Combat Diary The Marines Of Lima Company

[thedrifter]

May 5, 2006
RealityTVWebsite.com

Dramatic Reality Documentary COMBAT DIARY THE MARINES OF LIMA COMPANY Announced - Iraq War

An Emotional Two-Hour Documentary Featuring Video Shot by the Marines of Lima Company - the Hardest Hit Unit in the Iraq War

A&E Network presents an unflinching look at the war in Iraq, as seen through the eyes of the Marines of Lima Company. Featuring candid interviews and never-before-seen video, COMBAT DIARY: THE MARINES OF LIMA COMPANY tells the story of a reserve unit out of Columbus, Ohio, that was deployed to Iraq from February 28-September 30, 2005. This two-hour documentary, which captures significant moments from their tour of duty, including dramatic combat missions, makes its World Premiere May 25, 9-11PM/8C.

During the seven months it spent in Iraq, Lima Company was harder hit than any other combat unit. Out of a company of 184 Marines, 23 died in combat. Last August alone, 11 Marines from Lima were killed when their vehicle hit an IED-an improvised explosive device. It was the single worst roadside bombing in the three-year-old war.

COMBAT DIARY tells the story of the men who died - and those who survived. And it tells the story in a unique way - using footage shot by the Marines. "As we discovered, almost every Marine in Lima Company went to war with a video camera," says award-winning director and producer Michael Epstein, Viewfinder Productions. "They shot video of everything - playing around in their barracks, firefights, road-side explosions and video letters home."

"This is why this film is so incredibly powerful" said Nancy Dubuc, SVP, Non-Fiction & Alternative Programming, A&E Network. "The story is told by the Marines themselves. We see the war, literally, through their eyes. That′s what sets it apart from other war films."

"The Marines of Lima Company never intended this footage to be made public," explains Epstein. "It was shot for themselves, for their families. It′s vastly different than footage you see from imbedded reportersÑor even footage shot with the intent of later being folded into a film. This is one company′s unfiltered experience of war."

In telling the story, the filmmakers were careful to avoid any political agenda. "Our job wasn′t to tell everyone what we think about the war in Iraq," says producer Jonathan Yellen, Viewfinder Productions, who is also a former Marine and a veteran of Desert Storm. "We felt that there was an important story that needed to be told, one that had nothing to do with partisan politics."

COMBAT DIARY is a film with unprecedented power to put the viewer on the ground in Iraq. It is a fitting tribute to the Marines of Lima Company. And, as the nation prepares to honor its dead this Memorial Day, it is a poignant reminder of the sacrifices paid by the men and women in our armed services.

Photo Credits A&E Network

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Sergeant still looking out for his Marines

By TOM STAFFORD COMMUNITY NEWS EDITOR

ZANESFIELD — Gunny Bowman is still looking out for his Marines.

Saturday he was doing it with a cell phone rather than a rifle and at the Zanesfield Rod and Gun Club rather than in Iraq.

But his concern for them during their adjustment to civilian life is the same as it was last May 8 in Ubaydi, Iraq, when the Marine officially known as Gunnery Sgt. Larry R. Bowman was pulling Lance Cpl. Beau Links to a safer position during an operation to clear houses in a neighborhood of unfriendlies.

A grenade went off less than five meters away, hot peppering Bowman’s right side with shrapnel and rocketing a chunk of metal into his left calf.

The member of Ohio’s Lima Company remembers the time, 11:45 a.m., because “we had just put a tourniquet on one of my Marines,” he said.

Although Bowman bled profusely, it wasn’t until a corporal was giving him buddy aid at a casualty collection point that the severity of his wound became apparent.

Said Bowman, “I remember I asked for a cigarette, and then I passed out.”

The main artery supplying blood to his lower leg had been shredded.

Bowman said he’d likely have bled out had not the swelling in the leg cut off the blood flow.

At Al Asad, then Baghdad, then Landstuhl, Germany, and eventually at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Bowman got the treatment needed: a fasciotomy to open up the leg and allow the tissue to expand so it could survive, then the needed additional surgeries and follow up care.

There was pain to endure, of course, and the difficulties of the injury.

But the worst day was the day he learned that Staff Sgt. Anthony Goodwin had been killed the same day Bowman was injured.

Goodwin was among the first of 23 unit members killed during Lima Company’s service from January to October of last year. An additional 34 were wounded.

“He was a platoon sergeant like myself,” Bowman said. When killed, Goodwin also part of the same operation, Operatoin Matador, which is remembered on the license plates of Bowman’s silver-gray Mustang.

Although Goodwin had joined Lima Company when it was in Iraq, Bowman said, “he was quickly becoming my best friend.”

Like Bowman, who is 36, Goodwin was older than most of the younger Marines.

And the fact that the two older guys would sing “Air Supply” songs in unison not only made the two of them laugh and bond, “it gave the junior Marines a kick,” Bowman said.

The news of Goodwin’s death was difficult enough for Bowman.

Reading it in the pages of “Stars and Stripes” took the air out of him.

“It’s a lot harder than having a friend tell you.”

Although Gunny Bowman qualified to leave the Marines on medical disability, he both pushed for and exercised his option to remain on active duty.

On military leave from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Bowman said he’s not had enough of the Marines.

He has a sense of serving his country in a noble cause and of protecting the freedoms even of those who take their freedom for granted.

He supports President George Bush as a man “who stands by his principles” and understands what it takes to defend a nation.

And he says those who haven’t looked into the eyes of Iraqis who have thanked him for protecting them and their families “have no right to tell me” the work is not worthy.

“A man in the right place at the right time can save lives,” Bowman said, “and that’s the whole reason I’m in the Marine Corps.”

Cleared recently after a final appointment at Bethesda, Bowman returned again to his office at Rickenbacker Air Force Base, Columbus.

In addition to strengthening his leg and learning to live with nerve and tendon damage, he’s working with Corpsman 1st Class George Wentworth on the Wounded Warrior Program.

The program can involve anything from arranging financial support and recommending counselors to helping an injured Marine get his lawn mowed, Bowman said.

The lion’s share, however, is “just to be there as somebody to listen to Marines who have been through the same experiences. A lot of this you don’t want to talk about with family members or spouses.”

With most of the unit back in the reserve routine of weekend gatherings and annual training, Saturday’s outing at the Zanesfield Rod and Gun Club was planned as a pleasure event — and an opportunity to gather the first anniversary of the unit’s first deaths, Goodwin’s included.

(Springfielder Mike Ross is the rod and gun club’s president this year, and locals on the statewide membership roster include Tom Loftis, Hal Goodrich and Dick Kuss.)

Although the rain hampered attendance on Saturday, another opportunity to gather is not far off.

At 9 p.m. May 25, A&E will air a two-hour documentary about Lima Company and its service in Iraq, much of the combat footage shot by unit members on their hand-held cameras.

Two days before the national airing, unit members will preview it in Columbus.

Gunny Bowman will be there, of course.

He’ll be watching the show — and looking out for his Marines.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 22, 2006
A&E to air raw, moving portrait of ‘Lucky’ Marines

By Rob Colenso Jr.
Times staff writer

You probably remember the stories of “Lucky Lima.”

The company from 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, a Reserve outfit out of Columbus, Ohio, deployed to Iraq in March 2005 with 184 Marines, the last of nine Marine Corps Reserve infantry battalions to be called up for war.

By the end of its seven-month tour, about one in three leathernecks with the company had been killed or wounded.

In all, 59 Purple Hearts were awarded to Lima Marines, 23 of them posthumously. The company’s collective losses galvanized the Columbus community of Brook Park — and the nation as a whole.


You may have heard about the company’s role in Operation Spear in Karabilah, a city near the Syrian border that had become a base of operations for foreign fighters.

And you probably saw the smoking aftermath of the amphibious assault vehicle that hit a roadside explosive so massive that the 23-ton vehicle flipped onto its back and all 11 Lima Company leathernecks inside were killed.

It’s easy to remember the painful things — the images from the nightly news don’t really go away. But you’ve never seen them through the eyes of the Marines who fought there.

Until now.

A new A&E Network documentary set to air May 25, “Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company,” gives viewers a window into their world, largely through video and photos shot by the Marines themselves. As Sgt. Steve Hicks, platoon sergeant for Lima’s 3rd Platoon, puts it at the start of the documentary: “Everybody had a camera.”

And the Marines photographed everything. From pizza-eating contests in their barracks at Iraq’s Haditha Dam to the aftermath of the Aug. 3 explosion that flipped the assault vehicle, the Marines saw — and filmed — it all.

“The Marines of Lima Company never intended this footage to be made public,” said Michael Epstein, who directed and produced the film for Viewfinder Productions. “It’s vastly different than footage you see from embedded reporters — or even footage shot with the intent of later being folded into a film. This is one company’s unfiltered experience of war.”

Epstein’s spare, unadorned production allows the Marines to tell their own tales of success, frustration and loss. Follow-up interviews after the battalion’s return from Iraq and interviews with the parents and spouses of Marines killed in combat help bring richness and depth to the combat footage.

In one scene, a camera follows Stephanie Derga to a bar in the Columbus area. Her son, Cpl. Dustin Derga, 24, was killed May 8, 2005, shot in the back with an armor-piercing round during Operation Matador on the Iraq-Syria border. The bar is a popular hangout for Lima Company’s Marines — they spend more time with one another than they do with civilians now that they’re back from war — and Derga prefers to spend time with them as well.

At the start of the documentary, Lance Cpl. Trevor Smith tells the viewer, “I don’t really talk to people about what happened.”

But throughout, it becomes clear that the Marines want to tell their story, to be remembered as more than “the company that lost so many Marines.” They talk of the relationships they built with Iraqi soldiers, moving from early skepticism to loose bonds of friendship in the crucible of combat.

They cite the improved Iraqi turnout between the two elections that bracketed their seven-month deployment, noting that the rise in participation is thanks, at least in part, to their efforts during that long summer.

“I just want people to remember them for what they did, not because they died,” Smith says as the documentary draws to its close.

“Combat Diary” doesn’t explore the details of the battles Lima Company fought to the same depth that it does the stories of the company’s wounded and fallen. But it does provide a stark, honest and gripping portrait of idealism tempered by the pain of brothers lost in war.

“Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company” airs at 9 p.m. Eastern time May 25 on the A&E Network.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Borrowed from Hubby

A Marine Corps Story as Told From the Good Seats
File Under: Getting it from the hroses mouth...

http://www.juggernuts.com/more.php?id=5097_0_1_0_M

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Worth the tears
Saturday, May 20, 2006
BY JACQUELINE CUTLER
For the Star-Ledger

Usually when we watch television with the kids, it's for amusement. Every so often, however, we tune into a show that makes us cry.

"Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company" (A&E, Thursday at 9 p.m.) is well worth the tears. Regardless of one's feelings about the war, this is an intimate look at Marines as they talk candidly about their fallen comrades.

The Marines of Lima Company, a reserve unit from Columbus, Ohio had more men killed than any other division. From February through September of last year, 59 of the unit's 184 men received Purple Hearts; 23 were awarded posthumously.

Marines recorded one another during down times doing dumb things, like trying to eat 15 mini pizzas. The film jump-starts when they take their video cameras into war. Though blood is not shown, parents should be warned that curses slip in; these are Marines under fire, and if cursing were ever not gratuitous, this is it.

What makes this so different from the nightly news is that we get to know the men, especially those who died. Young widow Laura Youngblood, who was pregnant with a daughter and had a 5-year-old son when her husband, Travis, was killed, says, "Travis was one of those guys no one could not like. If they ever do a movie, Drew Carey would play him."

As poignant as the stories are, the shots of the war, hearing bullets at such close range, watching tanks go up in fire, are most gripping. The men are philosophical, and very open. "In the reserves, you are not prepared to see death," says Maj. Stephen Lawson. "We forget that when you go to war, the end result will be to see people dying."

If possible, watch this to the credits, when the names of the fallen are listed. This isn't for the youngest in the house, but anyone old enough to think about the war will benefit from it.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Window opens on Marines' thoughts
"Combat Diary" visits Lima Company in Iraq and afterward, seeing their best and worst.

By Tony Perry, Times Staff Writer

Marine Sgt. Phillip Jolly, in the masterful documentary "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," set for Thursday on A&E, explains the exhilaration of combat — and the horror that soon follows.

"In the beginning," he says, "it's the best thing ever, it's awesome, you want it every day. But once the bad stuff starts happening, you'll have some of the worst days of your life."

Lima Company, reservists based in Columbus, Ohio, had both experiences during the unit's deployment to Iraq last year. Of 184 Marines in the company, 23 died in combat and 36 others were wounded badly enough to receive Purple Hearts.

As part of the 3rd battalion, 25th regiment, the Marines patrolled insurgent strongholds along the Euphrates River Valley and the Syrian border, a region that gets scant news coverage but is referred to by Marines as the "wild west."

Veteran filmmaker Michael Epstein, in researching the story of Lima Company, found a journalistic mother lode: amateur video shot by the Marines of their training, their off-hours horseplay, their firefights and even the flames that engulfed one of their vehicles after it hit a hidden roadside bomb, killing 11 Marines.

From those videos, and their own long, thoughtful interviews with the returning troops, Epstein and co-producer Jonathan Yellen have created a two-hour documentary of young men and war that tells not just how Marines fight but, in large measure, why. Yellen, a former Marine, is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War.

Attention to detail is an Epstein trademark. His "Antietam" was the first and best of the recent 10-part series on the History Channel, "10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America."

"Diary" is right in its details about combat in Iraq and, more challengingly, pitch perfect in its nuance in what makes the Marine Corps, active-duty or reserve, unique as a military service.

The Marines of Lima Company enlisted to fight. And were disappointed when they figured deployment to Iraq would be boring sentry duty. "We were going to be stuck on the wire," one says.

It didn't work out that way. "Diary" catches the rhythm of a frontline deployment, heart-pounding firefights followed by pizza-eating contests back at base, in this case the Soviet-built Haditha Dam.

"Brotherhood" is a paltry word to describe the bonds that form between the troops. Gunnery Sgt. Shawn Delgado remembered the day Navy corpsman Travis Youngblood was hit:

"His last words to me were, 'Tell the guys I will be back. Don't get another corpsman, I'll be back.' " Youngblood died within minutes.

In the videos shot in Iraq, the Marines are high-spirited and youthfully profane. In the interviews done by Epstein and crew, they've had time to reflect on the meaning of war.

Slowly, painfully, Sgt. Guy Zierk tells of kicking in the door of an insurgent house and, filled with rage over the death of his buddies, coming close to killing two women and a teenage boy. At the last moment, he pulls back.

"It would make me no better than the people we're trying to fight," he says.

"Diary" is free of politics. Epstein knows that foreign policy has little to do with why men keep fighting.

Lance Cpl. Travis Williams, interviewed while fishing in Montana, explains why he wants to return to Iraq.

"I want revenge, and I want to be there for my friends when they go back," he says.

"If something happens to my friends and I'm sitting back here — I don't think I could live with that."

*

Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company'

Where: A&E

When: 9 to 11 p.m. Thursday.

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

[thedrifter]

Families, Marines Watch Documentary Of Hard-Hit Unit
POSTED: 8:32 am EDT May 24, 2006
UPDATED: 8:49 am EDT May 24, 2006

COLUMBUS -- Bethany Lyons gets caught off guard whenever she hears the recorded voice of her husband, a Marine who died in Iraq.

She saw her husband again, and listened to his voice, on video clips Tuesday night at an emotional and somber screening of a new documentary on the Columbus-based Lima Company, which lost 16 members, including Lance Cpl. Christopher Lyons.

More than 300 family and friends attended the private event. One woman walked out of a theater crying, her hands covering her face. Dozens of others used handkerchiefs to wipe their red eyes.

John Dyer's son Christopher was one of five Tri-State residents who were killed while the unit was deployed. (see sidebar for more information)

"Couple of times I was thinking my son would have enjoyed watching it with me. I obviously wish I could watch it with him," he said.

The film, "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," uses personal video shot by the Marines, and debuts Thursday on the A&E Network.

Lima Company has received much media attention, but this is the first documentary about the unit, part of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines based in Brook Park, said Maj. Kirk Greiner.

The Marines provided director and producer Michael Epstein with hours of footage.

Epstein said he and co-producer Jonathan Yellen, a former Marine who served during Desert Storm, wanted to cover the war in a different way.

"Everybody was focusing on the number dead," he said. "What people knew was that they had died, not what they accomplished in Iraq or who they were."

The video footage captures the Marines in some of their most candid moments because it was filmed for personal use, Epstein said.

In one, the late Cpl. Andre Williams makes a video for his daughter's sixth birthday, Epstein said. In another, Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem takes part in a pizza-eating contest.
Bloem was one of 14 Marines killed in a roadside bombing Aug. 3. Nine were from Lima Company, and Bloem and another Marine were serving as part of the unit while in Iraq.

Williams died July 28 along with another Lima Company Marine when his unit was attacked with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades in western Iraq.

Other documentaries about the Iraq war have focused on post-traumatic stress disorder and a war medical unit. Another, "The War Tapes," directed by Deborah Scranton, also featured footage shot by troops -- members of the New Hampshire National Guard.

The rest of the Lima Company documentary is based on 22 hours of interviews with 15 Marines who survived the ordeal, including Maj. Stephen Lawson, the company's commander.

"I was grateful and really startled at the depth of their honesty," Epstein said. "They really held nothing back ... They just needed to talk."

Those interviewed represent a cross-section of the company, coming from various platoons and ranks, Greiner said.

Epstein said the documentary shows a unit whose "cavalier" video-game attitude about war becomes "weathered and emotionally beaten" as fellow Marines die. In addition to the 16 based with Lima Company, seven others serving as part of the unit in Iraq also were killed.

Staff Sgt. Steve Hicks, 33, of Columbus, was one of the Marines interviewed for the film. He said he was apprehensive about working with the filmmakers because he didn't know what to expect. But he's pleased with the result.

"I liked every bit of it because it was something we lived for seven months," Hicks said. "Seeing in it this two-hour documentary puts it all together."

The documentary follows the Marines as they readjust at home as well as the effect the company's experience in Iraq had on Ohio communities, Epstein said.

"Because it's an all-volunteer service most of us ... are very, very removed from the daily life of war," Epstein said. "The country is so removed from the sacrifice of war.

"I'm hopeful the film gives people a greater sense of intimacy."

But Bethany Lyons said it was therapeutic.

"I love seeing the boys," said Lyons, 24, of Ashland. "They know they're all my Marines because they took care of Christopher when I couldn't be there, and for that, they're all my heroes."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines open up on 'Combat Diary'
Tony Perry / Los Angeles Times

Marine Sgt. Phillip Jolly, in the masterful documentary "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," set for today on A&E, explains the exhilaration of combat -- and the horror that soon follows.

"In the beginning," he says, "it's the best thing ever, it's awesome, you want it every day. But once the bad stuff starts happening, you'll have some of the worst days of your life."

Lima Company, reservists based in Columbus, Ohio, had both experiences during the unit's deployment to Iraq last year. Of 184 Marines in the company, 23 died in combat and 36 others were wounded badly enough to receive Purple Hearts.

As part of the 3rd battalion, 25th regiment, the Marines patrolled insurgent strongholds along the Euphrates River Valley and the Syrian border, a region that gets scant news coverage, but is referred to by Marines as the "wild west."

Veteran filmmaker Michael Epstein, in researching the story of Lima Company, found a journalistic mother lode: amateur video shot by the Marines of their training, their off-hours horseplay, their firefights and even the flames that engulfed one of their vehicles after it hit a hidden roadside bomb, killing 11 Marines.

From those videos, and their own long, thoughtful interviews with the returning troops, Epstein and co-producer Jonathan Yellen have created a two-hour documentary of young men and war that tells not just how Marines fight but, in large measure, why. Yellen, a former Marine, is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War.

Attention to detail is an Epstein trademark. His "Antietam" was the first and best of the recent 10-part series on the History Channel, "10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America."

"Diary" is right in its details about combat in Iraq and, more challengingly, pitch-perfect in its nuance in what makes the Marine Corps, active-duty or reserve, unique as a military service.

The Marines of Lima Company enlisted to fight. And were disappointed when they figured deployment to Iraq would be boring sentry duty. "We were going to be stuck on the wire," one says.

It didn't work out that way. "Diary" catches the rhythm of a frontline deployment, heart-pounding firefights followed by pizza-eating contests back at base, in this case the Soviet-built Haditha Dam.

"Brotherhood" is a paltry word to describe the bonds that form between the troops. Gunnery Sgt. Shawn Delgado remembered the day Navy corpsman Travis Youngblood was hit:

"His last words to me were, 'Tell the guys I will be back. Don't get another corpsman, I'll be back.' He died within minutes."

In the videos shot in Iraq, the Marines are high-spirited and youthfully profane. In the interviews done by Epstein and crews, they've had time to reflect on the meaning of war.

Slowly, painfully, Sgt. Guy Zierk tells of kicking in the door of an insurgent house and, filled with rage over the death of his buddies, coming close to killing two women and a teenage boy. At the last possible moment, he pulls back.

"It would make me no better than the people we're trying to fight," he says.

"Diary" is free of politics. Epstein knows that foreign policy has little to do with why men keep fighting.

Lance Cpl. Travis Williams, interviewed while fishing in Montana, explains why he wants to return to Iraq.

"I want revenge, and I want to be there for my friends when they go back," he says.

"If something happens to my friends and I'm sitting back here -- I don't think I could live with that."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

'Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company'
9 p.m. today on A&E;)

[thedrifter]

TELEVISION
Film's video footage brings home the loss of Marines in Iraq
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Chuck Yarborough
Plain Dealer Reporter

In an early episode of "M"A"S"H," Henry Blake tells Hawkeye Pierce that in war, Rule No. 1 is that young men die.

It is a lesson from television that an entire video generation knows all too well from the Iraq war. And it is a lesson brought heartbreakingly home in "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," using sometimes funny and sometimes frightening footage made by the young men themselves.

Lima Company, from the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, is a Columbus-based reserve unit that was deployed to Iraq from Feb. 28 to Sept. 30, 2005. The battalion also includes Marines based in Brook Park, some of whom served with Lima Company. In the seven months Lima Company was in Iraq, 23 members were killed. No combat unit in the entire war has suffered such horrendous casualties during a single deployment.

The film, produced for A&E Network and airing at 9 tonight, uses starkly lit interviews of Marines discussing the missions and the friends they lost carrying them out. But it is the Marines' own videos that showcase the real losses. There's Cpl. Dustin Derga, the first of their number to die, mugging for the camera. His smile is infectious, and he looks -- they all look -- invincible.

There are shots on the plane bound for Iraq, where video cameras seem to outnumber M16s. It is those cameras that capture the terrible journey of the young men of Lima Company. The faces in those early videos are unlined, full of anticipation and joy at what at first seemed to be a real-life PlayStation game. As one young Marine said in his post-deployment interview, "Before anybody got hurt, it was almost fun."

And then?

"Then once some of the bad stuff started happening, you'll have some of the worst days of your life."

As the film wears on, those home videos still show young faces, but the eyes begin to age and wither. Those first giddy images segue to ones of an emotional exhaustion that's almost palpable. Even those who survived have died.

For Derga, the end came when an Iraqi insurgent shot him in the back with an armor-piercing round. The hole made the pressure dressing his fellow Marines tried to apply virtually useless. Lance Cpl. Trevor Smith fought tears as he told the off-camera interviewer how the gunnery sergeant passed along word the next day that Smith's best friend, his hangout buddy back in Columbus, "didn't . . . didn't . . . didn't make it."

In one of several cutaways to interviews with family members, Derga's mother talks about spending time at a Columbus-area bar her son and his friends frequented. Stephanie Derga said she's not a bar person, but it's the one place she can go to connect to her son. Her ex-husband, Bob, and Derga's stepmother, in a bit that featured family photos of Dustin in an Ohio State sweat shirt and as a beaming toddler at Christmas, said they find solace in their knowledge that Derga is now in heaven.

"Me and Bob have different ideas on that,"' Stephanie Derga said, as tears clouded her eyes.

It's a moment as heart-wrenching as when filmmakers show Beckie Dixon playing the answering-machine tape of her 18-year-old son Christopher's last call home. Dixon was one of four men killed by an improvised explosive device. He died crying for his friend, Lance Cpl. Mark Camp, to pull him from the fiery blast.

Camp's description of the death captures how each Lima Company casualty affected the surviving Marines. The wartime function of any soldier, Marine or sailor, is to make sure his buddy comes back alive. Politics -- should we be here, shouldn't we be here -- becomes moot. There are sons and daughters who've never been seen. Loves that await rekindling. Dreams that need realizing.

A lot of dreams will go unrealized after Aug. 3, 2005. Eleven Lima Company Marines, among them Cleveland's own Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder, died when a roadside bomb blew up their amphibious assault vehicle. It was the deadliest day in Lima Company's seven months in Iraq and the deadliest single roadside bombing of coalition forces during the war.

"Lima's legacy is that we lost a lot of people over there, and not our accomplishments," said one of the young Marines who survived the tour. "And that's not right because our accomplishments are their accomplishments."

Lima Company went to Iraq with 184 men. Those 184 men earned 59 Purple Hearts. Twenty-three of those were awarded posthumously.

The unit already has begun training to return to the fight. That these young men have the courage to do that might be Lima Company's greatest accomplishment.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

cyarborough@plaind.com, 216-999-4534

[thedrifter]

Local soldier hopes documentary opens eyes to military work in Iraq

By JOSIE McCORMICK
Staff Writer

COSHOCTON - Debbie Brill will get a glimpse of what her son went through in Iraq when the documentary, "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," airs on A&E.

"Our family plans to watch May 25th ... reliving events that we remember all too well ... and preparing to absorb details that we may have been mercifully unaware of at the time," Brill said.

Her son, Sgt. Travis Brill, a Ridgewood High School graduate, is a member of the Weapons Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment of the U.S. Marine Corps out of Columbus. He did a seven-month tour of duty with the battalion in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The battalion, which also has units in Brook Park and Akron, Moundsville, W.Va., and Buffalo, N.Y., lost 20 Marines in three days while overseas.

From what Travis has heard, the documentary will focus on the Marines from his battalion who were killed in action.

"It's going to be rough to watch," he said. "I have mixed emotions about it right now."

Travis, however, hopes the stories told will open people's eyes to how hard the military is working in Iraq and the good it is trying to do. Debbie believes the documentary will do just that.

"I am guessing it will deepen appreciation for what our sons and daughters in the military give of themselves," she said. "From what I have read about the film, it is compiled from footage shot by the Marines themselves ... not a film with any political agenda."

Debbie and her husband, Tom, are proud of Travis for serving his country and for being awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor.

"We are proud of him of course and happy that the Marine Corps also recognizes his bravery and patriotism during his time on the front lines in Iraq," Debbie said.

Travis and his wife, Teri, have a son, Kaden, and daughter, Cami, who was born while he was deployed.

"That was great getting to see her," Travis said. "I was looking forward to it. I hated to miss her birth."

"Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company," is rated TVPG and has a running time of 120 minutes.

jmccormick@nncogannett.com
295-3417

Originally published May 24, 2006

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Coming on soon....
Recorder Time....

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Film captures Ohio Marines
Documentary shows soldiers through own photos, videos

By HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

COLUMBUS -- As Jim Dyer, of Evendale, walked into a dark theater Tuesday night to watch a film on Lima Company, his son's Marine Reserve unit, what he wanted more than anything was the one thing he could not have: his son Christopher at his side.

Instead, what he saw was his son on a movie screen -- a short, choppy piece of videotape from a hand-held camera, an image of a handsome, gap-toothed Marine relaxing with his fellow Marines in bivouac, strumming a guitar and singing "Puff the Magic Dragon."

The scene was filmed in August, not long before the 19-year-old Princeton High School graduate and 10 of his comrades took off down a dusty road near Haditha in western Iraq in a 30-ton amphibious assault vehicle. They hit a land mine and died -- all of them -- in a massive explosion.

Dyer did not know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of his son, the musician and would-be pilot whose dreams ended that day, clowning for the camera.

"I laughed," Dyer said. "It was all I could laugh about."

Dyer and more than 300 other Marines and family members gathered Tuesday night at the Arena Grand Theater in Columbus for an emotional private screening by the producers of "Combat Diary: The Marines of Lima Company."

Tonight, on the A&E cable network, the nation will see and hear the story of Lima Company -- those who died and those who returned -- in words and pictures that are largely those of the Marines themselves. The 95-minute documentary -- made up, in large part, of video and photos shot by the Marines themselves -- airs at 9 p.m.

The program chronicles the tour of the 184-member reserve unit that sustained more casualties -- 23 dead, 59 Purple Hearts awarded -- in its seven-month combat tour than any other unit that served in Iraq.
EVERY MAN HAD A CAMERA

Four other Cincinnati area Marines of Lima Company died with Dyer in that Aug. 3 explosion; a sixth died earlier in an explosion of a roadside bomb near Karabilah that killed four Lima Company Marines.

Viewers who knew the young Lima Company Marines from the Cincinnati area will see glimpses of them in the film -- Corp. David Kreuter, mugging for the camera and manning a mounted machine gun as his armored vehicles rumbles down a dusty road.

They will glimpse, too, the smiling face of Lance Corp. Michael Cifuentes, of Oxford, clowning with his buddies and hear him described by his platoon leader as "smart as a whip" and a young man who was "not foul-mouthed like the rest of us."

"This is not the film we set out to make," said director and co-producer Michael Epstein, who attended the reception and screening with his partner, Jonathan Yellen, a former Marine "What we ended up with is unique. I don't believe there has ever been a film on war quite like this."

Epstein said the production team had planned to do a film that would be, for the most part, about the Marines of Lima Company trying to move back into civilian life after almost seven months of nearly non-stop combat, carnage and the deaths of friends.

But Staff Sgt. Steve Hicks, of Columbus, who is interviewed extensively in the documentary, turned over to the production team countless hours of video and photographs he had stored on his computer; and the footage ended up being the basis for the film.

"Every man in the unit had a camera of some kind," Hicks said. "Nobody told us we couldn't, so we did. And we shot everything."

The result was a compilation of intense firefights, bone-rattling explosions, black humor, moments of relaxation and camaraderie.

Carole Hoffman, of Pataskala, said after her son, Sgt. Justin Hoffman, 27, died in the Aug. 3 explosion, a camera with 80 photos on a memory stick was found near the vehicle and sent to her.

"I've seen those pictures and I could see that through them how much these young men meant to each other,'' she said Mrs. Hoffman, shortly before the screening. "They really do love each other. That's what I want people to see when they watch the film. That these young men love each other."
"NOT JUST MARINES"

Gunnery Sgt. Shawn Delgado, of Columbus, watched the film, which included interview clips with him and 14 fellow Lima Company Marines, and he said he was pleased with the result.

"It shows that these are not just Marines, but people too, just like anybody else, with families who love them,'' said Delgado, whose shaved head and chiseled features make him look like the prototype for a "squared-away" Marine. "I hope when people see this they will realize, too, not just how much we lost in Iraq, but how much we accomplished."

After the screening of the 90-minute film Tuesday night, the Marines and their families streamed slowly out of the screening rooms, standing around in small clusters. Tears flowed. Men and women who had been strangers before their sons came together in Lima Company hugged each other.

John Dyer walked out of the theater and found a quiet corner where he sat alone for about 15 minutes, unable to speak.

Afterwards he drifted upstairs into the upper lobby where a small group of reporters and photographers were waited. Head bowed, he still could barely speak, choking back tears.

The film, he said, was a revelation in some ways. He and many other family members learned for the first time that on Aug. 3, Lima Company's commander was told by a tank company the road they would be traveling was clear of roadside bombs and safe.

"That came as a shock to a lot of people, I think," Dyer said.

As painful as it was to watch, Dyer took away something from the film he hopes will make an impression on all of those who watch it on cable television tonight, whether their lives have been touched by the Iraq war or not.

"They'll see how hard it is for these young men to come back after what they saw and what happened to their friends and be civilians again," Dyer said. "They are all changed forever."

Originally published May 25, 2006