thedrifter
12-25-06, 09:09 AM
Marines in Iraq embrace holidays
By JOE SWICKARD
Gannett News Service
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Christmas comes to Bravo Company every few days in a couple of seven-ton Oshkosh trucks.
Twelve feet tall, 26 feet wide and Marine green, the trucks back up to the Fallujah train station, and the men, forming a line of elves in khaki, unload a mound of packages that quickly fill a lobby area shoulder-high with goodies from home.
Yet, all the tiny twinkling trees, ornaments and tinsel shipped by families, friends and schoolchildren -- as welcome as they are to these troops -- can't transform the station with a bomb-blasted locomotive into an island of Yuletide joy in the middle of strife-torn Iraq.
"It's more like 'Groundhog Day' with Bill Murray," said Sgt. Martin Gonzales of Saginaw, Mich., part of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Marines, a reserve unit based at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, Mich. The unit represents the largest deployment of Michigan Marines in the war. "Every day is just the same here, except maybe it's getting a little colder."
Gonzales, a 30-year-old social worker and wry joker, isn't moping, and neither are the other 150 or so men in Bravo Company guarding the northern edge of Fallujah and the nearby countryside.
"People back home may think we're lonely without our families," Gonzales said. "That's not so. Here, we're all going through the same thing -- and Marines are used to staying in the crappiest places, having the worst gear -- so that makes us as tight as family."
For the men here, it's a repetitious cycle of duties to patrol and guard in the Fallujah depot, marked by acres of asphalt, a concrete roof, 13 Porta-Johns, a weight room, Frosted Flakes and protein shakes.
The five companies of the 1/24 all battle the insurgents in and around Fallujah -- a tough, truck stop crossroads kind of town in the Sunni Triangle -- but the companies' base camps have distinct personalities.
Two companies, Headquarters and Weapons, are stationed at Camp Baharia, a former resort built just outside of town around a landscaped reservoir by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, who was killed in 2003. While it has been stripped by looters, and sandbagging shows that it is within insurgent rocket and mortar range, the area retains a touch of charm with a cluster of waterfront cottages, exotic birds and places to jog around the lake.
Charlie Company is in the middle of Fallujah, in a battered school administration building ventilated by rockets and artillery. The neighborhood is so rough the Marines have to wear helmets and flak jackets to use the Porta-Johns. Roadside bombs and snipers often await them just beyond their barricades.
Alpha Company sits across the Euphrates River in a compound of homes built by a wealthy family. While they live and work in pillared houses with ornate battlements like the palaces of the Arabian Nights, the Alpha Marines' one hot meal a day has to be trucked in on a convoy.
Bravo's home is the depot for a railroad that hasn't run in years: The tracks are torn up, and shot-apart locomotives, freight cars and passenger carriages sit silently in the vast yard.
The train station is hard, high and dry -- excellent qualities especially now that the winter rains are starting. The expanse of asphalt means the men aren't ankle-deep in mud and the reinforced concrete freight depot keeps the weather and insurgent weaponry at bay. Commanding officer Maj. Jeff O'Neill -- a regular Marine from Novi, Mich. -- said most residents would "flat out tell you they wish you weren't here."
Keeping the Marines fit for the task is like feeding a football team, said Bravo's cook, Lance Cpl. Michael Salazar, 24, of Adrian, Mich.
"And with three hot meals a day, that changes attitudes and helps keep people happy," Salazar said.
Staff Sgt. Chedrick Greene, 31, said troops do the best they can.
"Try to make it as much as home as you can with the situation you're in," said Greene, a Saginaw firefighter.
Food and water have to be trucked in as part of armed convoys that include sanitation trucks to service the Porta-Johns.
To conserve water, the men take "Navy showers" -- get wet, water off, soap up and rinse in less than two minutes -- a couple of times a week. Long showers, a sign reminds them, are disrespectful to fellow Marines.
The Marines live in hooches -- plywood huts built inside the vast train station terminal.
The officers and senior sergeants may have just a couple of hooch-mates, but the riflemen can share space with up to 19 others.
In these hooches, nine paces wide and 11 paces long, the men live amid electronic goods, magazines, combat gear, workout equipment, posters and snacks from home. Tinsel, blinking miniature trees and foil stars brighten some of the living spaces.
Some Marines want to ignore the holidays, but Lance Cpl. Jeremy DuRussel can't -- his 25th birthday fell a week before Christmas Day.
To brighten spirits, he set up a tree in the armory where he works on rifles and other weapons, and plays Christmas songs on the computer.
He said he and the others in his hooch have pooled their food from home and their stock of movies.
"We have about 500. Mostly we watch comedies to keep good spirits," said DuRussel, of Saginaw.
A personalized camouflage stocking hangs in Lt. Blake Sawyer's hooch. The Dallas resident is, like many of the officers, a regular Marine attached to the 1/24 for its seven-month combat tour in Iraq.
Even with combat veterans like O'Neill, Tart and Sawyer, some experience is bought at a dreadful price.
On Oct. 23, a routine patrol headed by Greene, the Saginaw firefighter, turned bad in an instant.
"Puffff," Greene recalled. "It sounded that soft."
A bomb ripped into a Humvee, killing Lance Cpls. Tyler Overstreet and Richard Buerstetta, both of Tennessee. Three other Marines in the vehicle were hurt, two of them seriously.
The Marines relish the chow hall's communications corner with two telephones and five computer terminals to keep them linked with families and loved ones. They talk and e-mail a lot to their homes.
Salazar said his mother is pleased he's a cook.
"She thinks the cook's safe," said Salazar, who went on active duty April 30, the day after he graduated from Western Michigan University.
He doesn't tell her about the heady rush when he joins his buddies on missions into the city: "I'm a Marine, and that means I'm a rifleman first."
"Holidays are tricky," Greene said. "You always want to be with your family. But right now, this is your family. And the only way you're going to get home to your blood family is sticking with your family here that's going through the same things you're going through."
By JOE SWICKARD
Gannett News Service
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Christmas comes to Bravo Company every few days in a couple of seven-ton Oshkosh trucks.
Twelve feet tall, 26 feet wide and Marine green, the trucks back up to the Fallujah train station, and the men, forming a line of elves in khaki, unload a mound of packages that quickly fill a lobby area shoulder-high with goodies from home.
Yet, all the tiny twinkling trees, ornaments and tinsel shipped by families, friends and schoolchildren -- as welcome as they are to these troops -- can't transform the station with a bomb-blasted locomotive into an island of Yuletide joy in the middle of strife-torn Iraq.
"It's more like 'Groundhog Day' with Bill Murray," said Sgt. Martin Gonzales of Saginaw, Mich., part of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Marines, a reserve unit based at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, Mich. The unit represents the largest deployment of Michigan Marines in the war. "Every day is just the same here, except maybe it's getting a little colder."
Gonzales, a 30-year-old social worker and wry joker, isn't moping, and neither are the other 150 or so men in Bravo Company guarding the northern edge of Fallujah and the nearby countryside.
"People back home may think we're lonely without our families," Gonzales said. "That's not so. Here, we're all going through the same thing -- and Marines are used to staying in the crappiest places, having the worst gear -- so that makes us as tight as family."
For the men here, it's a repetitious cycle of duties to patrol and guard in the Fallujah depot, marked by acres of asphalt, a concrete roof, 13 Porta-Johns, a weight room, Frosted Flakes and protein shakes.
The five companies of the 1/24 all battle the insurgents in and around Fallujah -- a tough, truck stop crossroads kind of town in the Sunni Triangle -- but the companies' base camps have distinct personalities.
Two companies, Headquarters and Weapons, are stationed at Camp Baharia, a former resort built just outside of town around a landscaped reservoir by Saddam Hussein's son Uday, who was killed in 2003. While it has been stripped by looters, and sandbagging shows that it is within insurgent rocket and mortar range, the area retains a touch of charm with a cluster of waterfront cottages, exotic birds and places to jog around the lake.
Charlie Company is in the middle of Fallujah, in a battered school administration building ventilated by rockets and artillery. The neighborhood is so rough the Marines have to wear helmets and flak jackets to use the Porta-Johns. Roadside bombs and snipers often await them just beyond their barricades.
Alpha Company sits across the Euphrates River in a compound of homes built by a wealthy family. While they live and work in pillared houses with ornate battlements like the palaces of the Arabian Nights, the Alpha Marines' one hot meal a day has to be trucked in on a convoy.
Bravo's home is the depot for a railroad that hasn't run in years: The tracks are torn up, and shot-apart locomotives, freight cars and passenger carriages sit silently in the vast yard.
The train station is hard, high and dry -- excellent qualities especially now that the winter rains are starting. The expanse of asphalt means the men aren't ankle-deep in mud and the reinforced concrete freight depot keeps the weather and insurgent weaponry at bay. Commanding officer Maj. Jeff O'Neill -- a regular Marine from Novi, Mich. -- said most residents would "flat out tell you they wish you weren't here."
Keeping the Marines fit for the task is like feeding a football team, said Bravo's cook, Lance Cpl. Michael Salazar, 24, of Adrian, Mich.
"And with three hot meals a day, that changes attitudes and helps keep people happy," Salazar said.
Staff Sgt. Chedrick Greene, 31, said troops do the best they can.
"Try to make it as much as home as you can with the situation you're in," said Greene, a Saginaw firefighter.
Food and water have to be trucked in as part of armed convoys that include sanitation trucks to service the Porta-Johns.
To conserve water, the men take "Navy showers" -- get wet, water off, soap up and rinse in less than two minutes -- a couple of times a week. Long showers, a sign reminds them, are disrespectful to fellow Marines.
The Marines live in hooches -- plywood huts built inside the vast train station terminal.
The officers and senior sergeants may have just a couple of hooch-mates, but the riflemen can share space with up to 19 others.
In these hooches, nine paces wide and 11 paces long, the men live amid electronic goods, magazines, combat gear, workout equipment, posters and snacks from home. Tinsel, blinking miniature trees and foil stars brighten some of the living spaces.
Some Marines want to ignore the holidays, but Lance Cpl. Jeremy DuRussel can't -- his 25th birthday fell a week before Christmas Day.
To brighten spirits, he set up a tree in the armory where he works on rifles and other weapons, and plays Christmas songs on the computer.
He said he and the others in his hooch have pooled their food from home and their stock of movies.
"We have about 500. Mostly we watch comedies to keep good spirits," said DuRussel, of Saginaw.
A personalized camouflage stocking hangs in Lt. Blake Sawyer's hooch. The Dallas resident is, like many of the officers, a regular Marine attached to the 1/24 for its seven-month combat tour in Iraq.
Even with combat veterans like O'Neill, Tart and Sawyer, some experience is bought at a dreadful price.
On Oct. 23, a routine patrol headed by Greene, the Saginaw firefighter, turned bad in an instant.
"Puffff," Greene recalled. "It sounded that soft."
A bomb ripped into a Humvee, killing Lance Cpls. Tyler Overstreet and Richard Buerstetta, both of Tennessee. Three other Marines in the vehicle were hurt, two of them seriously.
The Marines relish the chow hall's communications corner with two telephones and five computer terminals to keep them linked with families and loved ones. They talk and e-mail a lot to their homes.
Salazar said his mother is pleased he's a cook.
"She thinks the cook's safe," said Salazar, who went on active duty April 30, the day after he graduated from Western Michigan University.
He doesn't tell her about the heady rush when he joins his buddies on missions into the city: "I'm a Marine, and that means I'm a rifleman first."
"Holidays are tricky," Greene said. "You always want to be with your family. But right now, this is your family. And the only way you're going to get home to your blood family is sticking with your family here that's going through the same things you're going through."