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thedrifter
05-03-03, 12:43 PM
Seeing death changes Marines


EDITOR’S NOTE: Orange County Register staff writer Gordon Dillow and photographer Mark Avery are embedded with Marine Corps Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment, which is based at Camp Pendleton, Calif.



SOUTHERN IRAQ —Seeing violent death up close changes young men — even if they’re Marines.

For many of the young Marines in 1st Battalion, Marine Regimental Combat Team 5, the change came with the fight at Pumping Station No. 2.

The 1/5 had come in the darkness, in the early morning hours Friday. Several hundred Marine infantrymen were riding on AAVs, amphibious assault vehicles, also known affectionately as “hogs,” which carry .50 caliber machine guns and automatic grenade launchers.

The wind had died down but it was warm; everyone wore bulky chemical-protection suits, their gas masks off but ready. Ammo hung from their combat vests. The sky was full of thick, black, viscous smoke from a broken pipeline nearby that had been ignited. Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marines was the first large ground unit to cross the border into Iraq. Then they churned along for eight hours to cross the 18 miles to the oil pumping station in the Rumaylah oil fields.

The pumping station was also the base for an Iraqi army brigade. Usually a brigade would have a couple thousand guys in it, but low morale had thinned the Iraqi ranks and a Marine artillery barrage had thinned them even more, leaving some of the Iraqi soldiers lying dead, and others fleeing for home.

A few Iraqis stayed, hiding in poorly constructed underground bunkers, as the Marines bore down on them. Marine assault vehicles drew near, infantrymen climbed out of them and began searching the holes and trenches, M-16s at the ready.

Suddenly there was fire on the right, and on the left; it was hard to tell who was shooting at whom. Then an Iraqi soldier, losing his courage at the last moment, burst out of his bunker on a motorcycle — Iraqis here bury all their vehicles in sand bunkers — and started fleeing at high speed away from the Marines.

He was an enemy soldier, possibly armed.

The Marines opened up on him with M-16s. Marines standing nearby, watching, laughed at the spectacle, and joked about how foolish this Iraqi was, trying to outrun bullets on a motorcycle; the consensus was that anyone that stupid deserved to die.

The Iraqi didn’t die, but he was wounded and knocked from his motorcycle. He surrendered, hands in the air, his face bloody. His wound was treated, gently, by a Navy corpsman.

Then a half dozen other Iraqis, some of them from the Republican Guard, broke for safety in a brown Toyota pickup — and this time the Marines bled too. Wildly shooting an AK-47 out the window, the Iraqis wounded a Marine in the stomach. 2nd Lt. Therrel “Shane” Childers, 30, of Harrison, Miss. died soon after, becoming one of the first U.S. combat deaths of the war.

The Iraqis were immediately “lighted up” by Marine gunfire; some the Iraqis surrendered, and lived; others didn’t, and died.

The Marines later lamented that one of their own had been killed in what was essentially a drive-by shooting; for some it seemed more like something that would happen back home, on the block, instead of in a war zone.

Then another truckload of Iraqis made a break for it, also shooting automatic weapons. The Marines blew the vehicle apart with .50 calibers; three of the Iraqis were severely wounded and four were killed; the riddled bodies of the dead lay by the wrecked vehicle for hours.

By 10 a.m., the pumping station was secure.

But, it was still a bloody day, mostly for the Iraqis; 25 were killed, including those killed by artillery. So far, more than 100 enemy POWs have surrendered.

It was also bloody for the Marines. In addition to Childers, three Marines were superficially injured by a small toepopper mine.

And somehow the young Marines didn’t seem quite the same afterward. Before the war they had joked about their own deaths — and prayed, too.

The chaplain, Navy Lt. Carey Cash, had counseled them, telling them that fear was normal, and that their purpose in the war was “noble and good.”

Many of the Marines knelt in the sand and recited the Lord’s prayer with him.

But none of the laughter or the prayers fully immunized them against the harsh reality of their first real fight.

After the firefight, some of the Marines were exhilarated by their first combat experience.

Others had to admit to themselves that when the shooting and killing started they were more bothered by it than they’d thought they’d be.

“I didn’t feel anything after I did it,” said Cpl. Mike Cash, 30, of Oceanside, Calif. who shot and killed one of the armed Iraqis in the first vehicle that tried to flee. “I know I’m supposed to feel something, but I didn’t.

“That kind of bugs me a little bit, that I didn’t feel anything.”

“It wasn’t like I thought it’d be,” said Cpl. Martin Vera, 27, of Long Beach, Calif. who had re-enlisted in the Marines after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks because he thought that now, finally, he would get a chance to see some action. “It wasn’t like the movies and stuff. After 9-11 it was like, yeah, I wanted to come back for this. But it bothered me, shooting at those guys.

“I had to do it; it’s my job. But it bothered me. A lot.”



Sempers,

Roger