thedrifter
04-06-03, 09:47 PM
Many Took Arms With 9/11 Etched in Their Minds
By MONICA DAVEY
Most of them lived many miles from New York and Washington, in small towns and strip-mall suburbs worlds away from ground zero and the Pentagon. Still, they told their families, the terror attacks of Sept. 11 had changed them.
"He was plain angry," Leslie Montemayor said of her daughter's young boyfriend, who enlisted in the Army a few months after the attacks and was killed last weekend in Iraq. "He said he couldn't stand to see any more terrorists making us scared in our own country."
Of the Americans killed fighting in Iraq, some had signed up for service, at least in part, because of the 2001 attacks. Spurred along by feelings of frustration and rage at the scenes they saw on television, they set aside college plans and ordinary jobs.
For others, already serving in the Marines or the Army when the World Trade Center towers were struck, the attacks stirred a new sense of purpose, a new urgency, about their work. One young marine tattooed an image on his arm: firefighters raising the American flag through the smoke at ground zero. Another told his sister he felt guilty that he and his fellow marines had been unable to prevent the attacks. That had been their job, he told her, and they could never let such a thing happen again.
As families in towns like Conyers, Ga., and Layton, Utah, learned last week how their own had perished in Iraq — in a suicide bombing, a shooting, a tank accident, a helicopter crash, an ambush — they also reflected on the terror attacks, once a catalyst to serve and now a distant link to shared grief.
Diego Fernando Rincon, the smiley teenager who dated Ms. Montemayor's daughter, graduated from Salem High School in Conyers in 2001. Some of his friends had no idea he was thinking of the military. His interests had seemed more like their own: acting in school plays, driving his prized yellow Mustang, playing practical jokes on the guys. Around the end of 2001, though, he signed up.
"He did it because he felt it was something he needed to do to make sure Sept. 11 couldn't happen again," Ms. Montemayor said. "He was scared, but he was very proud to be a part of it."
Private Rincon, whose family moved to the United States from Colombia when he was 5, mailed a letter to his mother at the end of February. His unit was preparing to roll off in its Bradley fighting vehicles, he told her, and he might not be able to write soon. He told his mother he loved her. He also told her of his fears, the jarring flashes he had of what might come next.
"Sitting here picturing home with a small tear in my eyes," he wrote. "Spending time with my brothers who will hold my life in their hands. I try not to think of what may happen in the future but I can't stand seeing it in my eyes.
"There's going to be murders, funerals and tears rolling down everybody's eyes. But the only thing I can say is keep my head up and try to keep the faith and pray for better days. All this will pass."
Private Rincon, 19, was killed on March 29 at an Army roadblock outside Najaf. An Iraqi soldier dressed as a cabdriver summoned him and three other soldiers, then detonated a bomb. Killed beside him were Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton-Weldon, Sgt. Eugene Williams and Cpl. Michael Edward Curtin.
Like many others, Corporal Curtin, 23, of Howell Township, N.J., had enlisted before the terror attacks. That very week, in fact, he had completed his basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., his aunt Karen Thompson said.
Corporal Curtin was a deeply private person, Ms. Thompson said, and he would hate all this attention. He rarely even let anyone snap his photo, she said, but he was proud of his military service, and the speed with which he was promoted to corporal.
When he came home for a visit last Christmas, he surprised his relatives by letting them take pictures. He had his uniform with him. "He posed in it beside his family," Ms. Thompson said. "Maybe that was fate that we got to have those."
'He Knew the Risks'
Two years ago, Michael J. Williams seemed to have a clear path before him. He had started a flooring business in Phoenix. He was 29, old enough to know what he was doing. Then the planes hit.
"After Sept. 11, he wanted to do something," Heather Strange, his girlfriend, said. So he joined the Marines, where he was a lance corporal. Some of the other marines, right out of high school, considered Corporal Williams so much older that they called him names like Pops. But he was also 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, thick and strong enough to lug heavy mortar on his back along with his gear, family members said.
"He knew the risks of serving in Iraq, but he thought it was important that he do something to protect this country," Ms. Strange said. On the ship on his way to Kuwait, Corporal Williams proposed to Ms. Strange by e-mail. She typed back: Yes.
Corporal Williams, 31, disappeared during a fierce firefight with Iraqi tanks, soldiers and guerrillas near Nasiriya on March 23. His body was found later, as were those of two other marines — Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Blair of Wagoner, Okla., and Lance Cpl. Patrick R. Nixon of Gallatin, Tenn. The bodies of nine other marines were found near the attack earlier. Others are still missing.
Corporal Nixon, 21, took a different path into the Marines. He signed up almost the moment he graduated from Overton High School in Nashville. He seemed to have always known he would.
"Every man in the family, as far as I know, has served in the military," his older brother, Joseph Nixon, said. "We just view it as service to our country."
Corporal Nixon was the baby and the joker of the family. He had nursed his mother with his humor when she was terminally ill, and he still willingly dressed in a clown costume for his nieces on their birthdays. But he also immersed himself in history, reading fat books on generals, presidents and the Revolutionary War. And he saw the 2001 terror attacks through that lens, his stepsister Ginger A. Ford said.
"He said that we wouldn't have what we had now if we hadn't fought years and years ago, and he really believed that we have to fight for it now," Ms. Ford said. "He really felt like there was no time to waste."
From their base, Corporal Nixon and his two closest friends in the Marines had watched news coverage of the 2001 strikes, hour after hour, she said. "They really wanted to go after somebody at that point. They wanted to go get them."
While no evidence has directly connected Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, Corporal Nixon viewed this war as another chapter in a longer battle against terror, Ms. Ford said. "He truly saw Iraq as part of that," she said, adding that Corporal Nixon had said he was saddened and puzzled that people in this country did not seem to feel as united around this war as they had in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and during the fighting in Afghanistan.
'I'm Ready for This'
When members of his family asked him about the prospect of fighting in Iraq, Pfc. Francisco Martínez-Flores of the Marines expressed no fear. They asked if he was nervous. "No, I'm ready for this," he answered.
"It was his duty," said his sister, Nayeli Martínez-Flores. He wanted to serve his country, she said.
But like several of the servicemen killed in Iraq, Private Martínez-Flores was not, officially, a United States citizen. He grew up in Duarte, east of Los Angeles, where he signed up for the Boy Scouts and played football at Duarte High School. But he was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. His family said he shipped out for war two weeks before he had planned to take the citizenship oath.
"He was proud of being here in the United States," his sister said. "He felt if we hadn't come we wouldn't have had the same opportunities that we do now." His family said he told them that he hoped to become an F.B.I. agent someday.
Private Martínez-Flores, 22, died when the M1A1 Abrams tank he was riding in veered off a bridge west of Nasiriya, crashed through a guardrail and sank, upside down, in the Euphrates River. Three other marines in the 60-ton tank also died: Staff Sgt. Donald C. May Jr., Lance Cpl. Patrick T. O'Day and Cpl. Robert M. Rodriguez.
More than 31,000 people serving in the armed forces are not United States citizens, Pentagon officials say. At least six of them have died in the war in Iraq. Last week, the United States awarded citizenship to two marines killed in the first days of the war, and other families say they may seek similar status for their lost servicemen — only a symbol, they say, but one that would have meant something to the men.
"I know he wanted to be a citizen," Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Menusa's wife, Stacy L. Menusa, said. "If he hadn't, he wouldn't have made the military and fighting for this country his life."
continued.............
By MONICA DAVEY
Most of them lived many miles from New York and Washington, in small towns and strip-mall suburbs worlds away from ground zero and the Pentagon. Still, they told their families, the terror attacks of Sept. 11 had changed them.
"He was plain angry," Leslie Montemayor said of her daughter's young boyfriend, who enlisted in the Army a few months after the attacks and was killed last weekend in Iraq. "He said he couldn't stand to see any more terrorists making us scared in our own country."
Of the Americans killed fighting in Iraq, some had signed up for service, at least in part, because of the 2001 attacks. Spurred along by feelings of frustration and rage at the scenes they saw on television, they set aside college plans and ordinary jobs.
For others, already serving in the Marines or the Army when the World Trade Center towers were struck, the attacks stirred a new sense of purpose, a new urgency, about their work. One young marine tattooed an image on his arm: firefighters raising the American flag through the smoke at ground zero. Another told his sister he felt guilty that he and his fellow marines had been unable to prevent the attacks. That had been their job, he told her, and they could never let such a thing happen again.
As families in towns like Conyers, Ga., and Layton, Utah, learned last week how their own had perished in Iraq — in a suicide bombing, a shooting, a tank accident, a helicopter crash, an ambush — they also reflected on the terror attacks, once a catalyst to serve and now a distant link to shared grief.
Diego Fernando Rincon, the smiley teenager who dated Ms. Montemayor's daughter, graduated from Salem High School in Conyers in 2001. Some of his friends had no idea he was thinking of the military. His interests had seemed more like their own: acting in school plays, driving his prized yellow Mustang, playing practical jokes on the guys. Around the end of 2001, though, he signed up.
"He did it because he felt it was something he needed to do to make sure Sept. 11 couldn't happen again," Ms. Montemayor said. "He was scared, but he was very proud to be a part of it."
Private Rincon, whose family moved to the United States from Colombia when he was 5, mailed a letter to his mother at the end of February. His unit was preparing to roll off in its Bradley fighting vehicles, he told her, and he might not be able to write soon. He told his mother he loved her. He also told her of his fears, the jarring flashes he had of what might come next.
"Sitting here picturing home with a small tear in my eyes," he wrote. "Spending time with my brothers who will hold my life in their hands. I try not to think of what may happen in the future but I can't stand seeing it in my eyes.
"There's going to be murders, funerals and tears rolling down everybody's eyes. But the only thing I can say is keep my head up and try to keep the faith and pray for better days. All this will pass."
Private Rincon, 19, was killed on March 29 at an Army roadblock outside Najaf. An Iraqi soldier dressed as a cabdriver summoned him and three other soldiers, then detonated a bomb. Killed beside him were Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton-Weldon, Sgt. Eugene Williams and Cpl. Michael Edward Curtin.
Like many others, Corporal Curtin, 23, of Howell Township, N.J., had enlisted before the terror attacks. That very week, in fact, he had completed his basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., his aunt Karen Thompson said.
Corporal Curtin was a deeply private person, Ms. Thompson said, and he would hate all this attention. He rarely even let anyone snap his photo, she said, but he was proud of his military service, and the speed with which he was promoted to corporal.
When he came home for a visit last Christmas, he surprised his relatives by letting them take pictures. He had his uniform with him. "He posed in it beside his family," Ms. Thompson said. "Maybe that was fate that we got to have those."
'He Knew the Risks'
Two years ago, Michael J. Williams seemed to have a clear path before him. He had started a flooring business in Phoenix. He was 29, old enough to know what he was doing. Then the planes hit.
"After Sept. 11, he wanted to do something," Heather Strange, his girlfriend, said. So he joined the Marines, where he was a lance corporal. Some of the other marines, right out of high school, considered Corporal Williams so much older that they called him names like Pops. But he was also 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, thick and strong enough to lug heavy mortar on his back along with his gear, family members said.
"He knew the risks of serving in Iraq, but he thought it was important that he do something to protect this country," Ms. Strange said. On the ship on his way to Kuwait, Corporal Williams proposed to Ms. Strange by e-mail. She typed back: Yes.
Corporal Williams, 31, disappeared during a fierce firefight with Iraqi tanks, soldiers and guerrillas near Nasiriya on March 23. His body was found later, as were those of two other marines — Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Blair of Wagoner, Okla., and Lance Cpl. Patrick R. Nixon of Gallatin, Tenn. The bodies of nine other marines were found near the attack earlier. Others are still missing.
Corporal Nixon, 21, took a different path into the Marines. He signed up almost the moment he graduated from Overton High School in Nashville. He seemed to have always known he would.
"Every man in the family, as far as I know, has served in the military," his older brother, Joseph Nixon, said. "We just view it as service to our country."
Corporal Nixon was the baby and the joker of the family. He had nursed his mother with his humor when she was terminally ill, and he still willingly dressed in a clown costume for his nieces on their birthdays. But he also immersed himself in history, reading fat books on generals, presidents and the Revolutionary War. And he saw the 2001 terror attacks through that lens, his stepsister Ginger A. Ford said.
"He said that we wouldn't have what we had now if we hadn't fought years and years ago, and he really believed that we have to fight for it now," Ms. Ford said. "He really felt like there was no time to waste."
From their base, Corporal Nixon and his two closest friends in the Marines had watched news coverage of the 2001 strikes, hour after hour, she said. "They really wanted to go after somebody at that point. They wanted to go get them."
While no evidence has directly connected Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks, Corporal Nixon viewed this war as another chapter in a longer battle against terror, Ms. Ford said. "He truly saw Iraq as part of that," she said, adding that Corporal Nixon had said he was saddened and puzzled that people in this country did not seem to feel as united around this war as they had in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and during the fighting in Afghanistan.
'I'm Ready for This'
When members of his family asked him about the prospect of fighting in Iraq, Pfc. Francisco Martínez-Flores of the Marines expressed no fear. They asked if he was nervous. "No, I'm ready for this," he answered.
"It was his duty," said his sister, Nayeli Martínez-Flores. He wanted to serve his country, she said.
But like several of the servicemen killed in Iraq, Private Martínez-Flores was not, officially, a United States citizen. He grew up in Duarte, east of Los Angeles, where he signed up for the Boy Scouts and played football at Duarte High School. But he was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. His family said he shipped out for war two weeks before he had planned to take the citizenship oath.
"He was proud of being here in the United States," his sister said. "He felt if we hadn't come we wouldn't have had the same opportunities that we do now." His family said he told them that he hoped to become an F.B.I. agent someday.
Private Martínez-Flores, 22, died when the M1A1 Abrams tank he was riding in veered off a bridge west of Nasiriya, crashed through a guardrail and sank, upside down, in the Euphrates River. Three other marines in the 60-ton tank also died: Staff Sgt. Donald C. May Jr., Lance Cpl. Patrick T. O'Day and Cpl. Robert M. Rodriguez.
More than 31,000 people serving in the armed forces are not United States citizens, Pentagon officials say. At least six of them have died in the war in Iraq. Last week, the United States awarded citizenship to two marines killed in the first days of the war, and other families say they may seek similar status for their lost servicemen — only a symbol, they say, but one that would have meant something to the men.
"I know he wanted to be a citizen," Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Menusa's wife, Stacy L. Menusa, said. "If he hadn't, he wouldn't have made the military and fighting for this country his life."
continued.............