thedrifter
05-25-07, 06:57 AM
Some Marines extend terms to serve as mentors to the less-experienced
'Short-timers' see it as duty to return
By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times | May 25, 2007
RAMADI, Iraq -- Marine Corporal Saul Mellado could be back in California, finishing the final months of his enlistment in a safe billet at Camp Pendleton.
Instead, the 23-year-old naturalized US citizen from Mexico is patrolling these war-torn streets only recently wrested from insurgent control -- and bracing for an expected counteroffensive.
Mellado, a machine-gunner, knows these streets: the adults who eye the Marines with suspicion and the children who beg for candy and water. He was first dispatched to Ramadi in late 2004, a deployment during which 15 Marines in his unit, the 2d Battalion, 5th Regiment, died and more than 200 were wounded.
Under Marine Corps rules about "short-timers," Mellado could have skipped this return to Ramadi six weeks ago. But like 200 other members of the battalion -- a quarter of its number -- he asked to have his enlistment extended. Unlike a reenlistment, the move earns the Marines no bonus money, no promotion, and no promise of a job shift or posting to a favored duty station.
"For a lot of the guys, this is their first tour," Mellado said as his Humvee moved slowly through the rubble-strewn streets. "If anything happened to them, and I could have helped them, I couldn't stand that."
Ellie
'Short-timers' see it as duty to return
By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times | May 25, 2007
RAMADI, Iraq -- Marine Corporal Saul Mellado could be back in California, finishing the final months of his enlistment in a safe billet at Camp Pendleton.
Instead, the 23-year-old naturalized US citizen from Mexico is patrolling these war-torn streets only recently wrested from insurgent control -- and bracing for an expected counteroffensive.
Mellado, a machine-gunner, knows these streets: the adults who eye the Marines with suspicion and the children who beg for candy and water. He was first dispatched to Ramadi in late 2004, a deployment during which 15 Marines in his unit, the 2d Battalion, 5th Regiment, died and more than 200 were wounded.
Under Marine Corps rules about "short-timers," Mellado could have skipped this return to Ramadi six weeks ago. But like 200 other members of the battalion -- a quarter of its number -- he asked to have his enlistment extended. Unlike a reenlistment, the move earns the Marines no bonus money, no promotion, and no promise of a job shift or posting to a favored duty station.
"For a lot of the guys, this is their first tour," Mellado said as his Humvee moved slowly through the rubble-strewn streets. "If anything happened to them, and I could have helped them, I couldn't stand that."
Ellie