thedrifter
04-11-08, 02:24 PM
OKINAWA-- In the spring of 2006, a tight platoon of motor transportation Marines from Okinawa were torn apart by a tragedy that left one of them horribly wounded. Last month, the Marines reunited here. This is the first chapter in their story.
The last time Tim Jeffers was on Okinawa, he had legs.
That was in February 2006 when Jeffers, then a corporal assigned to 3rd Transportation Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, as a motor transport operator, left the island for Iraq's Anbar Province.
Jeffers was three months into a seven-month deployment the day he dismounted the lead security vehicle in a convoy, took a few steps off the road during a security sweep and had his life changed forever.
His platoon mates watched from the ground that day - the haze of dust and smoke still permeating the battlefield - as a medevac helicopter gulped up their friend, shot back in the direction the convoy came from and disappeared over the horizon.
It was the beginning of a long journey for Tim Jeffers - one that, more than two years later, brought him back here. He came back, he says, for family - the family he was taken from that day in Anbar.
Before Iraq
Jeffers arrived on Okinawa in August 2005 and was assigned to 2nd Platoon, Motor Transportation Company, 3rd TSB (the battalion has since been redesignated as Combat Logistics Battalion 4).
He joined the Marines in 2002 as a reservist but volunteered for active duty in 2005. He was 18 when service in the Corps attracted his interest.
"I wanted a challenge, and the poster looked cool," Jeffers says with a chuckle.
Jeffers is a smart ass. It is, his friends say, his biting wit for which they know and love him, and his charismatic personality helped forge the tight bonds that defined the Marines of 2nd Platoon.
"His personality is just awesome," said Cpl. Jason O'Hearn, who became close friends with Jeffers on Okinawa. "He was the life of the party. He was a ladies man. He was like my little brother."
Fraternal bonds run deep in 2nd Platoon, which goes by the moniker "Scorpions." The Scorpions are fiercely proud of the glory days before Iraq when they reigned as the all-star platoon of Motor T Company. They trained hard and "played" even harder. They exercised together, went to the field together, smoked and drank together and traded tales of life back home. They did all the things Marines do to become units, to become family. They felt, as one member put it, "untouchable."
"We were taught that if there was ever going to be anything or anyone better than us, they better be untouchable," said Sgt. Charles Trask, the tough kid from a broken home in Kansas City, Mo., who goes by the call sign "Spartan" and wears a matching tattoo of a Spartan warrior on his left pectoral.
Trask calls the Marines of 2nd Platoon "my Marines," and he reveres them like a proud father. His fervent pride and loyalty to his Marine family is prevalent in 2nd Platoon.
Many of them came from broken homes or dysfunctional families and found in the platoon a kinship they had never known. That kinship was at the heart of the "unbreakable chain" the platoon formed before they went to war together in 2006.
"Our belief and trust in each other always got us through," said Sgt. Joseph Tocci, a Boston native and mellower complement to Trask's hard-edged disposition. "Our leaders always instilled in us to be the best, and we always were."
Before they left for Iraq, 2nd Platoon, Tocci says, had the highest physical fitness test average in the company, and the platoon won every unit competition that came along.
They were untouchable.
'You either find 'em or you hit 'em'
When the Scorpions went to Iraq in 2006, they were assigned the mission of security platoon and worked out of Al Asad Air Base, the biggest base in Anbar Province, supporting convoys that supplied forward operating bases in the area. The mission was arduous, nerve-racking and never-ending.
The battalion the Scorpions supported lost eight Marines within the first six weeks they were on the ground, and the harsh realities of war quickly set in for them.
"It was definitely a culture shock," Tocci says. "We were like, 'It's no joke over here.'"
With improvised explosive devices and snipers the two biggest threats in Iraq, the Scorpions' mission was to find and protect against those threats during convoy operations.
"You either find 'em, or you hit 'em," Tocci said about the stark reality they faced either spotting IEDs or triggering them. "We were the ones right in front looking out. You have to really have that eagle's eye to see them."
The platoon was attacked with IEDs continuously. Trask was hit with an IED himself but suffered only minor injuries and returned to duty.
"It was IED after IED after IED," he said. "I expected the enemy to be right in my face like a football game. It wasn't like that. It was an enemy that was right there in our face that we couldn't see."
The invisible enemy loomed constantly under roadside rocks and rubble. The Marines regarded every object with suspicion and contempt.
'You tell them what they need to know'
Marines have an informal doctrine for mourning. A Marine's mourning process is often abbreviated and stored away, to be indulged in some time later when it isn't a battlefield liability. It is a very unnatural act to swallow a heart full of sorrow, but it is a necessary sacrifice Marines make for the sake of the mission.
"You tell them what they need to know," Trask said, describing the process. "You give them the least bit of information to carry on, and when the mission is accomplished, you give them some time to mourn. Then you get them focused again."
The day Jeffers was wounded, Cpl. John Rockwell, Jeffers' next-door neighbor in the barracks on Okinawa, was on a separate convoy. When the Marines reached their destination, a lieutenant pulled everyone together and passed the news.
"She told us one of our own got hit," Rockwell said. "She didn't tell us how bad until later, but they don't tell us somebody got hit unless something bad happened."
Rockwell and Jeffers, who both hail from Orange County in Southern California, forged a strong friendship on Okinawa.
"Me and Jeffers got really close," Rockwell said. "We were a lot alike because we're from the same area."
When Rockwell learned what had happened to Jeffers, it hit him hard.
"I can't really explain the feeling," he said. "It's horrible. It's just the worst feeling possible."
O'Hearn, who was attached to an engineer unit, also got an initial vague report.
"At first, I thought, 'he's fine,'" he said. "I had to tell myself that. That's like my brother. I had to tell myself that to stay sane."
He found out the next day how bad Jeffers had been hit.
"I broke down," O'Hearn said. "I was bawling. When I heard the extent of his injuries, I didn't think he was going to make it. I thought 'how could anyone live through that?'"
Cpl. Carl Drexler was in the convoy with Jeffers, but he was far back in the snaking procession of vehicles.
The convoy stopped when a vehicle in the rear was hit with an IED. Jeffers, who was the pace vehicle commander, did what he was trained to do. He got out to sweep the area around his vehicle for IEDs or insurgents.
Drexler heard the call come over the radio moments later: "We lost a man."
He initially assumed it wasn't anyone from 2nd Platoon. "We figured maybe it was a contractor or something because they didn't say Marine."
But when the convoy arrived at Al Qaim, Drexler saw someone else in Jeffers' seat.
"As soon as I saw he wasn't there, I knew it was bad," he said. "I'd seen a lot of guys get hit, and they don't get medevac'd. They just go in a different track."
Drexler grabbed a Marine who had been close to the incident and demanded to know what happened. He asked three times before the Marine revealed his horrible secret.
"He told me both his legs got blown off."
Drexler figured his friend was dead. He thought he would have bled to death on the chopper ride.
"I just wanted to stop," he said "I didn't want to go back out there."
The platoon's leaders knew the other Marines would have similar thoughts. They pulled the Marines together.
"When you take that unbreakable chain you've built and then break it, the whole thing can fall apart," Trask said. "Our staff sergeant brought us together and told us 'no matter how much we want to quit, no matter how much we hate this situation, we can't let it tear us apart.'"
And they didn't let it tear them apart, but, as Drexler put it, none of them were the same after that.
"We were all just down for the next few weeks."
While they were down, Jeffers was in a coma.
Part two of the Untouchables will appear in next Friday, April 18.
The last time Tim Jeffers was on Okinawa, he had legs.
That was in February 2006 when Jeffers, then a corporal assigned to 3rd Transportation Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, as a motor transport operator, left the island for Iraq's Anbar Province.
Jeffers was three months into a seven-month deployment the day he dismounted the lead security vehicle in a convoy, took a few steps off the road during a security sweep and had his life changed forever.
His platoon mates watched from the ground that day - the haze of dust and smoke still permeating the battlefield - as a medevac helicopter gulped up their friend, shot back in the direction the convoy came from and disappeared over the horizon.
It was the beginning of a long journey for Tim Jeffers - one that, more than two years later, brought him back here. He came back, he says, for family - the family he was taken from that day in Anbar.
Before Iraq
Jeffers arrived on Okinawa in August 2005 and was assigned to 2nd Platoon, Motor Transportation Company, 3rd TSB (the battalion has since been redesignated as Combat Logistics Battalion 4).
He joined the Marines in 2002 as a reservist but volunteered for active duty in 2005. He was 18 when service in the Corps attracted his interest.
"I wanted a challenge, and the poster looked cool," Jeffers says with a chuckle.
Jeffers is a smart ass. It is, his friends say, his biting wit for which they know and love him, and his charismatic personality helped forge the tight bonds that defined the Marines of 2nd Platoon.
"His personality is just awesome," said Cpl. Jason O'Hearn, who became close friends with Jeffers on Okinawa. "He was the life of the party. He was a ladies man. He was like my little brother."
Fraternal bonds run deep in 2nd Platoon, which goes by the moniker "Scorpions." The Scorpions are fiercely proud of the glory days before Iraq when they reigned as the all-star platoon of Motor T Company. They trained hard and "played" even harder. They exercised together, went to the field together, smoked and drank together and traded tales of life back home. They did all the things Marines do to become units, to become family. They felt, as one member put it, "untouchable."
"We were taught that if there was ever going to be anything or anyone better than us, they better be untouchable," said Sgt. Charles Trask, the tough kid from a broken home in Kansas City, Mo., who goes by the call sign "Spartan" and wears a matching tattoo of a Spartan warrior on his left pectoral.
Trask calls the Marines of 2nd Platoon "my Marines," and he reveres them like a proud father. His fervent pride and loyalty to his Marine family is prevalent in 2nd Platoon.
Many of them came from broken homes or dysfunctional families and found in the platoon a kinship they had never known. That kinship was at the heart of the "unbreakable chain" the platoon formed before they went to war together in 2006.
"Our belief and trust in each other always got us through," said Sgt. Joseph Tocci, a Boston native and mellower complement to Trask's hard-edged disposition. "Our leaders always instilled in us to be the best, and we always were."
Before they left for Iraq, 2nd Platoon, Tocci says, had the highest physical fitness test average in the company, and the platoon won every unit competition that came along.
They were untouchable.
'You either find 'em or you hit 'em'
When the Scorpions went to Iraq in 2006, they were assigned the mission of security platoon and worked out of Al Asad Air Base, the biggest base in Anbar Province, supporting convoys that supplied forward operating bases in the area. The mission was arduous, nerve-racking and never-ending.
The battalion the Scorpions supported lost eight Marines within the first six weeks they were on the ground, and the harsh realities of war quickly set in for them.
"It was definitely a culture shock," Tocci says. "We were like, 'It's no joke over here.'"
With improvised explosive devices and snipers the two biggest threats in Iraq, the Scorpions' mission was to find and protect against those threats during convoy operations.
"You either find 'em, or you hit 'em," Tocci said about the stark reality they faced either spotting IEDs or triggering them. "We were the ones right in front looking out. You have to really have that eagle's eye to see them."
The platoon was attacked with IEDs continuously. Trask was hit with an IED himself but suffered only minor injuries and returned to duty.
"It was IED after IED after IED," he said. "I expected the enemy to be right in my face like a football game. It wasn't like that. It was an enemy that was right there in our face that we couldn't see."
The invisible enemy loomed constantly under roadside rocks and rubble. The Marines regarded every object with suspicion and contempt.
'You tell them what they need to know'
Marines have an informal doctrine for mourning. A Marine's mourning process is often abbreviated and stored away, to be indulged in some time later when it isn't a battlefield liability. It is a very unnatural act to swallow a heart full of sorrow, but it is a necessary sacrifice Marines make for the sake of the mission.
"You tell them what they need to know," Trask said, describing the process. "You give them the least bit of information to carry on, and when the mission is accomplished, you give them some time to mourn. Then you get them focused again."
The day Jeffers was wounded, Cpl. John Rockwell, Jeffers' next-door neighbor in the barracks on Okinawa, was on a separate convoy. When the Marines reached their destination, a lieutenant pulled everyone together and passed the news.
"She told us one of our own got hit," Rockwell said. "She didn't tell us how bad until later, but they don't tell us somebody got hit unless something bad happened."
Rockwell and Jeffers, who both hail from Orange County in Southern California, forged a strong friendship on Okinawa.
"Me and Jeffers got really close," Rockwell said. "We were a lot alike because we're from the same area."
When Rockwell learned what had happened to Jeffers, it hit him hard.
"I can't really explain the feeling," he said. "It's horrible. It's just the worst feeling possible."
O'Hearn, who was attached to an engineer unit, also got an initial vague report.
"At first, I thought, 'he's fine,'" he said. "I had to tell myself that. That's like my brother. I had to tell myself that to stay sane."
He found out the next day how bad Jeffers had been hit.
"I broke down," O'Hearn said. "I was bawling. When I heard the extent of his injuries, I didn't think he was going to make it. I thought 'how could anyone live through that?'"
Cpl. Carl Drexler was in the convoy with Jeffers, but he was far back in the snaking procession of vehicles.
The convoy stopped when a vehicle in the rear was hit with an IED. Jeffers, who was the pace vehicle commander, did what he was trained to do. He got out to sweep the area around his vehicle for IEDs or insurgents.
Drexler heard the call come over the radio moments later: "We lost a man."
He initially assumed it wasn't anyone from 2nd Platoon. "We figured maybe it was a contractor or something because they didn't say Marine."
But when the convoy arrived at Al Qaim, Drexler saw someone else in Jeffers' seat.
"As soon as I saw he wasn't there, I knew it was bad," he said. "I'd seen a lot of guys get hit, and they don't get medevac'd. They just go in a different track."
Drexler grabbed a Marine who had been close to the incident and demanded to know what happened. He asked three times before the Marine revealed his horrible secret.
"He told me both his legs got blown off."
Drexler figured his friend was dead. He thought he would have bled to death on the chopper ride.
"I just wanted to stop," he said "I didn't want to go back out there."
The platoon's leaders knew the other Marines would have similar thoughts. They pulled the Marines together.
"When you take that unbreakable chain you've built and then break it, the whole thing can fall apart," Trask said. "Our staff sergeant brought us together and told us 'no matter how much we want to quit, no matter how much we hate this situation, we can't let it tear us apart.'"
And they didn't let it tear them apart, but, as Drexler put it, none of them were the same after that.
"We were all just down for the next few weeks."
While they were down, Jeffers was in a coma.
Part two of the Untouchables will appear in next Friday, April 18.