed a tour of duty in Iraq.
But Dan and the rest of the family could sense a distance in the two boys about their experiences there. When pressed, Drew acknowledged being in firefights but had little more to say, Sean recalled. Neil was no more talkative.
That gulf suddenly became clear to Dan at a Memorial Day barbecue he arranged last year in honor of the boys' return.
He asked Drew an offhand question. His son wasn't one of the servicemen who kicked down doors and rushed into buildings to search for suspected insurgents, was he?
"Yeah. Who do you think does it?" Drew replied.
"It just kind of dawned on me at that time," Dan said. "They've been through more than we ever thought."
Drew was ordered back to Iraq for a second deployment soon afterward. He had been there a only little over a month when the Uhleses got the news. Dan was home alone on the September afternoon when a Ford Taurus pulled into the driveway and two Marines in dress-blue uniforms walked up to the door.
Neil left for Iraq on May 15. His friend Micah Hankla went with him, as did two more National Guard buddies from the last deployment.
And since then, Neil's parents have felt a familiar mixture of pride and anxiety.
Despite Dan's misgivings, he has accepted the inevitable and tried to be supportive. He raised his children to be leaders and not followers, and is glad to be father to a son who shows the strength of will to accomplish what he sets out to do.
Someone else is safe
He knows, too, that his son's willingness to go again means another member of the Guard can stay home. Neil may be taking the place of a father or mother who can now be with their children, Dan said.
Still, it never is easy to have a child in harm's way, particularly so soon after losing another. And in addition to the dangers his son faces, Dan wonders how the experience of war may be changing Neil.
"When Neil comes back, is he going to be twice as distant about his time in Iraq? Is he going to want to go back again?" Dan asked.
Drew's death has altered Neil's plans in one way. Though he admits it is unlikely the military will allow him to do it, he would like to visit the place where his brother died.
He would like one glimpse of that ground, a final memory of Drew to take back home.
----------
mdorning@tribune.com
Ellie
Downstate parents feel pride, pain over son's return to Iraq
By Mike Dorning
Tribune national correspondent
June 13, 2005
DU QUOIN, Ill. -- They keep two plastic ribbons tied to the flagpole in the front lawn: one black for mourning and the other yellow for a safe return.
Dan and Marla Uhles lost one son in Iraq already. Last month, another left to go to war.
Now, as they mourn the loss of one child, they struggle with the choice made by the other.
Drew, a quiet youngest boy who loved to while away summer afternoons fishing for bass and bluegill, died nine months ago--killed by a rocket-propelled grenade that hit his Humvee four days before his 21st birthday. Being a Marine had been his life's ambition since 8th grade, when he tacked a recruiting poster to his bedroom door. But it cost him his life.
The other son, Neil, 25, a stocky former high school football player, made it safely home from a yearlong deployment in Iraq with the Illinois National Guard. He did not have to go back. But against his parents' wishes, he volunteered.
At Drew's burial, after a white-gloved Marine bowed and presented his parents with the lance corporal's Purple Heart, the grieving father turned to Neil and handed him the medal.
"I don't want any more of these," Dan told his son. But, recalled the father, "He just held it. He didn't say anything."
In the months afterward, Dan and Marla sought comfort in e-mail contacts and visits with other parents of soldiers who died in Iraq. Neil, who always had been the family's easygoing jokester, withdrew for a time, often spending hours silently watching television.
Though Neil insists his decision to return to Iraq has nothing to do with Drew's death--he points out that he signed up before Drew's passing--his sister believes this tour of duty may at least bring him a sense of closure.
The death affected Neil deeply. In the days following, he slept in Drew's room and sometimes simply locked the door and shut himself inside, remembers Sean, 31, the oldest of three brothers.
Neil had Drew's initials and the dates of his brother's birth and death tattooed in black onto his forearm. For the rest of his life, he said, he wanted people who came into contact with him to see the letters "DMU" and ask their meaning. "I don't want other people to forget."
But the death did not change his mind about returning to Iraq.
"It made it a lot harder, because I didn't know how to tell my family I still wanted to go back," Neil said in an interview just before he deployed again. "I knew they wouldn't like it."
Families always bear a burden along with the soldiers who go to war. But it is an especially heavy one for those such as the Uhleses whose traditions of military service place more than one member at risk. The loss of the five Sullivan brothers who served and died together on a ship torpedoed in World War II provided an iconic image of wartime tragedy to a generation of Americans.
Neil, a sergeant, now is stationed at the Baghdad airport. Amid a stepped-up campaign of insurgent bombings, the Uhleses anxiously watch the news.
"Every time something happens in Baghdad, we're extremely worried and wonder how close he is to the attacks," Dan said.
Early thoughts of returning
Even before he arrived home from his first tour of duty, Neil was considering another.
The idea came up on the final stage of his Army Guard unit's journey home: a noisy, all-night bus trip in May 2004 from Ft. Riley, Kan., to Sparta, Ill., where the soldiers would be reunited with their families.
Sitting across the aisle from each other, Neil and his friend Micah Hankla warily talked over what lay ahead, Hankla recalled.
Hankla was on his way back to a job at the local Maytag factory. Neil was headed for part-time work and a final semester studying at Southern Illinois University--though he had long since tired of his major, management information systems, and of college studies in general, which were paid for in part by benefits from Guard duty.
Their home, Du Quoin, is an economically depressed southern Illinois town of 6,400 where many of the storefronts downtown lie vacant. Since environmental protections in the Clean Air Act of 1990 rendered the high-sulphur coal mined in the region uneconomical, many high-paying jobs have left the area.
Neither friend was excited by the prospects at home. Then came the idea: Why not go back to Iraq?
Neil would mull it over in the months ahead. Sitting at the wheelchair shop where he took a job that summer doing repairs, he would listen to the radio and find himself thinking back to the excitement of running for cover during mortar attacks.
His 30-minute commute to work seemed numbingly dull. In Iraq, all his senses would be at work whenever he went out on the road for a patrol. There, every passing car and piece of debris was a potential threat that demanded his full attention. Now, on the two-lane highway to Carbondale, there was nothing to do but drive on past.
Danger's rush gone
He missed the adrenaline. Though Neil's job had been to set up and maintain military communications systems, he often volunteered to go out on patrols.
He missed the camaraderie, the off-duty card games and chess matches, the easy friendships and the tent he shared with five buddies.
In Iraq, he was in the best shape of his life. He lifted weights regularly and dropped 30 pounds. He boxed for the first time, surrounded by cheering, shouting soldiers in a makeshift ring roped off in the desert sand. And he won the fight, scoring a victory for his company in a battalion tournament.
Back home, even though he had plenty of free time, he couldn't muster the energy to exercise.
"At the end of the day, I'd be exhausted, just from being so bored," Neil said.
And so, one evening last August, he went over to his parents' house for dinner and announced that he had signed up. Not for his final semester of college, as they had expected, but for another deployment to Iraq with the Guard. His father suggested he go see a counselor.
The Uhles family has a tradition of military service. Dan's father was an infantryman in the Army in World War II. His father-in-law was an artilleryman in the same war and served again during the Korean War.
Dan Uhles, a 56-year-old assistant manager at a supermarket, often tells people that the Air Force saved his life: During his four-year stint, a doctor detected a tumor on his heart and military surgeons removed it. Though he served during the Vietnam era, he was stationed in Korea and never saw combat.
3 of 4 children have served
Of the Uhles children, only one did not serve in the military: Sean, who now is a project leader for a credit bureau in suburban Chicago. A daughter, Melissa, 34, enlisted in the Navy and was in the Shore Patrol. Now she is an investigator with the Illinois State Police.
"I think it all started with my dad," Sean said. "They all wanted to follow what he did, but in their own way."
By 2004, Neil and Drew each had completed a tour of duty in Iraq.
But Dan and the rest of the family could sense a distance in the two boys about their experiences there. When pressed, Drew acknowledged being in firefights but had little more to say, Sean recalled. Neil was no more talkative.
That gulf suddenly became clear to Dan at a Memorial Day barbecue he arranged last year in honor of the boys' return.
He asked Drew an offhand question. His son wasn't one of the servicemen who kicked down doors and rushed into buildings to search for suspected insurgents, was he?
"Yeah. Who do you think does it?" Drew replied.
"It just kind of dawned on me at that time," Dan said. "They've been through more than we ever thought."
Drew was ordered back to Iraq for a second deployment soon afterward. He had been there a only little over a month when the Uhleses got the news. Dan was home alone on the September afternoon when a Ford Taurus pulled into the driveway and two Marines in dress-blue uniforms walked up to the door.
Neil left for Iraq on May 15. His friend Micah Hankla went with him, as did two more National Guard buddies from the last deployment.
And since then, Neil's parents have felt a familiar mixture of pride and anxiety.
Despite Dan's misgivings, he has accepted the inevitable and tried to be supportive. He raised his children to be leaders and not followers, and is glad to be father to a son who shows the strength of will to accomplish what he sets out to do.
Someone else is safe
He knows, too, that his son's willingness to go again means another member of the Guard can stay home. Neil may be taking the place of a father or mother who can now be with their children, Dan said.
Still, it never is easy to have a child in harm's way, particularly so soon after losing another. And in addition to the dangers his son faces, Dan wonders how the experience of war may be changing Neil.
"When Neil comes back, is he going to be twice as distant about his time in Iraq? Is he going to want to go back again?" Dan asked.
Drew's death has altered Neil's plans in one way. Though he admits it is unlikely the military will allow him to do it, he would like to visit the place where his brother died.
He would like one glimpse of that ground, a final memory of Drew to take back home.
----------
mdorning@tribune.com
Ellie