thedrifter
09-10-06, 06:23 AM
Death of son turned parents into antiwar activists
William Porter / The Denver Post
Brook Park, Ohio -- Dusk is settling on Lutheran Cemetery. The waning light burnishes the rows of grave markers. Rosemary Palmer kneels before one of them and brushes away evergreen needles and newly mown grass. Her husband, Paul Schroeder, stands nearby, lost in thought.
The name on the tablet belongs to their only son, Marine Lance Cpl. Edward A. "Augie" Schroeder II. He is buried opposite his grandfather, whose name he carried.
Schroeder men have a history of longevity; Augie's great-grandfather died two years shy of the century mark.
Augie died at 23. He was one of 14 Marines -- many from around the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park -- killed Aug. 3, 2005, when a bomb detonated underneath their vehicle in Hadithah, Iraq.
The polished headstone is carved from red granite. It bears the family name and a verse from the fourth Psalm, chiseled in English on one side and German on the other: We lie and sleep completely in peace.
Augie Schroeder has come home. He is at peace.
Now his parents wage a quiet war of their own.
Controversy has dogged the war in Iraq since the United States launched the invasion in March 2003. But while its pros and cons were debated from the start, many feel a watershed in public protest came when the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve unit based in Brook Park, lost 20 members in a three-day span last year. Along with the Aug. 3 casualties, six died Aug. 1.
Not since Vietnam had Americans seen combat deaths hit one town so hard.
"We consider those deaths a tipping point," Schroeder said. "Before then, people were afraid to really speak out."
Schroeder is co-founder of Families of the Fallen for Change, a Cleveland organization backing a measured U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The group has 1,300 members nationwide, Republicans and Democrats alike. Half are veterans. A growing number are parents with children serving in Iraq.
"We opposed this war from the start, but when Augie joined the Marine Corps, we kept quiet so he wouldn't get any fallout," Schroeder said.
The couple began speaking out soon after their son's death. At first they echoed Augie's concerns: There were not enough troops to do the job.
"But we came to realize we were dead wrong" about the entire U.S. foray into Iraq, Schroeder said.
Augie complained that soldiering in Iraq had eroded into a deadly game of Whac-A-Mole. He was killed on his fifth mission to Hadithah. Four times before, his unit had entered the city, trying to secure it.
Since then, his parents have argued for Congress to set a timetable for withdrawal.
"The whole point of this is to find a middle ground to maintain credibility with both sides," Schroeder said. "We feel a call for an immediate pullout would be a mistake and create another vacuum."
The couple praise the military but are furious at the administration.
"We think the war was a mistake, an overreaction and poorly planned," Schroeder said. "If they'd done it like the Army said they should, I think they could have been in and out in a year."
Brook Park's armory is home to the "Three-Deuce-Five," the 1,200-strong 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines.
A few paces from its doors, a breeze snaps the Marine Corps' scarlet-and-gold flag. It flies over a memorial to the Marines the unit has lost in Iraq: Each of 48 bricks bears a name and the Corps' globe-and-anchor seal.
Capt. Jeffrey Cisek is assigned to the armory. His captain's bars were pinned on him in its main hallway Aug. 1.
Cisek is 27, an affable young man with an open face. He returned in March from a six-month Iraq tour; he was stationed at Al Taqaddum about 45 miles west of Baghdad.
With an officer's understatement and professorial patience, Cisek talked about the nature of battle -- what it means to pick up a weapon, choke down your fear and move out on patrol.
"It's hard to explain to civilians, but our training is so repetitive and rehearsed, it seems like a normal training event," he said. "After a while, the helicopter takes off and it just turns into your environment.
"Complacency kills," he said. "Nothing can happen for a long, long time and all of a sudden" -- Cisek spread his arms, palms up -- "something happens."
Cisek grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, graduating from high school in that once-booming city in 1997. He joined the Marine Reserves while an engineering student at Ohio University. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation.
Memories from Cisek's Iraq tour include the carnage after combat and the surrealistic experience of a desert sandstorm. "The wind was blowing so hard that I saw a guy who had managed to hold onto something, and he was almost parallel to the ground," he recalled.
Cisek was friends with men whose names are on the armory's memorial bricks. David Kreuter was one; he was in the vehicle that blew up on Aug. 3.
"I carpooled with him at Ohio University," Cisek said. "It's very strange. In the Marine Corps, we only have 170,000 Marines. It's very close-knit, especially in the reserves.
"You can graduate high school, join the reserves and live here for 20 or 30 years. When you know a guy's name and face, it definitely brings reality to what our mission is."
The armory offers a Wounded Warrior Program to assist injured returnees.
"Some people pay the ultimate price, and some come back really messed up," Cisek said. "Sometimes it's hard if they're younger to get the proper care, or it's hard to fill out the forms."
Staff Sgt. Dan Priestley coordinates the program, checking in with returnees and offering help. On this warm afternoon he wears shorts and a T-shirt.
At 36, he has a wrestler's build and a bounce in his stride that belies the two steak-sized chunks of flesh gouged from his left leg. During his Iraq tour, Priestley was wounded on foot patrol by a suicide car bomb. He spent 38 days in Bethesda Naval Hospital and has endured 24 surgeries.
He refuses to look back. "Keep up the spirits, and you can do it," he said.
Standing in front of a memorial case housing tokens of appreciation from the community -- letters, stuffed animals, Marine memorabilia, drawings of the fallen -- Priestley marveled at Cleveland's outpouring a year ago.
"It was wonderful what they did for us," he said. "We're still getting stuff donated, like an electric wheelchair given to us by a lady to give to a paraplegic Marine."
One month ago, Schroeder and Palmer sat on the living room sofa in their two-story house on a shady street in Brooklyn, a Cleveland suburb near Brook Park. It was late afternoon. Kids enjoying the waning days of summer vacation yelped in the street, and the couple recalled their own child.
"He was one of those kids who was very, very quiet," Schroeder said. "He hated conflict. I couldn't picture him as a Marine. He was nonviolent. He just didn't like fighting. He was a helper."
Augie grew up in New Jersey, where his dad ran a trading company. His parents remember a boy with an uproarious sense of humor. He served as a lifeguard at a Cub Scout camp; during his junior year in high school he took an EMT course. After graduation he enrolled in Ohio State University, a family tradition, but withdrew.
"People ask why he joined the Marine Corps," Schroeder said. "There are a number of reasons, but the biggest was that he wanted to go after bin Laden."
Palmer was the last family member to speak with her son. They talked 10 days before he was killed. Augie figured he would be shipped home in a few weeks. Among his first orders of business: buy a large-screen TV.
The couple learned that Augie's unit had been hit just hours after the explosion that blew him apart. They recall being far more nervous than after earlier incidents.
"We had such a bad feeling about it," Palmer said. "I went to the computer and wrote up a life story about him for the media. We were so afraid that we were hoping that by writing it, we could somehow keep it at bay."
Soon a Marine lieutenant arrived on their porch. They let him in. He took a chair.
"That poor man," Palmer said. "He had to sit there for a full minute to compose himself to give us the news."
They have days when life tastes like a mouthful of ashes.
"We're trying to do the things we've always done," Schroeder said. "But as Rosemary has said, it seems like we're underwater."
The couple have a daughter, Amanda. She and Augie were close. Amanda, 29, is just now emerging from her grief.
Schroeder and Palmer are pushing their cause, speaking to civic groups and lobbying Congress.
"Augie's life was wasted -- all these lives," Schroeder said. "But they did not die in vain if we can keep stupid people out of political power. We're a divided nation and we're being sold division. This isn't happening because Americans don't like each other."
The couple spent the anniversary of Augie's death cleaning family gravesites here and in Wooster, 50 miles away.
Memorial Day was painful but manageable. Christmas was hard. Holiday decorations were brought from storage but remained in their boxes. There was no tree.
April 10 was the worst day. That was Augie's birthday. It is also Schroeder's birthday. His own father's was April 9, so it was always a joyous time in the family.
Not this year. "It was the loneliest day I ever spent," Schroeder said.
The dead are free in a way the living are not.
"I wake up in the morning and, briefly, I think everything is normal," Schroeder said. "And then I remember. Life is not at all what it was.
"The things that interested me no longer interest me, and I haven't found anything to replace them other than speaking out against this war and getting some new people in the national government who will make sure this never happens again."
Ellie
William Porter / The Denver Post
Brook Park, Ohio -- Dusk is settling on Lutheran Cemetery. The waning light burnishes the rows of grave markers. Rosemary Palmer kneels before one of them and brushes away evergreen needles and newly mown grass. Her husband, Paul Schroeder, stands nearby, lost in thought.
The name on the tablet belongs to their only son, Marine Lance Cpl. Edward A. "Augie" Schroeder II. He is buried opposite his grandfather, whose name he carried.
Schroeder men have a history of longevity; Augie's great-grandfather died two years shy of the century mark.
Augie died at 23. He was one of 14 Marines -- many from around the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park -- killed Aug. 3, 2005, when a bomb detonated underneath their vehicle in Hadithah, Iraq.
The polished headstone is carved from red granite. It bears the family name and a verse from the fourth Psalm, chiseled in English on one side and German on the other: We lie and sleep completely in peace.
Augie Schroeder has come home. He is at peace.
Now his parents wage a quiet war of their own.
Controversy has dogged the war in Iraq since the United States launched the invasion in March 2003. But while its pros and cons were debated from the start, many feel a watershed in public protest came when the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve unit based in Brook Park, lost 20 members in a three-day span last year. Along with the Aug. 3 casualties, six died Aug. 1.
Not since Vietnam had Americans seen combat deaths hit one town so hard.
"We consider those deaths a tipping point," Schroeder said. "Before then, people were afraid to really speak out."
Schroeder is co-founder of Families of the Fallen for Change, a Cleveland organization backing a measured U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. The group has 1,300 members nationwide, Republicans and Democrats alike. Half are veterans. A growing number are parents with children serving in Iraq.
"We opposed this war from the start, but when Augie joined the Marine Corps, we kept quiet so he wouldn't get any fallout," Schroeder said.
The couple began speaking out soon after their son's death. At first they echoed Augie's concerns: There were not enough troops to do the job.
"But we came to realize we were dead wrong" about the entire U.S. foray into Iraq, Schroeder said.
Augie complained that soldiering in Iraq had eroded into a deadly game of Whac-A-Mole. He was killed on his fifth mission to Hadithah. Four times before, his unit had entered the city, trying to secure it.
Since then, his parents have argued for Congress to set a timetable for withdrawal.
"The whole point of this is to find a middle ground to maintain credibility with both sides," Schroeder said. "We feel a call for an immediate pullout would be a mistake and create another vacuum."
The couple praise the military but are furious at the administration.
"We think the war was a mistake, an overreaction and poorly planned," Schroeder said. "If they'd done it like the Army said they should, I think they could have been in and out in a year."
Brook Park's armory is home to the "Three-Deuce-Five," the 1,200-strong 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines.
A few paces from its doors, a breeze snaps the Marine Corps' scarlet-and-gold flag. It flies over a memorial to the Marines the unit has lost in Iraq: Each of 48 bricks bears a name and the Corps' globe-and-anchor seal.
Capt. Jeffrey Cisek is assigned to the armory. His captain's bars were pinned on him in its main hallway Aug. 1.
Cisek is 27, an affable young man with an open face. He returned in March from a six-month Iraq tour; he was stationed at Al Taqaddum about 45 miles west of Baghdad.
With an officer's understatement and professorial patience, Cisek talked about the nature of battle -- what it means to pick up a weapon, choke down your fear and move out on patrol.
"It's hard to explain to civilians, but our training is so repetitive and rehearsed, it seems like a normal training event," he said. "After a while, the helicopter takes off and it just turns into your environment.
"Complacency kills," he said. "Nothing can happen for a long, long time and all of a sudden" -- Cisek spread his arms, palms up -- "something happens."
Cisek grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, graduating from high school in that once-booming city in 1997. He joined the Marine Reserves while an engineering student at Ohio University. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation.
Memories from Cisek's Iraq tour include the carnage after combat and the surrealistic experience of a desert sandstorm. "The wind was blowing so hard that I saw a guy who had managed to hold onto something, and he was almost parallel to the ground," he recalled.
Cisek was friends with men whose names are on the armory's memorial bricks. David Kreuter was one; he was in the vehicle that blew up on Aug. 3.
"I carpooled with him at Ohio University," Cisek said. "It's very strange. In the Marine Corps, we only have 170,000 Marines. It's very close-knit, especially in the reserves.
"You can graduate high school, join the reserves and live here for 20 or 30 years. When you know a guy's name and face, it definitely brings reality to what our mission is."
The armory offers a Wounded Warrior Program to assist injured returnees.
"Some people pay the ultimate price, and some come back really messed up," Cisek said. "Sometimes it's hard if they're younger to get the proper care, or it's hard to fill out the forms."
Staff Sgt. Dan Priestley coordinates the program, checking in with returnees and offering help. On this warm afternoon he wears shorts and a T-shirt.
At 36, he has a wrestler's build and a bounce in his stride that belies the two steak-sized chunks of flesh gouged from his left leg. During his Iraq tour, Priestley was wounded on foot patrol by a suicide car bomb. He spent 38 days in Bethesda Naval Hospital and has endured 24 surgeries.
He refuses to look back. "Keep up the spirits, and you can do it," he said.
Standing in front of a memorial case housing tokens of appreciation from the community -- letters, stuffed animals, Marine memorabilia, drawings of the fallen -- Priestley marveled at Cleveland's outpouring a year ago.
"It was wonderful what they did for us," he said. "We're still getting stuff donated, like an electric wheelchair given to us by a lady to give to a paraplegic Marine."
One month ago, Schroeder and Palmer sat on the living room sofa in their two-story house on a shady street in Brooklyn, a Cleveland suburb near Brook Park. It was late afternoon. Kids enjoying the waning days of summer vacation yelped in the street, and the couple recalled their own child.
"He was one of those kids who was very, very quiet," Schroeder said. "He hated conflict. I couldn't picture him as a Marine. He was nonviolent. He just didn't like fighting. He was a helper."
Augie grew up in New Jersey, where his dad ran a trading company. His parents remember a boy with an uproarious sense of humor. He served as a lifeguard at a Cub Scout camp; during his junior year in high school he took an EMT course. After graduation he enrolled in Ohio State University, a family tradition, but withdrew.
"People ask why he joined the Marine Corps," Schroeder said. "There are a number of reasons, but the biggest was that he wanted to go after bin Laden."
Palmer was the last family member to speak with her son. They talked 10 days before he was killed. Augie figured he would be shipped home in a few weeks. Among his first orders of business: buy a large-screen TV.
The couple learned that Augie's unit had been hit just hours after the explosion that blew him apart. They recall being far more nervous than after earlier incidents.
"We had such a bad feeling about it," Palmer said. "I went to the computer and wrote up a life story about him for the media. We were so afraid that we were hoping that by writing it, we could somehow keep it at bay."
Soon a Marine lieutenant arrived on their porch. They let him in. He took a chair.
"That poor man," Palmer said. "He had to sit there for a full minute to compose himself to give us the news."
They have days when life tastes like a mouthful of ashes.
"We're trying to do the things we've always done," Schroeder said. "But as Rosemary has said, it seems like we're underwater."
The couple have a daughter, Amanda. She and Augie were close. Amanda, 29, is just now emerging from her grief.
Schroeder and Palmer are pushing their cause, speaking to civic groups and lobbying Congress.
"Augie's life was wasted -- all these lives," Schroeder said. "But they did not die in vain if we can keep stupid people out of political power. We're a divided nation and we're being sold division. This isn't happening because Americans don't like each other."
The couple spent the anniversary of Augie's death cleaning family gravesites here and in Wooster, 50 miles away.
Memorial Day was painful but manageable. Christmas was hard. Holiday decorations were brought from storage but remained in their boxes. There was no tree.
April 10 was the worst day. That was Augie's birthday. It is also Schroeder's birthday. His own father's was April 9, so it was always a joyous time in the family.
Not this year. "It was the loneliest day I ever spent," Schroeder said.
The dead are free in a way the living are not.
"I wake up in the morning and, briefly, I think everything is normal," Schroeder said. "And then I remember. Life is not at all what it was.
"The things that interested me no longer interest me, and I haven't found anything to replace them other than speaking out against this war and getting some new people in the national government who will make sure this never happens again."
Ellie