thedrifter
07-17-07, 06:50 AM
Bonds of Battle Remain the Strongest
by Gordon Dillow
Orange County Register
7 July 2007
Las Vegas - They came from all over, from Boston and Chicago and California and Oregon and everywhere in between, all of them current or former Marines of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Half a hundred strong, they gathered in a bar fittingly called the Leatherneck Club, in a fittingly gritty part of town, to remember the war in Iraq and the times that changed their lives.
They were the Marines I was with during my first two trips to Iraq as an embedded journalist, the ones I still call "my Marines," and it was an honor for me to be invited to their first reunion, to listen to them recall places and things that few others will ever know about the Baghdad mosque fight, Phase Line Violet, Wounded Knee, Fort Apache, the Fallujah 500 and on and on.
But as I watched them laughing and hugging each other and crying a little and drinking a lot, as I remembered what they had done and what has been done to them, I couldn't help thinking about Lt. Dave's face.
"Lt. Dave" is David Russell, 26, a former platoon commander in Alpha Co. and one of the Marines at the reunion and also one of the finest young men I know. (He's actually Capt. Russell now, and someday he may even be Gen. Russell, but he'll always be Lt. Dave to me.) Two years ago, during a bloody firefight in Ramadi, Dave was wounded by grenade fragments and a grazing AK-47 shot to the head. Though stunned and bleeding blood was actually seeping out of his eyes Dave kept leading his Marines, an act of valor for which he was awarded the Silver Star.
But his wounds caused some temporary nerve damage to his face, so until the nerves healed, every time he laughed or smiled only half of his face could respond, while the other half remained impassive. He's fully recovered now, but for months the best that he could manage was half a smile.
And that's how I felt seeing my Marines again.
I could only muster half a smile.
The smiling part came from seeing how well most of them have done, and remembering how they were three and four years ago.
There was Eric Young, a baby-faced lance corporal when I first met him, an Orange High School graduate bursting with pride at being a Marine "grunt," now working a civilian office job. There was my friend Sgt. John "Mac" McFarling, the toughest guy I know, now a gentle new father, and Erik Sphoon, who I last saw lying wounded in a Navy hospital while surgeons fought to save his bullet-shattered arm, and who's now planning to become a deputy sheriff in Oregon. There was Brown and Chin and Quesada and Komatz and Pokorny and Big Dunn and Maj. Thompson and Capt. Huysman and all the others, too many to list.
Most of them were boys when I met them, full of youthful idealism about their cause, and ready no, eager to fight. And fight they did, in the march up to Baghdad in 2003, in Fallujah in 2004, in Ramadi in 2005.
Of course, the years have changed them. The ones who have left the Marines are steelworkers or firefighters or college students or cops or some just drifting, unsure what to do with their lives. Of those still in the Corps, the corporals are sergeants, the lieutenants are captains, and they've scattered to new duty stations around the world.
And the war has changed them also. They are all combat veterans, with veterans' older eyes and their once youthful idealism has grown older, too.
"I don't care what anybody says, I'm proud of what we did," several of them defiantly told me ? and they should be proud. They did everything this nation asked of them, and more.
But for whatever reasons a stubborn and barbaric enemy, misguided strategies, craven politicians, a hysterical news media, a fickle American public, a largely ungrateful Iraqi population the clear-cut, black-and-white, good-versus-evil victory that should have been theirs has faded to an uncertain gray.
And given all that, as they remembered the Alpha Co. dead ? Lt. Shane Childers (the very first American to die in the war), Gunny Jeff Bohr, Cpls. Kelly Cannan and Tyler Trovillion, Lance Cpls. Michael Wafford, Marty Mortenson, Jonathan Flores, Jesse Jaime, Chad Maynard and Dion Whitley ? some of them couldn't help but wonder if it was worth it.
"It's sad, because a lot of my friends got killed," one misty-eyed Marine told me. "But it's getting harder to believe in it anymore."
And that's the part that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that these young men, some of the best and bravest men I've ever known, have been forced to wonder if their cause was worth the terrible cost.
History will figure that out eventually in the Marines' favor, I believe. But no matter what happens, there is one thing that no one will ever be able to take away from them.
While others sat safely back, they were part of history. And forever more, not just at a reunion in the smoky confines of the Leatherneck Club, but for all of their lives, the men of Alpha Co. will be brothers brothers in a way that other, lesser men of their generation will never know or understand.
And that, at least, is something to smile about.
Ellie
by Gordon Dillow
Orange County Register
7 July 2007
Las Vegas - They came from all over, from Boston and Chicago and California and Oregon and everywhere in between, all of them current or former Marines of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. Half a hundred strong, they gathered in a bar fittingly called the Leatherneck Club, in a fittingly gritty part of town, to remember the war in Iraq and the times that changed their lives.
They were the Marines I was with during my first two trips to Iraq as an embedded journalist, the ones I still call "my Marines," and it was an honor for me to be invited to their first reunion, to listen to them recall places and things that few others will ever know about the Baghdad mosque fight, Phase Line Violet, Wounded Knee, Fort Apache, the Fallujah 500 and on and on.
But as I watched them laughing and hugging each other and crying a little and drinking a lot, as I remembered what they had done and what has been done to them, I couldn't help thinking about Lt. Dave's face.
"Lt. Dave" is David Russell, 26, a former platoon commander in Alpha Co. and one of the Marines at the reunion and also one of the finest young men I know. (He's actually Capt. Russell now, and someday he may even be Gen. Russell, but he'll always be Lt. Dave to me.) Two years ago, during a bloody firefight in Ramadi, Dave was wounded by grenade fragments and a grazing AK-47 shot to the head. Though stunned and bleeding blood was actually seeping out of his eyes Dave kept leading his Marines, an act of valor for which he was awarded the Silver Star.
But his wounds caused some temporary nerve damage to his face, so until the nerves healed, every time he laughed or smiled only half of his face could respond, while the other half remained impassive. He's fully recovered now, but for months the best that he could manage was half a smile.
And that's how I felt seeing my Marines again.
I could only muster half a smile.
The smiling part came from seeing how well most of them have done, and remembering how they were three and four years ago.
There was Eric Young, a baby-faced lance corporal when I first met him, an Orange High School graduate bursting with pride at being a Marine "grunt," now working a civilian office job. There was my friend Sgt. John "Mac" McFarling, the toughest guy I know, now a gentle new father, and Erik Sphoon, who I last saw lying wounded in a Navy hospital while surgeons fought to save his bullet-shattered arm, and who's now planning to become a deputy sheriff in Oregon. There was Brown and Chin and Quesada and Komatz and Pokorny and Big Dunn and Maj. Thompson and Capt. Huysman and all the others, too many to list.
Most of them were boys when I met them, full of youthful idealism about their cause, and ready no, eager to fight. And fight they did, in the march up to Baghdad in 2003, in Fallujah in 2004, in Ramadi in 2005.
Of course, the years have changed them. The ones who have left the Marines are steelworkers or firefighters or college students or cops or some just drifting, unsure what to do with their lives. Of those still in the Corps, the corporals are sergeants, the lieutenants are captains, and they've scattered to new duty stations around the world.
And the war has changed them also. They are all combat veterans, with veterans' older eyes and their once youthful idealism has grown older, too.
"I don't care what anybody says, I'm proud of what we did," several of them defiantly told me ? and they should be proud. They did everything this nation asked of them, and more.
But for whatever reasons a stubborn and barbaric enemy, misguided strategies, craven politicians, a hysterical news media, a fickle American public, a largely ungrateful Iraqi population the clear-cut, black-and-white, good-versus-evil victory that should have been theirs has faded to an uncertain gray.
And given all that, as they remembered the Alpha Co. dead ? Lt. Shane Childers (the very first American to die in the war), Gunny Jeff Bohr, Cpls. Kelly Cannan and Tyler Trovillion, Lance Cpls. Michael Wafford, Marty Mortenson, Jonathan Flores, Jesse Jaime, Chad Maynard and Dion Whitley ? some of them couldn't help but wonder if it was worth it.
"It's sad, because a lot of my friends got killed," one misty-eyed Marine told me. "But it's getting harder to believe in it anymore."
And that's the part that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that these young men, some of the best and bravest men I've ever known, have been forced to wonder if their cause was worth the terrible cost.
History will figure that out eventually in the Marines' favor, I believe. But no matter what happens, there is one thing that no one will ever be able to take away from them.
While others sat safely back, they were part of history. And forever more, not just at a reunion in the smoky confines of the Leatherneck Club, but for all of their lives, the men of Alpha Co. will be brothers brothers in a way that other, lesser men of their generation will never know or understand.
And that, at least, is something to smile about.
Ellie