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View Full Version : Marine heads to Iraq for second tour - First in a series of “letters home”



thedrifter
09-25-07, 05:48 AM
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2007

Last modified: Monday, September 24, 2007 10:16 AM CDT

Marine heads to Iraq for second tour - First in a series of “letters home” from a local Marine deployed for a second tour in Iraq

By Staff sgt. Isaac Weix, USMC, Special to The News

Mobilization week. The first week, we spent activating the Marines. It takes more than showing up and getting on an airplane.

The first thing that was done was to get accountability of all the Marines in the company. When you have a group of 200 people, you will always have extenuating circumstances — cars breaking down, family problems, sickness, etc. — that prevent some from reporting on time. After all effort is made to contact the missing Marines, the ones who have not showed up are put into an “unauthorized absence” status. If they fail to report for a longer period of time, they are then considered deserters.

The next step is to determine who is able to activate. Things that would prevent activation would be medical reasons, legal issues or pending administrative actions.

This is an effort because nothing occurs in the military without paperwork. You could arrive with a broken leg, but if you do not have the correct documentation, the military does not recognize it. In these cases, the necessary paperwork must be generated.

After it is determined who will actually go, the administrative process begins. Orders must be signed, identification cards made, wills and powers of attorney written, notification processes for next of kin established, and so on.

This is all straightforward until the reality of life kicks in. People have wives and children who need insurance and ID cards. The process gets further bogged down when there are estranged wives, divorce proceedings and illegitimate children.

Once administration is squared away, it is on to medical for your obligatory bloodletting and shot regimen, then to supply and the armory for your gear and weapons.

Running concurrently with all of this are classes for the dependents and families on health care, legal issues, pay and benefits, and even dealing with the press.

None of these activities is very difficult, but because of not nonstatic nature of life — marriages, births, deaths and injuries — none of these processes is fully complete. The exact number of Marines we will take to Iraq is not firm until the moment one steps on the airplane.

We headed for California on Monday, and the fly away was quite different this time. The only ones there to send us off were the families and friends of the Marines. There were no speeches, no fanfare — all of our politicians from the governor to our senators who could not get in front of the camera fast enough the last time were mysteriously absent. No one missed them.

During his first tour in Iraq in 2004, Weix provided Dunn County News readers with a “Marine’s-eye” view of the war in Iraq. He serves with the 24th Marine Regiment out of Madison as a platoon sergeant for Weapons Platoon, “G” Company, 2nd Battalion.

Some will also recall that Weix ran last year for the open 29th Assembly seat. The Elmwood native and co-owner of T&S Hardware in Elmwood leaves behind a wife and two young daughters.

Ellie