The Family Business [Archive] - Marine Corps

thedrifter

06-14-05, 11:36 AM

Tony was a 26-year-old Airborne Ranger-trained platoon leader in the First Cav when he arrived in the Middle East in March 2004 for duty in Iraq. His father, whose tour was over, was just leaving. They had time for a 90-minute dinner in a mess tent at Camp New York in Kuwait. "We talked," Ray said, shrugging. Once Ray was home, they exchanged e-mails every week. Lieutenant Odierno was able to give General Odierno a junior officer's-eye view of what a combat infantry platoon needed in the way of equipment and support.

For Linda Odierno, it was different. "It was hardest on her," Ray says. "Her husband was over there for a year and her son was going right in when I was leaving." Tony did not share with his mother in quite the way he did with his father. "To his mother," Ray says, "he'd say, 'Everything's fine, nothing's going on.' Then he'd talk to me and say, 'I was on three raids; I was on 12 patrols'."

There's a long history of generals and their wives worried about their fighting sons. (Harry Hopkins, FDR's top aide during World War II, lost a teenage son in combat in the Pacific, prompting Winston Churchill, who also had a son and daughters under fire in uniform, to send Hopkins these lines from "Macbeth": "Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt;/He only liv'd but till he was a man/ ... But like a man he died.") Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose son John was with the 71st Infantry Division in World War II, is said to have feared nothing more than telling his wife that their son had been killed or wounded. He couldn't very well move John to the rear without devastating morale, but he was saved when Gen. Omar Bradley did it for him. Ray Odierno says that he did not share Eisenhower's fear. "My wife," he says, "understands the risks."

It was around midnight on a stultifying summer's night in Baghdad when the rocket-propelled grenade hit Tony Odierno's Humvee. Odierno had been "in country" for five months, patrolling the deadliest turf in Iraq, the airport road. He was riding on the passenger side, leading a column of Bradley fighting vehicles. He heard a whizzing sound, then an explosion. The RPG ripped through his door, clipped the bicep in his right arm and nearly severed his left arm before lodging in the chest of the driver. Gunfire rang out, along with the deadly whoosh of more RPGs.

Odierno tried to move his left arm and realized it was hanging by only a few strands of muscle. Around him his driver was mortally wounded, his gunner in the back was knocked unconscious and his door was smoking, shredded metal. Odierno's training and instincts kicked in. "I'm the platoon leader. I have to take control of the situation," he recalls thinking. "It's hard on my men, too. I've got to be the strong one, I don't want anyone to freeze." He had to get moving and giving orders. "If I don't get out and do this, the situation's going to get a lot worse," he thought.

The only way out was up. Cradling his mauled left arm, he snaked out of the gunner's hatch and hit the ground running for the nearest radio. His own was dead. Calling for reinforcements and medevac support, he directed his men to lay down suppression fire. After 15 minutes or so, the blood loss finally hit him; he lay down and waited for the chopper to safety. As he lifted off, his thoughts drifted to his parents. He hoped that he'd get to see them again.

Ray Odierno recalls his reaction when General Chiarelli called him at his parents' in New Jersey. "The first thing I thought was, 'I just wanna get home'." On the drive back, Chiarelli called again. "Tony just finished surgery, and he lost his left arm." Odierno could feel that Chiarelli was crushed by being the bearer of such bad tidings, and he tried to reassure him. "You're doing a great job over there. I understand the risks and Tony understands the risks, and we'll work through this together." Odierno tried to stay focused: his son was alive.

It helped through the long months of convalescence and rehab for father and son to both know that Tony had handled himself well under fire and in extreme pain. "I was happy with how I reacted," says Tony, who was awarded a Bronze Star for valor. "They always told me how physically tough and mentally tough he was, and what kind of lead-by-example kind of person he was, which always made me feel good," says Ray Odierno, "because that's the kind of son you want to have."

Father and son acknowledge that Tony has had some bad moments, but he never complained. "He's never once said, 'Why did this happen to me?' " says Ray. "I'm sure he's said it to himself, but he's never said it out loud."

Just because fathers and sons don't express their worries doesn't mean they don't have them. "It affected me more than I would have thought," says Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, whose son Scott, 31, served under him (five command echelons removed) as a reconnaissance officer, a risky frontline post. Another son, Brandon, 33, served nine months in Iraq as a rifle-company commander. "I got awakened every night," says Conway. "Among the 10 things I thought was, 'Gee, how am I going to tell their mother?' "Conway, like Odierno, would not have dreamed of taking any step to remove his sons from the line of fire, and their sons would have been incensed if they had. But, says Conway, "you never stop being a father." Both his sons won Bronze Stars for their bravery under fire. How did their mother deal with her fears? "She immersed herself," says Conway. As a volunteer at Camp Pendleton, Calif., she met every returning wounded Marine, no matter what time of day or night.

The Conways are a warrior clan. At Christmas, they discuss whether Humvees have enough armor and what an RPG round looks like when it's arcing toward you. Their view of the civilian world is mixed. General Conway says he "doesn't buy" the idea that Marines feel somehow superior or isolated from the civilian world. Yet his son Brandon says that when his buddies get out of the service, most are unimpressed by the civilian work ethic. "They just don't have as high expectations of civilians," says Brandon. On the other hand, most Marines recall the abuse heaped on Vietnam vets returning from war and are grateful for the support they now get. "You wind up with more care packages than you know what to do with," says Brandon.

General Conway recalled that when the Marines were about to "jump off" into Iraq, the "No. 1" question his troops asked was: "Is the country behind us?" The answer was, and is, a qualified yes ... but. While the troops enjoy support, the Bush policy in Iraq is now opposed by a small majority. And it remains true that an important segment of society has chosen to largely sit out the war.

During Vietnam, many colleges and universities kicked out their Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs. Elite schools including Harvard, Yale and Brown still have no ROTC on campus (though their students can take ROTC courses at other schools). In both the world wars, graduates of schools like Harvard and Yale gave their lives in disproportionate numbers. Not today: among the 1,175 students who graduated from Princeton last year, eight went into the military. "America's elite would prefer somebody else's daughter to die rather than one of their own sons," says Moskos.

Many schools still ban military recruiters from coming on campus on the ground that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy discriminates against gays. "I've always had a degree of resentment against Ivy League schools for preventing recruiters on campus," says Sen. John McCain. "It is the height of elitist snobbery." McCain's argument for letting ROTC back on Ivy League campuses is "not because it gives us career officers, but because it gives future leaders of our country military experience."

Congressional action has threatened federal funding for schools that bar military recruiters, and the issue is coming before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the meantime, the military will continue to grow its own leaders. Despite the military's difficulty in meeting recruitment goals, no one in a position of authority seems to think that a draft will be necessary, at least any time soon. Generous cash bonuses (up to $150,000 for some highly trained Special Forces operatives) have helped persuade valuable soldiers to re-enlist. In the Third ID, which bore the brunt of the early fighting in Iraq, re-enlistment rates are twice what was expected. To help boost faltering enlistment rates, the military is increasingly offering cash bonuses—and for the first time since Vietnam, lowering the test scores required to join the military.

The modern military is demanding on families. During the cold war, the military was essentially a "garrison force," meaning that soldiers could stay put on base with their families for long periods of time. But in the high-tempo war on terror, the military has increasingly become an "expeditionary force," which means that soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines must leave their families for long tours overseas in places like Bosnia or Iraq. There are signs of stress: divorce rates are up, particularly among officers.

Marine Corps duty is especially hard on families. A Marine could once expect to be home 18 months for every six months spent deployed abroad. Now he or she is gone half the time. And yet General Conway, who is now the chief operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was surprised to learn that young married Marines re-enlist at a greater rate than unmarried troops. The only explanation is that for many, the Marine Corps is a world in which they wish to raise their families, despite the dangers and frequent moves.

There is no doubt that the military can encourage family values. There are undoubtedly a few fathers right out of Pat Conroy's "The Great Santini," about his abusive Marine Corps dad. But there are many more who fit the model of the Conways, or Ray and Tony Odierno, father and son trading tips on body armor and inexpressible love as they passed an ancient torch, in a tent in Kuwait, on the way to war.

With Martha Brant and John Barry

Ellie