thedrifter
10-04-06, 11:13 AM
Military families know joy and sorrow
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com
One of the good things about our military is that it connects people, with each unit drawing a web of mothers and fathers and sisters and cousins and friends into a vast extended family. And like all families, they have their joys and their sorrows.
In the past week, with Marine units I recently spent time with in Iraq, I was able to share in both.
The joy came Monday night at Camp Pendleton, when 140 Marines of the 3rd Civil Affairs Group – the guys and gals who help build water treatment plants and give schoolbooks to Iraqi kids and do a lot of that other "good news" stuff that never actually makes the news – finally came home after seven months in Iraq.
I've been to a half-dozen Marine homecomings in recent years, and in some ways they're always the same. There are balloons and American flags and little kids holding signs – "Welcome home, Daddy!" – and hundreds of family members and friends standing around trading last-minute cell-phone updates: "They've landed!" "They're on the buses!" "They're almost here!"
The months of waiting have been bad enough, but in the last hours and minutes, time seems almost to stop.
"It feels like it's been years since he's been here," Erica Duane, the wife of my friend Gunnery Sgt. Erik Duane, of Westminster, told me as she waited with their son, Macen, and their daughter, Gillian, and a half-dozen family members and friends. Erica is a hardened veteran of waiting; this is the third time she's waited like this for Erik to come home from Iraq.
But the waiting never gets easier, for her or for any other family members.
And so the minutes drag by, until finally, finally, the buses pull up and the Marines clamber off and the signs wave and the people scream and everybody laughs and cries at the same time, and the Marines, misty-eyed themselves, scoop up the people they love and hold them, hold them as if they'll never let go. It's about the closest thing to pure joy that you'll ever see.
But as I said, there is sorrow that also comes with being part of an extended military family. Sometimes it's the sorrow of knowing that, sooner or later, you'll probably have to say goodbye again.
And sometimes it's the sorrow of saying goodbye forever.
I saw that, too, last week, at a memorial service at Camp Pendleton for the 11 men of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines who were killed in the battalion's recent deployment to Iraq.
Like the homecomings, military memorial services are in some ways all the same. The Marines stood on a parade deck in crisp rank and file, eyes straight ahead, facing family members and friends who sat on chairs under awnings. Between them was a row of inverted M-16 rifles, each with a helmet mounted at the top, a pair of empty boots at the bottom, and dog tags dangling in the breeze. There was a photograph of each fallen Marine, and in the photos they all looked young. But they are as old as they will ever be.
The chaplain said a prayer, and then the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Dave Furness, told the audience a little something about each Marine, what they were like as Marines and men. The lieutenant colonel said of the fallen Marines that "They were truly a national treasure" – and he was right.
Then a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace," and the battalion sergeant major read a final roll call: Cpl. Richard Waller, Lance Cpl. Philip Martini, Lance Cpl. Stephen Perez, Lance Cpl. Robert Posivio, Pfc Steven Freund, Cpl. Ryan Cummings, Staff Sgt. Benjamin Williams, Lance Cpl. Brandon Webb, Pfc Christopher White, Lance Cpl. James Higgins, and Lance Cpl. Marcus Glimpse of Huntington Beach. There were volleys fired by an honor guard, and then a benediction.
Children cried. Men and women cried, too, for the hundredth or the thousandth time. Then the Marines were dismissed from ranks and some gathered with family members around the small memorials, to talk and remember.
I didn't know any of these fallen Marines personally. But I've corresponded with Guy Glimpse, Lance Cpl. Glimpse's father, and when I saw him there, a man with a broken heart behind a brave face, we hugged each other in that stiff, awkward way that men have.
What is there to say? What can anybody really say?
Again, neither the memorials nor the homecomings are unusual. Although we seldom see them, separated as most of us are from the military life, almost every day, somewhere in America, these scenes are taking place in a constant cycle: Joy and sorrow, joy and sorrow, joy and sorrow.
For the men and women in uniform, and their extended families, there will never be enough of the one.
And there will always be too much of the other.
CONTACT US: Gordon Dillow recently returned from his third trip to Iraq as an embedded reporter with the Marines. He served as an Army sergeant in Vietnam in 1971. Contact him at 714-796-7953 or GLDillow@aol.com
Ellie
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
GLDillow@aol.com
One of the good things about our military is that it connects people, with each unit drawing a web of mothers and fathers and sisters and cousins and friends into a vast extended family. And like all families, they have their joys and their sorrows.
In the past week, with Marine units I recently spent time with in Iraq, I was able to share in both.
The joy came Monday night at Camp Pendleton, when 140 Marines of the 3rd Civil Affairs Group – the guys and gals who help build water treatment plants and give schoolbooks to Iraqi kids and do a lot of that other "good news" stuff that never actually makes the news – finally came home after seven months in Iraq.
I've been to a half-dozen Marine homecomings in recent years, and in some ways they're always the same. There are balloons and American flags and little kids holding signs – "Welcome home, Daddy!" – and hundreds of family members and friends standing around trading last-minute cell-phone updates: "They've landed!" "They're on the buses!" "They're almost here!"
The months of waiting have been bad enough, but in the last hours and minutes, time seems almost to stop.
"It feels like it's been years since he's been here," Erica Duane, the wife of my friend Gunnery Sgt. Erik Duane, of Westminster, told me as she waited with their son, Macen, and their daughter, Gillian, and a half-dozen family members and friends. Erica is a hardened veteran of waiting; this is the third time she's waited like this for Erik to come home from Iraq.
But the waiting never gets easier, for her or for any other family members.
And so the minutes drag by, until finally, finally, the buses pull up and the Marines clamber off and the signs wave and the people scream and everybody laughs and cries at the same time, and the Marines, misty-eyed themselves, scoop up the people they love and hold them, hold them as if they'll never let go. It's about the closest thing to pure joy that you'll ever see.
But as I said, there is sorrow that also comes with being part of an extended military family. Sometimes it's the sorrow of knowing that, sooner or later, you'll probably have to say goodbye again.
And sometimes it's the sorrow of saying goodbye forever.
I saw that, too, last week, at a memorial service at Camp Pendleton for the 11 men of the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines who were killed in the battalion's recent deployment to Iraq.
Like the homecomings, military memorial services are in some ways all the same. The Marines stood on a parade deck in crisp rank and file, eyes straight ahead, facing family members and friends who sat on chairs under awnings. Between them was a row of inverted M-16 rifles, each with a helmet mounted at the top, a pair of empty boots at the bottom, and dog tags dangling in the breeze. There was a photograph of each fallen Marine, and in the photos they all looked young. But they are as old as they will ever be.
The chaplain said a prayer, and then the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Dave Furness, told the audience a little something about each Marine, what they were like as Marines and men. The lieutenant colonel said of the fallen Marines that "They were truly a national treasure" – and he was right.
Then a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace," and the battalion sergeant major read a final roll call: Cpl. Richard Waller, Lance Cpl. Philip Martini, Lance Cpl. Stephen Perez, Lance Cpl. Robert Posivio, Pfc Steven Freund, Cpl. Ryan Cummings, Staff Sgt. Benjamin Williams, Lance Cpl. Brandon Webb, Pfc Christopher White, Lance Cpl. James Higgins, and Lance Cpl. Marcus Glimpse of Huntington Beach. There were volleys fired by an honor guard, and then a benediction.
Children cried. Men and women cried, too, for the hundredth or the thousandth time. Then the Marines were dismissed from ranks and some gathered with family members around the small memorials, to talk and remember.
I didn't know any of these fallen Marines personally. But I've corresponded with Guy Glimpse, Lance Cpl. Glimpse's father, and when I saw him there, a man with a broken heart behind a brave face, we hugged each other in that stiff, awkward way that men have.
What is there to say? What can anybody really say?
Again, neither the memorials nor the homecomings are unusual. Although we seldom see them, separated as most of us are from the military life, almost every day, somewhere in America, these scenes are taking place in a constant cycle: Joy and sorrow, joy and sorrow, joy and sorrow.
For the men and women in uniform, and their extended families, there will never be enough of the one.
And there will always be too much of the other.
CONTACT US: Gordon Dillow recently returned from his third trip to Iraq as an embedded reporter with the Marines. He served as an Army sergeant in Vietnam in 1971. Contact him at 714-796-7953 or GLDillow@aol.com
Ellie