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thedrifter
01-18-06, 05:42 AM
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
The Purple Heart
As Iraq War wounded come home, local veterans welcome new members to the club
By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer

For Iraq War veterans Jamie Roberto and Paul Brondhaver, the price of a lifetime membership in Chapter 3620 of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, which meets each month in Cheviot, is a mere $125.

It is a trifle compared with the price they paid to even be considered for membership - the price of being wounded in war.

"Every man in this chapter took a bullet, a piece of shrapnel - some of them over and over again - serving his country,'' said Tim Culbertson of Sycamore Township, a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran who helped found the Cheviot chapter of the national organization in 2000.

It is an organization "that really isn't looking for new members, because that just means more men and women have been wounded in war,'' Culbertson said.

Roberto, a Marine Corps master sergeant, and Brondhaver, a recently retired sergeant in the Ohio National Guard, are the first wave of Iraq War veterans to join the Purple Heart fraternal organization, with many more expected as they return home.

The Purple Heart - a short strip of metal, formed in the shape of a deep velvet heart, bordered in gold and bearing the cameo of George Washington - dates to the American Revolution. It is awarded to those who are killed or wounded in enemy action.

'We are all brothers'

The Military Order of the Purple Heart is a congressionally chartered fraternal organization open to all who have earned the medal.

As with most chapters, the group that meets each month at Cheviot's Harvest Home Lodge is made up mostly of World War II, Korea and Vietnam veterans. It has almost 60 members.

Those veterans of earlier wars know full well that they will soon be welcoming a new generation of combat veterans.

"We're determined that we are going to welcome these young people to our ranks as brothers,'' said a Chapter 3620 member, 81-year-old Tom Anderson of Dent, who lost his left forearm and the fingers of his right hand 61 years ago, when the young Army Ranger was trying to disarm a German booby trap.

"We'll welcome them as brothers,'' Anderson said, "because that's just what they are.''

Roberto was the first Iraq veteran to join Chapter 3620, coming on board about a year ago after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq with the 1st Military Police Company, a Marine Corps Reserve unit based in Dayton.

"Within the next two or three years, I truly believe that the Iraq veterans are going to come and join the Military Order of the Purple Heart and all the other veterans groups in big numbers,'' said Roberto, 37, a Cheviot native and graduate of Western Hills High who lives in West Chester.

"Sooner or later, most of us who served in Iraq are going to want to be come together with the guys from World War II, Korea and Vietnam," Roberto said. "They'll realize we are all brothers.''

'Like I was right there'

One morning last week, he sat in front of his laptop computer at the Marine Reserve Center on Dayton's west side, where he serves as the company's full-time operations director, showing visitors pictures of the mangled armored vehicle he rode in June 2004 near the Syrian border.

"We went over the crest of a hill and hit an anti-tank mine,'' he said. "Blew the whole left front off the vehicle. There were five Purple Hearts awarded out of that one blast.''

No one died in the blast. Roberto downplays his own injuries - "some cuts and scrapes,'' a busted eardrum, compressed vertebrae.

"But I look at that picture, and I know it could have been a lot worse,'' he said. "If I'd been riding with my arm out the window, like I usually do, I would have lost an arm for sure.''

When he returned, a friend in Springboro - another combat-wounded Marine - encouraged him to join the Springboro chapter. He decided instead to become a member of the chapter in his hometown of Cheviot.

"I've been in the Marines a long time, and I've heard a lot of old war stories from other generations,'' Roberto said. "I could never identify with them. But now I can walk in a room with a bunch of old guys and listen to them talk about Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Bulge, Pelelieu, and I understand. It's like I was right there with them.''

Brondhaver, 37, a soldier from Union Township, has the same feeling when he mixes with the old soldiers, Marines and airmen of Chapter 3620.

Jan. 10, about 20 members of Chapter 3620 gathered for their monthly meeting at Harvest Home Lodge, and Brondhaver was asked to get up and tell his story - a story of life-threatening injuries, a story of watching a good friend die. The chapter always has a speaker at its monthly meetings to talk about one military topic or another - this time, though, it was one of their own.

He was in Iraq in July 2004 with the Ohio National Guard's 216th Engineer Battalion, on patrol when a rocket-propelled grenade tore through his Humvee, killing his friend, Pfc. Samuel Bowen, instantly, then slamming into the fully-loaded M-16 rifle Brondhaver carried.

Shrapnel from the grenade and bullets from his own rifle exploded, leaving about 300 pieces of metal in his body.

'The Man'

Brondhaver has recounted his story many times to civic and church groups, each time telling his audience how he believed that God had spared him for a purpose and how thankful he is to be back home with his wife and children.

But this speech was different - instead of talking to civilians for whom the horrors of war are a remote and unreal thing, he was talking to men who had shared the kind of pain and sacrifice he went through.

It was a room full of heroes.

There was Dick Kist of Whitewater Township, who, as a young Marine, looked up from his foxhole to see the American flag raised over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima nearly 61 years ago; Jesse Willingham of Deer Park, who, 55 years ago, was a soldier in the Army's last all-black regiment, taking a bullet and enduring frostbite at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea; Bill Ahrens, the helicopter pilot wounded delivering and then extracting airborne troops in the jungles of Vietnam.

"I know each one of you has friends who didn't come home, just like me,'' Brondhaver said, choking back tears as he spoke. "We all woke up this morning with something in common: our freedom.

"Everyone in this room knows the price we paid for that freedom.''

After the speech, the older men walked up to the Iraq veteran to pat him on the back or pump his hand.

Brondhaver, who works for the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, went through the chapter's chow line with Keontay Jackson, the 13-year-old South Fairmount boy he has mentored since Keontay was 5. They loaded paper plates with fried chicken and potato salad and sat down at a table with two World War II veterans, Roger Laib of Mount Healthy and Bill Huth of Monfort Heights.

The men chatted about Iraq, the war the older men fought 60 years ago and the knee injury of Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer.

"You know,'' Brondhaver said, finishing off a chicken breast, "usually when I make a speech about Iraq, I walk into the room, and I'm 'The Man.' Everybody looks at me and says, 'You're the man.'

"Well, I'm not 'The Man' in this room. Everybody in this room is 'The Man.' "

Ellie