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thedrifter
08-30-05, 01:34 PM
September 05, 2005
Report cites problems handling troops’ effects
IG office offers suggested improvements
By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer

Apart from her terrible loss, Angelique Collins had one major complaint after the death of her only son.

Lance Cpl. Jonathan Collins carried a small, 3-by-5-inch book filled with notes from friends, pictures, memories — a scrapbook of a 19-year-old Marine on his first deployment to a war zone. The scrapbook was a window into Collins’ feelings, his hopes, his fears and his dreams of the future, a log book of the Marine’s experiences.

And it never came home with his remains.

“He always kept it in his front pocket,” said Collins’ mother, of Crystal Lake, Ill. Her son served as a rifleman with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, and was killed in Ramadi, Iraq, on Aug. 8, 2004. “I wish I had gotten that back.”

With complaints rising from the loved ones of fallen and injured Marines, the Corps’ inspector general launched a probe in March to examine how the Corps handles the personal effects of dead and wounded Marines and sailors and how those items get back to families — or don’t, in some cases.

The investigation, which ended in June, found that the Corps “[did] not provide sufficiently detailed instructions for handling and processing personal effects in a combat zone or joint operations area.”

Although investigators noted that great care was taken to assemble the personal gear of dead or wounded Marines, inventories were often inaccurate, packages arrived at U.S. bases damaged, items were missing and procedures for handling the personal effects were haphazard.

Policy changes are already in the works, however, including a newly revised order for handling such items from II Marine Expeditionary Force commanders in Iraq, according to the investigation report. The changes didn’t come in time to help Collins get her son’s scrapbook back — it was mistakenly burned with his damaged uniform — but they will help other families in the future.

“It’s a readiness issue,” said Maj. Gen. David Bice, the Corps’ inspector general, in a July 21 interview. “It deals with the readiness of the Corps and making sure we take care of our fallen Marines and their personal effects.”

Missing inventories

According to the July 8 investigation report, “Handling Personal Effects for Marine Casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom,” items belonging to a dead Marine and those belonging to a wounded Marine are handled in a different but standardized manner.

Typically, unit equipment — including rifle, web gear and cammies — goes back into the supply system for reuse.

An officer must assemble and inventory the rest of the personal gear at camp, box it and package it with a standardized, tamper-resistant seal. The gear is then shipped to the Theater Mortuary Evacuation Point/Personal Effects Depot at Kuwait International Airport. Items found with the service member that are not unit equipment are assembled by a mortuary-affairs Marine and shipped to Kuwait separately.

From the mortuary evacuation point in Kuwait, the items are shipped to the Joint Personal Effects Depot at Aberdeen, Md., where a small team of Marines re-inventories the gear before forwarding it on to next of kin.

“Interviews with personnel assigned to both depots revealed that personal effects had been received at both sites in unsecured and sometimes damaged containers,” the report stated. “The personnel reported that inventories were often missing from the shipments and that the inventories often received were not used to match against the contents of the personal effects shipments.”

At Aberdeen, a legal officer inspects the items to remove damaged, contaminated and pornographic items, or those of “questionable value.”

“It is left to the discretion of the [legal] officer to determine the category of each item of personal effects based on the [officer’s] experience and … regulations,” the report states.

The report indicated that it has been particularly difficult to track and return combat gear purchased by a Marine, such as holsters, packs and personal hydration systems.

The Inspector General’s Office suggested a number of changes for handling of personal effects that are meant to alleviate the concerns of many who might be missing items from their loved ones, including:

• Adopting formal procedures for the Joint Personal Effects Depot in Aberdeen “that includes responsibilities, common procedures and service-specific guidance.”

• Designing a standardized, crush-proof, securable container for storing and shipping personal effects.

• Forwarding the personal effects inventory of the Marine to his parent unit to check against what is received in case it doesn’t match, so the Marine’s unit can launch an “informed” investigation of missing items.

• Developing an automated means to track shipments of personal items, one that is accessible by both Army and Marine officials involved in the handling of personal effects.

But Angelique Collins has one more suggestion that the inspector general didn’t mention.

“If there’s anything of particular importance that you want, it needs to be relayed to the people in Iraq as soon as possible or it could be lost,” she said.

Her son’s first sergeant had difficulty tracking down the scrapbook, and Collins wondered whether it could have been saved from the incinerator had he known about it sooner.

Ellie