thedrifter
07-29-05, 07:14 AM
Courtesy of Mark aka The Fontman
For combat-weary Marines, each stint adds to the strain
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY 52 minutes ago
The day the Marines crossed into Iraq, Cpl. James Welter Jr. killed his first man. During his second combat tour, he earned a commendation for leadership skills and coolness under fire, but he brought a nightmare home. Now, with six weeks left in his third fighting tour, his goal is simple.
He hopes to survive.
Welter - Jimmy to his friends - is among about 150 veterans of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment here who have fought in Iraq three times since the war began in March 2003. Each trip, they have endured some of the harshest combat.
They were here for four months at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, when they were at the tip of the invasion spear. In the summer of 2004, during a second tour that lasted 41/2 months, they fought in the streets of Fallujah after insurgents there killed four American contractors, burned and mutilated their bodies and strung two of the corpses from a bridge.
Now, for seven months this year, the Marines are here in Ramadi, the capital of the insurgency and a city thick with roadside bombs. Snipers lie in wait, and at the exits of U.S. military installations, huge warning signs, some inscribed with a skull and crossbones, read: "Complacency Kills!"
The battalion has lost more men in Ramadi than anywhere else: 12 Marines and a Navy corpsman killed in action. Their 13 portraits hang on a wall in battalion headquarters - a grim reminder of what awaits outside the gate.
The frequency with which troops are being sent back to combat is unprecedented in the all-volunteer U.S. military, which was created in 1973 after the draft ended. To boost morale, commanders draw comparisons to the sacrifices of Greatest Generation, those who fought for the duration of World War II. But that war is dust-covered history to those fighting here, and defense researchers concede that they do not yet know what back-to-back-to-back tours of duty will do to this military - or to those fighting.
"It's an open question as to how much we can ask of them," says James Hosek, a RAND Corp., specialist on military retention.
The Marines send troops to Iraq more frequently than the Army, but do so for shorter combat stints that don't last longer than seven months. Three Marine battalions, including the one in which Welter serves, are now fighting for the third time; two more are preparing for third combat hitches. The Army deploys units for longer periods - usually 12 months - but less often. Some Army units are starting a second tour in Iraq this year.
Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army's personnel division, says re-enlistments have held steady so far. "But we are keeping an eye on that," he says.
Studies about Vietnam veterans are of little use because the nation had a larger, conscript military then and combat was typically limited to a single 12- or 13-month tour. Hosek testified before Congress last year that what limited data exist suggest a third tour could sour the troops and their families and hurt re-enlistments.
Interviews with two dozenMarines in Ramadi, their commanders, and friends and family back homereveal the costin human terms. Like Jimmy Welter, some Marines in this unit enlisted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But that patriotic fervor now seems spent. And what the Marines have endured - Welter's story is typical - speaks to the changes that come with war.
During their first tour, Welter and his unit were greeted as liberators. During the second, they fought a growing rebellion. Now, on the third, many say they are angry to be back, shaken by the loss of more friends and feeling old beyond their years.
"I'm 22 years old. It really feels like I'm 30," Welter says. "I've seen more and done more things at 22 than most people have in 40 years."
Evidence of victory is scant, those interviewed by the newspaper say. Some are stunned that, after all the sacrifices they and others have made, so many Iraqis now seem to hate them.
Their choice to serve has put them on the battlefield three times in three years. Now, many say they just want to go home.
A fiancée's fears:'He's pushing his luck'
Their commander, Lt. Col. Eric Smith, sees the wear and tear.
"This takes a mental toll on these guys," says Smith, 40, of Plano, Texas, who was wounded in combat during a tour last year in another command position.
"I do know they get tired, and I do know they've changed," Smith says. "I mean, their counterparts (back home) are running around getting ****ed off because they were unable to register for Psych 303 and they have to start their senior year. These guys are running around worried about being supplied with .50-caliber ammo and not getting shot tomorrow."
The man working to re-enlist them explains the hardships.
"They've done their war, and they're done," says Staff Sgt. William Beschman, the battalion retention officer. Unlike the Marine Corps as a whole, the battle-scarred 1st Battalion, 5th Marines will not meet its re-enlistment goal this year. The largest bonuses in Marine Corps history - a year's salary, or about $20,000 tax-free if they sign up while in Iraq - got few takers. Of 287 first-term Marines in the battalion, just 50 are staying. The goal is 58.
And veterans of the battalion now have a look about them. In Vietnam, it was called the "thousand-yard stare": a weariness devoid of emotion. Cpl. Mike Kelly, 23, wore it as officers award him a Navy commendation for valor at a battalion headquarters ceremony this month.
He's heading home to Boston with hopes of opening a bar. His four-year enlistment - including three tours of duty in Iraq - is almost over. "I just want to live an easy life," he says after the ceremony. "A normal job, nothing fancy. A working stiff. That's my dream."
So does Cpl. Richie Gunter. "I just want to go back to the way things are," says Gunter, 30, who longs to trade Marine fatigues for a T-shirt and jeans and work on the family'stomato farm in Woodland, Calif.
Their loved ones suffer with them. Danielle "Dani" Thurlow of Coloma, Mich., has watched her fiancé, Marine Cpl. Ryan Kling, 22, grow colder and angrier with each tour. "He's pushing his luck," she says.
"I tell a lot of people: I wouldn't wish this on anyone," says Thurlow, 19. "It's very hard. It really is. You're just looking toward the end. That's all you want, is for it to be over."
And Ken Frederking, 69, says he lives in fear that his oldest grandchild, Jimmy Welter, may never find his way home. "What this kid has gone through at his age, it's incredible," the grandfather says. "It just seems like he can't escape."
Keeping in touch with their families - through letters, e-mails and telephone calls - is essential to preserving morale, says Smith, the battalion commander.
"You've got to make sure to not let the Marines get mean," he says. "You can't let the guys go home without their humanity."
Listening to Metallica's'For Whom the Bell Tolls'
Ramadi, a city of 250,000 people along the Euphrates River, is the capital of volatile Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and stretches west to the borders of Jordan and Syria. The governor here is the third in as many months. The first one quit out of fear of reprisal for working with Americans. The second was assassinated.
Tips about insurgent activities in the city have been increasing, Lt. Col. Smith says. Still, the largely Sunni Arab population here seems either indifferent toward or outright supportive of the guerrillas. Barely a thousand people here participated in elections in January.
Clerics have routinely preached violence against Marines. Early this month, loudspeakers from the Saman Mosque in Ramadi blared: "My God: Victory to the enemy of America!"
Marines estimate that there are roughly 2,000 potential insurgent fighters here, rallied by a hard core of perhaps 150 full-time combatants skilled at sniping and roadside bomb ambushes. Suicide car bombers are also a threat.
"They kill us. We kill them," Smith says grimly. He could easily use two more battalions of about 850 Marines each, he says.
With the assistance of two Army battalions operating on the city edge, the Marines have incrementally brought limited security to Ramadi. They do this by aggressively sending out daily and hazardous "presence" patrols, on foot or in armored vehicles. The official acronym for this work is Security and Stability Operations, or SASO.
Marines call it "SASO World" and see it as anything but secure. "SASO World is 10 times scarier than any offensive," Jimmy Welter says. "In SASO World, like Ramadi, you don't know where the enemy is at. He could be anywhere."
Fair-skinned like his mother, with her eyes and slender frame, Welter wears a history of war across his body. After boot camp, he had the "USMC" tattoo inked into his right forearm; the brazen grim reaper across his right shoulder blade marks his first tour. For the second, a Celtic Cross is etched into his left shoulder and arm. And he plans a memorial to slain friends for his third: "Brothers in Arms, Even in Death," down his ribcage.
He prepares for SASO World with his iPod, often to the beat and lyrics of Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls. The intensity and throbbing rhythm of the heavy metal music stiffen his resolve:
Make his fight on the hill in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless gray
On the fight, for they are right, yes, but who's to say?
Each day, along the streets of Ramadi, their patrols in armored Humvees resemble Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, a dark and nightmarish Disneyland amusement. A driver speeds and swerves to avoid debris that might hide roadside bombs.
continued..
For combat-weary Marines, each stint adds to the strain
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY 52 minutes ago
The day the Marines crossed into Iraq, Cpl. James Welter Jr. killed his first man. During his second combat tour, he earned a commendation for leadership skills and coolness under fire, but he brought a nightmare home. Now, with six weeks left in his third fighting tour, his goal is simple.
He hopes to survive.
Welter - Jimmy to his friends - is among about 150 veterans of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment here who have fought in Iraq three times since the war began in March 2003. Each trip, they have endured some of the harshest combat.
They were here for four months at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, when they were at the tip of the invasion spear. In the summer of 2004, during a second tour that lasted 41/2 months, they fought in the streets of Fallujah after insurgents there killed four American contractors, burned and mutilated their bodies and strung two of the corpses from a bridge.
Now, for seven months this year, the Marines are here in Ramadi, the capital of the insurgency and a city thick with roadside bombs. Snipers lie in wait, and at the exits of U.S. military installations, huge warning signs, some inscribed with a skull and crossbones, read: "Complacency Kills!"
The battalion has lost more men in Ramadi than anywhere else: 12 Marines and a Navy corpsman killed in action. Their 13 portraits hang on a wall in battalion headquarters - a grim reminder of what awaits outside the gate.
The frequency with which troops are being sent back to combat is unprecedented in the all-volunteer U.S. military, which was created in 1973 after the draft ended. To boost morale, commanders draw comparisons to the sacrifices of Greatest Generation, those who fought for the duration of World War II. But that war is dust-covered history to those fighting here, and defense researchers concede that they do not yet know what back-to-back-to-back tours of duty will do to this military - or to those fighting.
"It's an open question as to how much we can ask of them," says James Hosek, a RAND Corp., specialist on military retention.
The Marines send troops to Iraq more frequently than the Army, but do so for shorter combat stints that don't last longer than seven months. Three Marine battalions, including the one in which Welter serves, are now fighting for the third time; two more are preparing for third combat hitches. The Army deploys units for longer periods - usually 12 months - but less often. Some Army units are starting a second tour in Iraq this year.
Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the Army's personnel division, says re-enlistments have held steady so far. "But we are keeping an eye on that," he says.
Studies about Vietnam veterans are of little use because the nation had a larger, conscript military then and combat was typically limited to a single 12- or 13-month tour. Hosek testified before Congress last year that what limited data exist suggest a third tour could sour the troops and their families and hurt re-enlistments.
Interviews with two dozenMarines in Ramadi, their commanders, and friends and family back homereveal the costin human terms. Like Jimmy Welter, some Marines in this unit enlisted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But that patriotic fervor now seems spent. And what the Marines have endured - Welter's story is typical - speaks to the changes that come with war.
During their first tour, Welter and his unit were greeted as liberators. During the second, they fought a growing rebellion. Now, on the third, many say they are angry to be back, shaken by the loss of more friends and feeling old beyond their years.
"I'm 22 years old. It really feels like I'm 30," Welter says. "I've seen more and done more things at 22 than most people have in 40 years."
Evidence of victory is scant, those interviewed by the newspaper say. Some are stunned that, after all the sacrifices they and others have made, so many Iraqis now seem to hate them.
Their choice to serve has put them on the battlefield three times in three years. Now, many say they just want to go home.
A fiancée's fears:'He's pushing his luck'
Their commander, Lt. Col. Eric Smith, sees the wear and tear.
"This takes a mental toll on these guys," says Smith, 40, of Plano, Texas, who was wounded in combat during a tour last year in another command position.
"I do know they get tired, and I do know they've changed," Smith says. "I mean, their counterparts (back home) are running around getting ****ed off because they were unable to register for Psych 303 and they have to start their senior year. These guys are running around worried about being supplied with .50-caliber ammo and not getting shot tomorrow."
The man working to re-enlist them explains the hardships.
"They've done their war, and they're done," says Staff Sgt. William Beschman, the battalion retention officer. Unlike the Marine Corps as a whole, the battle-scarred 1st Battalion, 5th Marines will not meet its re-enlistment goal this year. The largest bonuses in Marine Corps history - a year's salary, or about $20,000 tax-free if they sign up while in Iraq - got few takers. Of 287 first-term Marines in the battalion, just 50 are staying. The goal is 58.
And veterans of the battalion now have a look about them. In Vietnam, it was called the "thousand-yard stare": a weariness devoid of emotion. Cpl. Mike Kelly, 23, wore it as officers award him a Navy commendation for valor at a battalion headquarters ceremony this month.
He's heading home to Boston with hopes of opening a bar. His four-year enlistment - including three tours of duty in Iraq - is almost over. "I just want to live an easy life," he says after the ceremony. "A normal job, nothing fancy. A working stiff. That's my dream."
So does Cpl. Richie Gunter. "I just want to go back to the way things are," says Gunter, 30, who longs to trade Marine fatigues for a T-shirt and jeans and work on the family'stomato farm in Woodland, Calif.
Their loved ones suffer with them. Danielle "Dani" Thurlow of Coloma, Mich., has watched her fiancé, Marine Cpl. Ryan Kling, 22, grow colder and angrier with each tour. "He's pushing his luck," she says.
"I tell a lot of people: I wouldn't wish this on anyone," says Thurlow, 19. "It's very hard. It really is. You're just looking toward the end. That's all you want, is for it to be over."
And Ken Frederking, 69, says he lives in fear that his oldest grandchild, Jimmy Welter, may never find his way home. "What this kid has gone through at his age, it's incredible," the grandfather says. "It just seems like he can't escape."
Keeping in touch with their families - through letters, e-mails and telephone calls - is essential to preserving morale, says Smith, the battalion commander.
"You've got to make sure to not let the Marines get mean," he says. "You can't let the guys go home without their humanity."
Listening to Metallica's'For Whom the Bell Tolls'
Ramadi, a city of 250,000 people along the Euphrates River, is the capital of volatile Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and stretches west to the borders of Jordan and Syria. The governor here is the third in as many months. The first one quit out of fear of reprisal for working with Americans. The second was assassinated.
Tips about insurgent activities in the city have been increasing, Lt. Col. Smith says. Still, the largely Sunni Arab population here seems either indifferent toward or outright supportive of the guerrillas. Barely a thousand people here participated in elections in January.
Clerics have routinely preached violence against Marines. Early this month, loudspeakers from the Saman Mosque in Ramadi blared: "My God: Victory to the enemy of America!"
Marines estimate that there are roughly 2,000 potential insurgent fighters here, rallied by a hard core of perhaps 150 full-time combatants skilled at sniping and roadside bomb ambushes. Suicide car bombers are also a threat.
"They kill us. We kill them," Smith says grimly. He could easily use two more battalions of about 850 Marines each, he says.
With the assistance of two Army battalions operating on the city edge, the Marines have incrementally brought limited security to Ramadi. They do this by aggressively sending out daily and hazardous "presence" patrols, on foot or in armored vehicles. The official acronym for this work is Security and Stability Operations, or SASO.
Marines call it "SASO World" and see it as anything but secure. "SASO World is 10 times scarier than any offensive," Jimmy Welter says. "In SASO World, like Ramadi, you don't know where the enemy is at. He could be anywhere."
Fair-skinned like his mother, with her eyes and slender frame, Welter wears a history of war across his body. After boot camp, he had the "USMC" tattoo inked into his right forearm; the brazen grim reaper across his right shoulder blade marks his first tour. For the second, a Celtic Cross is etched into his left shoulder and arm. And he plans a memorial to slain friends for his third: "Brothers in Arms, Even in Death," down his ribcage.
He prepares for SASO World with his iPod, often to the beat and lyrics of Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls. The intensity and throbbing rhythm of the heavy metal music stiffen his resolve:
Make his fight on the hill in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless gray
On the fight, for they are right, yes, but who's to say?
Each day, along the streets of Ramadi, their patrols in armored Humvees resemble Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, a dark and nightmarish Disneyland amusement. A driver speeds and swerves to avoid debris that might hide roadside bombs.
continued..