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thedrifter
06-13-03, 06:41 AM
Marines Get Emotional Homecoming
Miami Herald
June 9, 2003


Pedro Boitel used every ounce of strength that he had to stand up from his wheelchair and take a few steps forward toward his son, who had come home from the war.

Cpl. Daniel Boitel was one of 104 area Marines and Marine reservists who returned from combat to the arms of their loved ones Saturday morning. The Miami Lakes-based antitank TOW/SCOUT platoon of the 8th Tank Battalion was part of what the Department of Defense referred to as the tip of the spear that led forces to Baghdad.

When Boitel left for Iraq almost six months ago, his father was in the hospital recovering from a stroke.

"My son, he left with his heart ripped open because his father was not well," said his mother, Cristina.

But he's home now. His heart will heal.

The Marines are home after nearly six months. The unit left Jan. 19 on four buses for the 13-hour ride to Camp Lejeune, N.C. They trained there for about two weeks before flying to Kuwait, then barreling their way through the desert to Baghdad.

The unit encountered numerous combat situations and at least three major firefights during Operation Iraqi Freedom, said Master Sgt. Richard Barber, the support team leader.

"Always in the front and directly engaging, destroying or capturing any enemy who attempted to stop them from completing their mission, our Miami Marines are returning true frontline combat veterans," Barber said.

In one particularly fierce battle in the town of Tuwayhah, just south of Baghdad, the troops were ambushed by a strong force of non-Iraqi Arab "professional terrorists" from the Islamic Jihad organization.

"At the end of the firefight, more than 100 bodies of terrorists from Syria, Egypt, Yemen and Lebanon were found," Barber said during a telephone interview last week.

Marines were lost, too. Three were killed, including a 2nd Battalion platoon commander, Marine 1st Lt. Brian McPhillips.

Five Marines were seriously wounded, four of them South Florida reservists who were shot while engaging the enemy from the cupolas of their lightly armored Hummers, Barber said. They were evacuated to field hospitals and eventually back to the United States in April.

GOT PURPLE HEARTS

All four -- Sgt. John Dale, of Coconut Creek; Sgt. Roberto Pavon, of Miami; Cpl. Joseph McMahon, of West Palm Beach; and Cpl. Alexander Tabares, of Miami -- received purple hearts.

Cpl. Pablo Rivas, 25, of Kendall, saw McPhillips go down. "I was in the last vehicle, seven or eight behind. Lt. McPhillips was the head of the convoy. He took a round to the back of the head. I saw him fall in the turret," Rivas recalled.

He is a changed man, he said.

"When you're over there, you feel a deep sadness. You see children barefoot, walking around on bloody feet. You become so thankful for what you have," Rivas said. "There is no one thing that will ever go unnoticed."

There are some stories he is not ready to tell.

"Just some instances where the stories are so grand, they have such magnitude, I'm afraid people will misinterpret. They're so deeply sad, so deeply disturbing," he said.

Rivas found religion along the way.

GEOGRAPHICAL GUIDE

"I'm not really religious, but I was reading the Bible because I wanted to keep track of where we were and where we were going. You know that whole area is the focus of everything from Exodus," he said. "It was amazing. By the time I was in the thick of it, I didn't have any fear.

"There are no atheists in a fighting war."

His father watched him speak, swollen with pride -- and relieved for the first time after months of anxiety.

"I can breathe again," Pablo Rivas Sr. said. Besides his son's being a bit thinner than when he left, the father observed another change.

"I can see something in his look, in his expression. Like he's matured," he said.

There were times when Rosa Orozco didn't think her son, Cpl. José Orozco, of the Flagami area, would come home at all.

"It looked so bad there," she said. "But he looks good."

She knows not to press her son for details. The families attended briefings at the reserve center last week and received booklets that tell them what to expect from their war heroes and how to react and respond.

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

"It says that if he wants to tell us something, for us to listen, but that we shouldn't ask him anything," Orozco said.

One of the returning men, Lance Cpl. Erick José Jiménez, of Carol City, had twins born while he was gone. His family had a party for him Saturday night.

Boitel, however, made it in time for the birth of his first child -- due Sept. 27. She will be named Danielle, after her father, his wife said.

"I never thought that he would make it in time," Patricia Boitel said as she touched her husband's shoulder, his back, his neck, his arm.

"He's in one piece. He's safe," she said.

Maj. Scott Mack, one of the unit's leaders, said he hoped the entire community would welcome the men back and take a moment to thank them.

"Miami needs to know what these young men did. They were integral to establishing a framework for democracy in Iraq. Their efforts directly impacted an immediate change in the Iraqi people and their daily lives," Mack said.

"Whether they ever find a weapon of mass destruction, to us it matters nothing. We changed those people's lives," Mack said.

Sempers,

Roger