thedrifter
12-14-07, 06:31 AM
Ooh-rah! Marines get signs
Jay Price, Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE - The nearly two miles of security fence lining N.C. 24 near Camp Lejeune's main gate are mostly bare.
It's a rare sight.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the fences have almost always been covered with dozens -- sometimes hundreds -- of homemade signs. Some are made in haste from cardboard and spray paint, others neatly hand-lettered and decorated in whimsical fashion with toys, flags and balloons. Many are crafted from bedsheets, others from tarpaulins, construction paper or even plastic cups pushed through the chain links to form words, welcoming Marines home from their dangerous work overseas.
Dozens of units, big and small, have come home to Jacksonville in recent years. It has been awhile, though, since the last major homecoming, and the Marines recently cleared away the old signs, each a shorthand tale of reunion, of lives no longer on hold.
That left a clean slate for Ashley McCarthy, 21, on a recent day when she steered her gold Mazda onto the grass beside the road. She looked at the bare links, stretching into the distance, and wondered, "Where are the other signs? Doesn't anyone care?"
Then McCarthy remembered that her boyfriend, Joe -- they have been together such a short time she struggled to spell his last name -- was returning with a small advance party. The bulk of his unit won't get back from Iraq for a few more weeks, so most of the wives, children, girlfriends and parents were still working on their signs.
She jumped out with the black bedsheet that she had been working on for three days, carefully hand-lettered. In German.
She translated out loud: "It has been a long time but we're finally together again. I missed you and I love you babe."
McCarthy, herself a military brat, was raised in Germany. The language, she thought, would make it a little special among the other signs that were sure to follow, probably all in English or Spanish, that extra little twist to help show how much she was thinking about him.
A Lejeune tradition
She didn't know it, but McCarthy's sign is part of a Lejeune tradition that stretches back more than 15 years to the last U.S. conflict in the Middle East, said Reinhild Huneycutt, an assistant in the base public affairs office, who has worked at Lejeune since 1970.
When nearly 10,000 Marines came home from the Persian Gulf War in the spring of 1991, they traveled on N.C. 24 via convoy from Morehead City. The welcome signs started in Morehead, where they came ashore from their ships, and the fences around the gate were a natural choice for even more, Huneycutt said.
It was a massive event, Huneycutt said. People lined the highway, and there was heavy media coverage. It took the Marines a couple of extra hours to reach Jacksonville from Morehead City.
After that, she said, the tradition of attaching signs to the fences around the main gate continued for the Marines' peacetime deployments, such as their frequent Mediterranean missions, when they are on ships for months at a time.
The signs became more poignant after 9/11. First, a deployment meant Afghanistan, then it came to mean seven months or a year in Iraq's Anbar Province. For most of the war, that province has been both Marine turf and the most dangerous place for U.S. troops. It has become much calmer in recent months but still can be deadly.
The signs have become so popular that the fences around the main gate aren't enough. Now they also spring up on the outfield fence of a Babe Ruth League baseball field down the road and on private fences around nearby shuttered businesses.
There are messages from children, paw-printed signs attributed to pining pets, and references to pleasures long denied, be they beer or other things: "Sgt. Johnson Prepare 4 Your Debriefing" proclaimed a recent spray-painted sheet.
For a homecoming this summer, Misty Roark made three signs, each a kind of announcement of lives restarting. One was for her husband, Lance Cpl. Brian Roark. Another was for three of his friends who weren't married. She wanted to make sure they knew someone cared. The third was for another young bachelor in the unit whose mother lived hundreds of miles away and couldn't make it for the reunion.
"She told me what to write, and later when we took it down, I mailed it to them," she said.
After her Marines had time to see the signs, Roark took them all down, as many families do, to keep as mementos.
For now there is only McCarthy's German missive, a handful of others and a long stretch of chain link waiting for more signs and more Marines.
jay.price@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4526
Ellie
Jay Price, Staff Writer
JACKSONVILLE - The nearly two miles of security fence lining N.C. 24 near Camp Lejeune's main gate are mostly bare.
It's a rare sight.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the fences have almost always been covered with dozens -- sometimes hundreds -- of homemade signs. Some are made in haste from cardboard and spray paint, others neatly hand-lettered and decorated in whimsical fashion with toys, flags and balloons. Many are crafted from bedsheets, others from tarpaulins, construction paper or even plastic cups pushed through the chain links to form words, welcoming Marines home from their dangerous work overseas.
Dozens of units, big and small, have come home to Jacksonville in recent years. It has been awhile, though, since the last major homecoming, and the Marines recently cleared away the old signs, each a shorthand tale of reunion, of lives no longer on hold.
That left a clean slate for Ashley McCarthy, 21, on a recent day when she steered her gold Mazda onto the grass beside the road. She looked at the bare links, stretching into the distance, and wondered, "Where are the other signs? Doesn't anyone care?"
Then McCarthy remembered that her boyfriend, Joe -- they have been together such a short time she struggled to spell his last name -- was returning with a small advance party. The bulk of his unit won't get back from Iraq for a few more weeks, so most of the wives, children, girlfriends and parents were still working on their signs.
She jumped out with the black bedsheet that she had been working on for three days, carefully hand-lettered. In German.
She translated out loud: "It has been a long time but we're finally together again. I missed you and I love you babe."
McCarthy, herself a military brat, was raised in Germany. The language, she thought, would make it a little special among the other signs that were sure to follow, probably all in English or Spanish, that extra little twist to help show how much she was thinking about him.
A Lejeune tradition
She didn't know it, but McCarthy's sign is part of a Lejeune tradition that stretches back more than 15 years to the last U.S. conflict in the Middle East, said Reinhild Huneycutt, an assistant in the base public affairs office, who has worked at Lejeune since 1970.
When nearly 10,000 Marines came home from the Persian Gulf War in the spring of 1991, they traveled on N.C. 24 via convoy from Morehead City. The welcome signs started in Morehead, where they came ashore from their ships, and the fences around the gate were a natural choice for even more, Huneycutt said.
It was a massive event, Huneycutt said. People lined the highway, and there was heavy media coverage. It took the Marines a couple of extra hours to reach Jacksonville from Morehead City.
After that, she said, the tradition of attaching signs to the fences around the main gate continued for the Marines' peacetime deployments, such as their frequent Mediterranean missions, when they are on ships for months at a time.
The signs became more poignant after 9/11. First, a deployment meant Afghanistan, then it came to mean seven months or a year in Iraq's Anbar Province. For most of the war, that province has been both Marine turf and the most dangerous place for U.S. troops. It has become much calmer in recent months but still can be deadly.
The signs have become so popular that the fences around the main gate aren't enough. Now they also spring up on the outfield fence of a Babe Ruth League baseball field down the road and on private fences around nearby shuttered businesses.
There are messages from children, paw-printed signs attributed to pining pets, and references to pleasures long denied, be they beer or other things: "Sgt. Johnson Prepare 4 Your Debriefing" proclaimed a recent spray-painted sheet.
For a homecoming this summer, Misty Roark made three signs, each a kind of announcement of lives restarting. One was for her husband, Lance Cpl. Brian Roark. Another was for three of his friends who weren't married. She wanted to make sure they knew someone cared. The third was for another young bachelor in the unit whose mother lived hundreds of miles away and couldn't make it for the reunion.
"She told me what to write, and later when we took it down, I mailed it to them," she said.
After her Marines had time to see the signs, Roark took them all down, as many families do, to keep as mementos.
For now there is only McCarthy's German missive, a handful of others and a long stretch of chain link waiting for more signs and more Marines.
jay.price@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4526
Ellie