thedrifter
11-19-07, 09:16 AM
Marine starts next mission
Milwaukee man weds early after surviving Iraq bomb
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 18, 2007
Christopher Lawrence wore his dress blue Marine uniform to his wedding Sunday, but the Milwaukee man didn't slip on a gold wedding band.
Although many grooms are nervous on their wedding day, Lawrence was calm. After all, he shouldn't be alive.
Lawrence, 20, refused to let a roadside bomb deter him from getting married to the woman he proposed to days before he shipped out to Iraq in April. And although the couple originally planned to have a big wedding next February, they decided to get hitched now.
So Lawrence's family journeyed from Milwaukee to California, where the nuptials were held in the "healing garden" at Naval Medical Center in San Diego. Lawrence wore a modified Marine uniform with short sleeves to accommodate the bandages on his shattered left arm and blue pants over his badly broken feet. He can't move his wrist or some of the fingers on his left hand, so he skipped the wedding ring part of the ceremony.
"Everybody gets the feeling, 'Why me? How could I have prevented this?' " Lawrence said in a phone interview from his hospital room. "But I'm happy at least I'm alive."
Lawrence was the student council president at Pulaski High School in Milwaukee his senior year. The 2005 graduate enlisted in the Marines in February that year, attracted by the pride and bearing of the Marine recruiters who came to Pulaski. Although Lawrence's father was in the Army, Lawrence knew he wanted to be a Marine.
"It was somewhat like a dream being in the Marines, just the way they carried themselves whenever they visited my school," he said. "Just the way people looked at them. Just what being a Marine meant, the whole connotation. I wanted that."
A member of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division, Lawrence arrived in Iraq in April. On Aug. 17, he was on a foot patrol to an island in Alus in the volatile Anbar province. His unit crossed over a bridge, patrolled the island and was headed back when his life changed.
Carrying the unit's radio, Lawrence, a corporal, watched one team of Marines cross the bridge and set up a security perimeter. Then Lawrence walked across with his staff sergeant.
"And we made it all the way across the bridge to where the bridge came in contact with the land. There was a metal plate. All I remember is hearing a click and then I woke up in Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was told I was thrown pretty high in the air," Lawrence said.
He was later sent to the Naval hospital in San Diego, where he is recuperating and hopes to walk by the end of December. But he's not out of the woods, yet, medically speaking. Doctors have told him that they plan to remove metal braces from his feet next month, but if there is still too much damage, his feet likely will be amputated.
Martin Kruming, a Vietnam veteran who volunteers at the Naval hospital on weekends, met Lawrence on Saturday. Kruming said he noticed a Green Bay Packers jacket hanging in Lawrence's hospital room, along with family photos, and they began talking about the Packers. "We sort of kidded around and said, 'Why don't we send the jacket back to the Packers and get Brett Favre to autograph it?' He said, 'That's great.' "
Kruming, who brings pizza and desserts to wounded military members at the hospital with two other volunteers, was struck by Lawrence's positive attitude and was impressed that he was getting married.
"In our four years that we've been doing this every weekend, unless a Marine or a Navy corpsman is so sedated, we have never found any of them down. This young man is no exception," Kruming said.
Even though Lawrence faces many months of rehabilitation, he decided the time was right to marry Rebecca Sora Fung, a California woman and Army veteran he met in an Internet chat room soon after he finished Marine boot camp. Shortly before his unit shipped out to Iraq, he popped the question. At first, though, his girlfriend didn't quite understand he was asking her to marry him.
"We were laughing, and I just opened up the (ring) box and said, 'Will you marry me?' I was laughing, so she didn't believe me because she didn't think I was serious," Lawrence said.
But she soon got the hint. And she said yes.
Ellie
Milwaukee man weds early after surviving Iraq bomb
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 18, 2007
Christopher Lawrence wore his dress blue Marine uniform to his wedding Sunday, but the Milwaukee man didn't slip on a gold wedding band.
Although many grooms are nervous on their wedding day, Lawrence was calm. After all, he shouldn't be alive.
Lawrence, 20, refused to let a roadside bomb deter him from getting married to the woman he proposed to days before he shipped out to Iraq in April. And although the couple originally planned to have a big wedding next February, they decided to get hitched now.
So Lawrence's family journeyed from Milwaukee to California, where the nuptials were held in the "healing garden" at Naval Medical Center in San Diego. Lawrence wore a modified Marine uniform with short sleeves to accommodate the bandages on his shattered left arm and blue pants over his badly broken feet. He can't move his wrist or some of the fingers on his left hand, so he skipped the wedding ring part of the ceremony.
"Everybody gets the feeling, 'Why me? How could I have prevented this?' " Lawrence said in a phone interview from his hospital room. "But I'm happy at least I'm alive."
Lawrence was the student council president at Pulaski High School in Milwaukee his senior year. The 2005 graduate enlisted in the Marines in February that year, attracted by the pride and bearing of the Marine recruiters who came to Pulaski. Although Lawrence's father was in the Army, Lawrence knew he wanted to be a Marine.
"It was somewhat like a dream being in the Marines, just the way they carried themselves whenever they visited my school," he said. "Just the way people looked at them. Just what being a Marine meant, the whole connotation. I wanted that."
A member of the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division, Lawrence arrived in Iraq in April. On Aug. 17, he was on a foot patrol to an island in Alus in the volatile Anbar province. His unit crossed over a bridge, patrolled the island and was headed back when his life changed.
Carrying the unit's radio, Lawrence, a corporal, watched one team of Marines cross the bridge and set up a security perimeter. Then Lawrence walked across with his staff sergeant.
"And we made it all the way across the bridge to where the bridge came in contact with the land. There was a metal plate. All I remember is hearing a click and then I woke up in Bethesda Naval Hospital. I was told I was thrown pretty high in the air," Lawrence said.
He was later sent to the Naval hospital in San Diego, where he is recuperating and hopes to walk by the end of December. But he's not out of the woods, yet, medically speaking. Doctors have told him that they plan to remove metal braces from his feet next month, but if there is still too much damage, his feet likely will be amputated.
Martin Kruming, a Vietnam veteran who volunteers at the Naval hospital on weekends, met Lawrence on Saturday. Kruming said he noticed a Green Bay Packers jacket hanging in Lawrence's hospital room, along with family photos, and they began talking about the Packers. "We sort of kidded around and said, 'Why don't we send the jacket back to the Packers and get Brett Favre to autograph it?' He said, 'That's great.' "
Kruming, who brings pizza and desserts to wounded military members at the hospital with two other volunteers, was struck by Lawrence's positive attitude and was impressed that he was getting married.
"In our four years that we've been doing this every weekend, unless a Marine or a Navy corpsman is so sedated, we have never found any of them down. This young man is no exception," Kruming said.
Even though Lawrence faces many months of rehabilitation, he decided the time was right to marry Rebecca Sora Fung, a California woman and Army veteran he met in an Internet chat room soon after he finished Marine boot camp. Shortly before his unit shipped out to Iraq, he popped the question. At first, though, his girlfriend didn't quite understand he was asking her to marry him.
"We were laughing, and I just opened up the (ring) box and said, 'Will you marry me?' I was laughing, so she didn't believe me because she didn't think I was serious," Lawrence said.
But she soon got the hint. And she said yes.
Ellie