PDA

View Full Version : After seeing the 9/11 attacks on television,



thedrifter
03-12-06, 05:48 AM
The Herald News -

After seeing the 9/11 attacks on television, Stephen Foster knew what he had to do

our years ago, Stephen Foster was a junior at Lincoln-Way Central High School.

The New Lenox teen had his mind made up. Watching the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, unfold while sitting in school with his classmates, Foster decided he needed to do something for his country.

He asked his mother if he could join the Marines. She asked him to wait until he was 18.

Foster enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps delayed entry program in July 2002. He left for boot camp soon after he graduated from Lincoln-Way in June 2003.

His buddies didn't get it.

"Some of my friends didn't believe it. They were like, 'Why would you do that?'" said Foster, 21.

"It's something I have to do. I could do anything in the world, but if I don't do this, who's going to do it?"

He spent about 10 months training in radar repair, his military specialty, at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

, before he learned his squadron was heading to the American military base Al Asad in Iraq.

"We were nervous, worried. Because you don't know what's happening," said his mother, Chris Stanford of New Lenox. A friend whose son was also in the military told her that Al Asad was the safest place to be in Iraq, which eased her mind a little.

While he was in Iraq, communication flowed easily between Foster and his family — his mother; his father, Larry Foster; sisters Nicole Foster, 24, and Ashley Stanford, 15; and brother Jacob Foster, 6 — which also helped.

"He could call, he could e-mail. I could type him a letter, and they would print it out and give it to him," Stanford said. "To me, it was just like he was in North Carolina."

On Foster's end, it was more like Twentynine Palms.

"We landed, and it was like school — flat, desert," he said. "The unknown was a big thing. We didn't know what to expect."

But the transition in Iraq was easy, he said.

Foster's squadron worked as a support crew, fixing whatever broke, running errands and ensuring that base operations ran smoothly. Foster also volunteered to spend several days guarding a Marine chaplain on a trip to Al Qaim, where the chaplain held a prayer service for the troops the night before a big operation.

Last month, Foster came home from Iraq a corporal, promoted for his work ethic overseas. He recently presented Mayor Mike Smith, a Marine veteran, and the village an American flag that was flown over Al Asad.

While his service in Iraq was safely uneventful — spent a good distance from the Marines sleeping in the sand on the front lines — Foster said the military experience has changed him.

"I matured real fast. I left after I graduated, and when I came back it was so much different," he said, comparing his journey to his civilian buddies' post-graduation summer.

Foster headed back to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C., this month. He said he's looking forward to a return to civilian life, going to college and becoming an electrician, when his enlistment ends in 2008.

"I won't do it again. It's hard. Hard being away, hard on my family," Foster said. "I'm very proud that I can be called a Marine. I'm so proud of this country, that we're helping."

03/12/06

Ellie