thedrifter
01-27-06, 06:42 AM
Local Marine set for 3rd tour
Friday, January 27, 2006
By Jim Six
jimsix@sjnewsco.com
Delsea Regional High School grad Mike Collins is preparing to go to Iraq -- for his third tour of duty there.
He's going back "Because it's my job," Collins said Thursday in a telephone interview from California, where he's training at 29 Palms.
Collins, a Marine sergeant, graduated from Delsea in 1997. He served his first tour in Iraq in 2003.
He returned to the war zone and served a second tour in Fallujah last year.
His job, he explained, is tracking down and arresting HVTs -- high-value targets.
Last year, he received a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medal for taking part in Operation Clear Decision, detaining 20 insurgents and locating four weapons caches, including the biggest arms cache found since the beginning of the war.
Once the engineers dug it up, the underground cache was found to include more than 200 155mm rounds used to make improvised explosive devices or IEDs, 20 armor-piercing 25mm rounds, 82mm mortar rounds with a firing tube, 40mm mortar rounds, 60mm mortar rounds and about 100 Russian helicopter-fired rockets that insurgents usually rig to fire from an on-ground rail system.
When he returns to Iraq for this third tour, Collins will be in Ramadi.
The Franklin Township Marine is stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. In recent time off, he said, he'd been helping his girlfriend's family fix up the family farm in Folsom, La. -- about 30 minutes north of New Orleans.
His girlfriend wasn't crazy about him returning to Iraq until he introduced her to the men in his platoon. They're the reason he's going back, he told her.
Last year, when he returned from Iraq in August, he wasn't sure he'd want to sign up for a third trip to the combat zone.
"My Marines changed my mind," he said. Collins, a squad leader, has 13 men under his command. They're the same guys he worked with during his last tour -- when they successfully apprehended some HVTs.
He'd have nine years in the Marine Corps in September, but he just re-enlisted for another four years, he said.
He's got another couple of weeks of training to go through in California. He'll then return to Lejeune, but expects to be in Ramadi by early March.
"I love what I do," Collins said. "I wouldn't change anything for the world."
Collins said he knows his family will be concerned about his safety, but said they support him and his decision to return to the war completely.
"I just keep telling them I'll be fine and nothing's going to happen to me," Collins said.
Ellie
Friday, January 27, 2006
By Jim Six
jimsix@sjnewsco.com
Delsea Regional High School grad Mike Collins is preparing to go to Iraq -- for his third tour of duty there.
He's going back "Because it's my job," Collins said Thursday in a telephone interview from California, where he's training at 29 Palms.
Collins, a Marine sergeant, graduated from Delsea in 1997. He served his first tour in Iraq in 2003.
He returned to the war zone and served a second tour in Fallujah last year.
His job, he explained, is tracking down and arresting HVTs -- high-value targets.
Last year, he received a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medal for taking part in Operation Clear Decision, detaining 20 insurgents and locating four weapons caches, including the biggest arms cache found since the beginning of the war.
Once the engineers dug it up, the underground cache was found to include more than 200 155mm rounds used to make improvised explosive devices or IEDs, 20 armor-piercing 25mm rounds, 82mm mortar rounds with a firing tube, 40mm mortar rounds, 60mm mortar rounds and about 100 Russian helicopter-fired rockets that insurgents usually rig to fire from an on-ground rail system.
When he returns to Iraq for this third tour, Collins will be in Ramadi.
The Franklin Township Marine is stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. In recent time off, he said, he'd been helping his girlfriend's family fix up the family farm in Folsom, La. -- about 30 minutes north of New Orleans.
His girlfriend wasn't crazy about him returning to Iraq until he introduced her to the men in his platoon. They're the reason he's going back, he told her.
Last year, when he returned from Iraq in August, he wasn't sure he'd want to sign up for a third trip to the combat zone.
"My Marines changed my mind," he said. Collins, a squad leader, has 13 men under his command. They're the same guys he worked with during his last tour -- when they successfully apprehended some HVTs.
He'd have nine years in the Marine Corps in September, but he just re-enlisted for another four years, he said.
He's got another couple of weeks of training to go through in California. He'll then return to Lejeune, but expects to be in Ramadi by early March.
"I love what I do," Collins said. "I wouldn't change anything for the world."
Collins said he knows his family will be concerned about his safety, but said they support him and his decision to return to the war completely.
"I just keep telling them I'll be fine and nothing's going to happen to me," Collins said.
Ellie