thedrifter
05-28-07, 07:34 AM
Marines reflect and remember on Memorial Day
BY MEGAN PENNEFATHER
STAFF WRITER
Michael is not the same.
A mother knows. She looks at her son, and his face is the same, his voice is the same.
But he's not the same.
"The war hardened him," Pat Ullmann says quietly of her son, Michael, 24.
Before he went into the Marines, he was laid-back, easygoing.
"He's not the same child," Ullmann, a longtime Troy resident, says now. "He saw too much, more than our children should see."
She means all children, anyone's child. After two tours in the Anwar Province of Iraq, Michael is home at Camp Pendleton in California.
But he's not home. Not yet.
"Every unit has casualties," is all Michael Ullmann would say when asked recently if he lost any friends in the Iraq War. The sentence is firm, polite but clipped, with a barely audible break that let's you know not to ask any more questions like that.
"I'm a lot more appreciative of everything I have," says Ullmann. "It's definitely made me more responsible."
And that's what Ullmann was looking for when he enlisted in the Marines three and a half years ago. He wanted the military life because of the life skills; he wanted to join the Marines because, well, he wanted to be the best, as he put it.
"We're very proud," he says.
That's true, and very close. They put their fellow soldier's life above their own, he says. They defend without question, and they try not to look back.
But Monday, Ullmann and others at Camp Pendleton will look back. They'll gather for the several Memorial Day ceremonies taking place, and they'll remember.
"Memorial Day is a huge, huge thing," he says. "We all look back, reflect on the guys that didn't have a chance to come back."
It's that pride and that honor that got him through every day, through the 120-degree heat as he supervised transport vehicles in Falluja and set up roadside bases along important roads. Through the insurgents firing at him unseen from city buildings.
He didn't think about how he did it, he had to do it. "If you don't get up and do your job, someone could take a hit from it."
He says he meets people who thank him for his service, and those who condemn his association with the Iraq War.
"There are people who don't like us one bit," he says. He still sounds incredulous as to why anyone would judge him when he's doing his job. He's being a Marine.
"We're very proud of doing what we're told, we're good at it."
That's the life of a Marine, and whether they agree with the war or not is irrelevant. They've got a mission to do.
WILD AND CRAZY KID
Like Ullmann, Tom Stenger shrugs when he's asked to explain how he dealt with it all. For 19 months, he was a communications specialist in Iraq, and endured attacks, heat and separation from his family.
He got used to the heat, he says. He got used to not having any food because he was in such a remote area that he couldn't get much. He got used to the booms.
Except for one day, he says, when the mortar fell through the ceiling. It's a story he tells with the type of matter-of-fact tone that one talks about sports or a movie they've seen.
"It blew a hole in the ceiling and everything came down on us, and I was underneath the hole," says the Troy native, 23.
"Whenever anything happened, you fell back on your training."
He had to bring the government building he was in back online and hooked up to radio communication -- without it, there would be no way to talk to those in the field.
So it was on the roof, under a oppressively hot sun, inches away from where that mortar shell blew a hole in the building, that Tom Stenger brought his unit back online.
"Communication is so vital that it really needs to get up," he said.
Now that he's safe at home, he's trying to leave his war experiences in the past. He doesn't talk all that much about it, except when he's asked, like he was on a recent afternoon as he sat across from his father, Robert, a Troy resident and former Marine.
The mortar shell bombing? No, it didn't really scare him too much. "That probably doesn't rattle Tom, knowing him," his father interjects, with a chuckle.
Tom just offers a slight smile. "Tom is our wild and crazy kid," continues Robert. "Every family has one. If something got broken in the neighborhood, it was probably Tom."
So there was a certain amount of surprise when at 19, Tom announced that he would become a Marine.
Robert wasn't so sure about that. The discipline? The rules? The regimented life? It doesn't exactly sound like his free-spirited son.
But after a contentious meeting with a Marine recruiter, who called Tom a name not suitable for print, the 19-year-old was determined to show the military what he could do.
"I felt it necessary to prove him wrong," he says, smiling. "They had some strange techniques to get people to enlist."
He's been home since winter, and is now in the inactive reserves. He doesn't dream about Iraq, or of mortar attacks. But he is interested in going to college to study business and maybe open up his own bar someday. "I'm not worried about working long hours now, 'cause I've done that."
And there's this bit of military wisdom he keeps handy: "Set your mind to a mission and get it accomplished, basically."
He'll be spending his Memorial Day helping his sister move. It won't be a hard day for him, he says. He didn't lose any close friends in the war. He's reverent, but not solemn.
Then, after he gets up and walks into his parents' kitchen to get a glass of water, his father leans in and talks about how, when he was drafted during the Vietnam War, he felt invincible like Tom. He didn't worry about dying.
"It's not until you grow older, that you realize how fragile life can be," he says.
Tom walks back into the room, and Robert looks at him and smiles. Even though the elder Stenger comes from a family of Marines, he can't seem to say enough about what Tom volunteered to do for four years.
"I'm proud as can be," he says. "I couldn't have managed to do what he's done for four years."
mpennefather@hometownlife.com (24 901-2558
Ellie
BY MEGAN PENNEFATHER
STAFF WRITER
Michael is not the same.
A mother knows. She looks at her son, and his face is the same, his voice is the same.
But he's not the same.
"The war hardened him," Pat Ullmann says quietly of her son, Michael, 24.
Before he went into the Marines, he was laid-back, easygoing.
"He's not the same child," Ullmann, a longtime Troy resident, says now. "He saw too much, more than our children should see."
She means all children, anyone's child. After two tours in the Anwar Province of Iraq, Michael is home at Camp Pendleton in California.
But he's not home. Not yet.
"Every unit has casualties," is all Michael Ullmann would say when asked recently if he lost any friends in the Iraq War. The sentence is firm, polite but clipped, with a barely audible break that let's you know not to ask any more questions like that.
"I'm a lot more appreciative of everything I have," says Ullmann. "It's definitely made me more responsible."
And that's what Ullmann was looking for when he enlisted in the Marines three and a half years ago. He wanted the military life because of the life skills; he wanted to join the Marines because, well, he wanted to be the best, as he put it.
"We're very proud," he says.
That's true, and very close. They put their fellow soldier's life above their own, he says. They defend without question, and they try not to look back.
But Monday, Ullmann and others at Camp Pendleton will look back. They'll gather for the several Memorial Day ceremonies taking place, and they'll remember.
"Memorial Day is a huge, huge thing," he says. "We all look back, reflect on the guys that didn't have a chance to come back."
It's that pride and that honor that got him through every day, through the 120-degree heat as he supervised transport vehicles in Falluja and set up roadside bases along important roads. Through the insurgents firing at him unseen from city buildings.
He didn't think about how he did it, he had to do it. "If you don't get up and do your job, someone could take a hit from it."
He says he meets people who thank him for his service, and those who condemn his association with the Iraq War.
"There are people who don't like us one bit," he says. He still sounds incredulous as to why anyone would judge him when he's doing his job. He's being a Marine.
"We're very proud of doing what we're told, we're good at it."
That's the life of a Marine, and whether they agree with the war or not is irrelevant. They've got a mission to do.
WILD AND CRAZY KID
Like Ullmann, Tom Stenger shrugs when he's asked to explain how he dealt with it all. For 19 months, he was a communications specialist in Iraq, and endured attacks, heat and separation from his family.
He got used to the heat, he says. He got used to not having any food because he was in such a remote area that he couldn't get much. He got used to the booms.
Except for one day, he says, when the mortar fell through the ceiling. It's a story he tells with the type of matter-of-fact tone that one talks about sports or a movie they've seen.
"It blew a hole in the ceiling and everything came down on us, and I was underneath the hole," says the Troy native, 23.
"Whenever anything happened, you fell back on your training."
He had to bring the government building he was in back online and hooked up to radio communication -- without it, there would be no way to talk to those in the field.
So it was on the roof, under a oppressively hot sun, inches away from where that mortar shell blew a hole in the building, that Tom Stenger brought his unit back online.
"Communication is so vital that it really needs to get up," he said.
Now that he's safe at home, he's trying to leave his war experiences in the past. He doesn't talk all that much about it, except when he's asked, like he was on a recent afternoon as he sat across from his father, Robert, a Troy resident and former Marine.
The mortar shell bombing? No, it didn't really scare him too much. "That probably doesn't rattle Tom, knowing him," his father interjects, with a chuckle.
Tom just offers a slight smile. "Tom is our wild and crazy kid," continues Robert. "Every family has one. If something got broken in the neighborhood, it was probably Tom."
So there was a certain amount of surprise when at 19, Tom announced that he would become a Marine.
Robert wasn't so sure about that. The discipline? The rules? The regimented life? It doesn't exactly sound like his free-spirited son.
But after a contentious meeting with a Marine recruiter, who called Tom a name not suitable for print, the 19-year-old was determined to show the military what he could do.
"I felt it necessary to prove him wrong," he says, smiling. "They had some strange techniques to get people to enlist."
He's been home since winter, and is now in the inactive reserves. He doesn't dream about Iraq, or of mortar attacks. But he is interested in going to college to study business and maybe open up his own bar someday. "I'm not worried about working long hours now, 'cause I've done that."
And there's this bit of military wisdom he keeps handy: "Set your mind to a mission and get it accomplished, basically."
He'll be spending his Memorial Day helping his sister move. It won't be a hard day for him, he says. He didn't lose any close friends in the war. He's reverent, but not solemn.
Then, after he gets up and walks into his parents' kitchen to get a glass of water, his father leans in and talks about how, when he was drafted during the Vietnam War, he felt invincible like Tom. He didn't worry about dying.
"It's not until you grow older, that you realize how fragile life can be," he says.
Tom walks back into the room, and Robert looks at him and smiles. Even though the elder Stenger comes from a family of Marines, he can't seem to say enough about what Tom volunteered to do for four years.
"I'm proud as can be," he says. "I couldn't have managed to do what he's done for four years."
mpennefather@hometownlife.com (24 901-2558
Ellie