Staff Sergeant Matt Ingham
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  1. #1

    Staff Sergeant Matt Ingham

    http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/co...2.html?nav=742
    Local Marine dies
    Altoonan ambushed in Afghanistan
    By William Kibler, bkibler@altoonamirror.com


    As a kid, Matt Ingham of Juniata wanted to be a game warden.

    But 9/11 triggered his martial spirit, and he signed up for a way of life where the quarry shoots back.

    Early Monday, the ultimate consequence of that decision came due when Marine Staff Sgt. Ingham, 24, died with two comrades in an ambush in southern Afghanistan.

    When two of Matt's fellow Marines in dress uniform walked through the door of his home office on North Fourth Avenue Monday afternoon, Matt's father, Gary, suspected the worst.

    "Please tell me he's injured," he recalled saying. But he knew by the set of their faces that wasn't it.

    "We're sorry to inform you ... " they began. He flung his glasses down, breaking one of the stems.

    Still, the visitors were kind, waiting two-and-a-half hours until Matt's mother, Tammi, came home from work at the Central Pennsylvania Humane Society so they could tell her in person.

    On Tuesday, Matt's platoon leader called from Afghanistan. Almost immediately, Gary and Tammi began crying. The platoon leader spoke of the ambush that killed Matt and two fellow Marines he'd stationed with him in an exposed position, anticipating an assault. He said Matt remained calm and called for helicopters.

    "He saved the rest of our lives," the platoon leader said.

    Matt, a 2002 Altoona Area High School graduate, had already done two tours in Iraq and was among the first Marines there at the beginning of the war. He went to Afghanistan in the fall, part of a reconnaissance outfit in the Third Marine Division.

    Gary didn't like the idea of his son in combat. "But he was his own man," Gary said.

    He said his son was good with a gun and could shoot a bull's-eye at a thousand yards.

    He liked the structure of the military, and he was a "physical kid."

    "His arms are like this," Gary said, making a circle with his hands about 7 inches in diameter.

    He played football in junior high school, but motocross was his love. He became a professional motocross driver in Okinawa, Japan, where he was stationed.

    The platoon leader spoke of riding with Matt up and down hills until he had to get off.

    In 2006, Matt, who has a sister, Monica, who lives in Phoenix, married Yasmin Rajpar, whom he met in eighth grade at Keith Junior High School.

    "They were the loves of each others' lives," said Yasmin's mother, Shamim, an Altoona native who lives in Altoona with her husband, Haider, a native African she met in the Peace Corps. They adopted Yasmin as a baby from Pakistan and raised her here. Matt "absolutely adored" their daughter, she said.

    They were best friends, "like two puppies from the same litter," she said.

    They hiked and kayaked together in Okinawa, where he was stationed. They saw life as an adventure, she said. She was a secondary school teacher taking courses for a master's degree. Despite the divergence of their life goals, they supported each other's ambitions, she said.

    Shamim took pride in her son-in-law's excellence as a Marine.

    "I hope I've conveyed to you our love for him, and our high regard," she said. "He's part of our family."

    Yasmin had just returned to their home in Okinawa from Christmas vacation in Altoona when she learned of Matt's death. She sounded "numb" and "flat" when her mom spoke to her Monday. She'll fly accompanied by a casualty officer to Dover, Del., where Matt's body will be brought back to the States, and she'll probably re-settle here, Shamim said.

    With strangers, Matt was reserved, but with people he loved he was "loving" and "carefree," Gary said.

    He "messed with everybody," according to the platoon leader, but he always kept a straight face.

    Listening on the speakerphone to the platoon leader speak, Tammi slapped her husband on the thigh at that point.

    Matt never spoke of what it was like in battle, said his father, who never served. Surely he was scared, Gary said.

    "I don't see how you could get used to that," he said.

    But Matt was highly trained and stayed calm Monday in anticipation of the attack, his father pointed out.

    Gary and Tammi will fly to Dover today to meet the plane that will bring their son's body in about 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

    Depending on the weather, a motorcycle honor guard may accompany the hearse from Lancaster to Altoona, Gary said.

    Gary said he goes from "numb to angry." But he remained sensitive to others.

    He called the Marines who delivered their message of death "super nice." He asked the platoon leader to give his phone number to the families of the other two Marines killed in the ambush, so they could call if they wanted.

    He said goodbye to the platoon leader by saying, "Stay safe, so I can talk to you again."

    Before Matt left for Afghanistan, Gary visited him in San Diego, where they rode motorcycles in the desert, fished in the ocean and went to bars at night. They were buddies. "That 'I'm your dad' sort of thing went out when he went into the Marines," Gary said.

    The platoon leader told Gary that Matt wasn't easy to lead because of his knowledge and strong convictions.

    They didn't always agree but always "talked it out," the platoon leader said.

    He learned a lot from Matt, he said.

    Matt wanted to make a career of the service, his dad said.

    "He was literally the No. 1 Marine I've ever had," the leader told them. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring him home."







    http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/co...8.html?nav=742
    Marine died ‘with his boots on’
    By William Kibler, bkibler@altoonamirror.com

    In the Greek epic "The Iliad," hero Achilles faces a choice between a short life ending in a glorious death or a long, peaceful life without the glory.

    Ultimately, Achilles chose the glory.

    Matt Ingham and his fellow Marines would understand.

    Staff Sgt. Ingham, 25, died Monday in Afghanistan in an ambush, saving the lives of 12 fellow Marines by crawling, while wounded, to a radio to call in air support, exposing himself to additional fire, which killed him, according to reports from his platoon commander, his family and friends.

    "That's the way you want to go," said Marine Sgt. Greg Wenzel, an Altoona native awaiting his sixth deployment to the Middle East war zone. "Taking the fight to the enemy."

    No one wants to die, said Justin Slep, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who along with Wenzel and Ingham was one of 10 Altoona Area High School graduates from 2002 to join the Corps.

    But such a death is "one of the things people like us live for," Slep said. "If I did [die], I'd want it to be just like that."

    Slep has imagined what it would be like afterwards: a heroic medal citation that people read again and again, wondering "What was that guy made of? ... How the hell did he do that?"

    Ingham "went out with his boots on," Wenzel said. "[Doing] what we all loved doing."

    It's the kind of death that's enviable to those who join the Marines for the "right reasons" - which don't include money for school or because their dad wanted them to go, Slep and Wenzel said.

    His action was potentially "big, big stuff" and medal-worthy, according to Slep.

    Based on preliminary reports, squad-leader Ingham may have suspected he was fatally injured when he crawled to the body of his comrade carrying the radio pack, Slep said.

    One could argue that believing you're going to die makes it easier to risk getting shot again.

    But Slep and Wenzel don't look at it that way.

    They see Ingham simply ignoring his personal concerns to focus on helping his comrades - something he would have done whether he was already hit or not.

    "You have to stay in the fight," said Ron Heller, Logan Township police chief and former Marine, who was wounded several times in Vietnam. "You cannot give up."

    Maybe Ingham could have increased his survival odds by attending to his own injuries and remaining under cover, Slep said.

    But that wasn't his role as leader.

    Injured or not, it couldn't have been easy to work his way to the fallen radioman, calm himself with "rounds snapping past his head," then provide the helicopter pilots the precise location coordinates, while explaining the positions of his men and the enemy in detail, so the pilots would know what they were getting into, Slep said.

    A partial, hurried picture risked making things much worse, he said.

    It's absolutely unnatural for people to willingly enter hostile fire, he said.

    Some can't do it and end up "sitting in corners crying or physically sick," he said.

    But for most, the intense training and the momentum of battle take over, Wenzel said.

    Anger, too - as you realize the enemy is shooting at you, Heller said.

    "It's the biggest adrenaline rush," Wenzel said.

    Everyone is afraid, but you can reach a place where normal perceptions vanish, said Heller, who recalls that firefights initially sounded loud, but sometimes faded so in retrospect he recalled hearing nothing.

    When it's over, you think "Holy s---, I don't believe I did that," Wenzel said.

    Ingham may have died an enviable death, but children aren't supposed to precede their parents, said Leanne Sidney, who taught him at the Greater Altoona Career & Technology Center.

    She has a 19-year-old daughter and can't "wrap [her] mind around" losing a child.

    Still, he was doing what he loved.

    "It's what Marines do," Heller said. "For each other."


  2. #2
    I have read a lot of stories of Marines going up to guard the gates. As a matter of fact, a fellow police officer, who is a retired Marine, died today. It is always hard to read about one of our brothers or sisters dying....but this one was especially tough to read. It sounds like this Marine embodied and lived what we all aspire and have aspired to be. It sounds like he was a true leader, an unselfish Marine, and a good person. He saved a lot of lives through his courage, devotion, and unselfishness. God bless him, and his family. Semper Fi brother. Another Marine reporting for duty at the gates of heaven!


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