Shaffer
04-16-03, 07:20 AM
For Marines highly trained and eager for combat, the war has been a disappointment.
The only dead so far have been innocent civilians, killed by Marines at traffic-control points or blown away as U.S. troops "prepared the battlefield" with airstrikes or suppressing fire before they entered a town or village.
"I was expecting a slug-fest," said 28-year-old Lance Cpl. Jeremy Wilton, a mortar man in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, one of many Marines who said the war has not lived up to his expectations.
Wilton, a Texan who said he loved the combative recreational sport of paintball so much that "I might as well be paid for this stuff," said he enlisted in the Marine Corps to experience combat. When his Camp Pendleton-based battalion got called up, he thought he would have the chance.
"Fifth and seventh got it all," he said, referring to other Marine units that were in bloody engagements early in the war and more recently have been ambushed and attacked by suicide bombers and guerrillas, at a terrible cost.
"I still haven't been able to kill anybody," Wilton said, sharing his disappointment with numerous enlisted Marines and officers who have made similar complaints. "I've got my name carved into my K-Bar over the blood groove, but I still don't have any hash marks."
http://www.nctimes.net/news/2003/20030415/53829.html
The only dead so far have been innocent civilians, killed by Marines at traffic-control points or blown away as U.S. troops "prepared the battlefield" with airstrikes or suppressing fire before they entered a town or village.
"I was expecting a slug-fest," said 28-year-old Lance Cpl. Jeremy Wilton, a mortar man in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, one of many Marines who said the war has not lived up to his expectations.
Wilton, a Texan who said he loved the combative recreational sport of paintball so much that "I might as well be paid for this stuff," said he enlisted in the Marine Corps to experience combat. When his Camp Pendleton-based battalion got called up, he thought he would have the chance.
"Fifth and seventh got it all," he said, referring to other Marine units that were in bloody engagements early in the war and more recently have been ambushed and attacked by suicide bombers and guerrillas, at a terrible cost.
"I still haven't been able to kill anybody," Wilton said, sharing his disappointment with numerous enlisted Marines and officers who have made similar complaints. "I've got my name carved into my K-Bar over the blood groove, but I still don't have any hash marks."
http://www.nctimes.net/news/2003/20030415/53829.html