Tattoos Honor Marines Killed

[thedrifter]

Tattoos Honor Marines Killed
In Iraq and Help the Survivors
By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
February 15, 2006; Page A8

RAMADI, Iraq -- Not long before the invasion of Iraq, when death still seemed far over the horizon, Jason Lemieux joked that he would tattoo Ruben Valdez's name on his arm if his buddy were killed in action.

A few months after Lance Cpl. Valdez died in a gunfight on the Syrian border, Sgt. Lemieux remembered the conversation and decided the joke was a promise. When the sergeant made it home, he walked into a tattoo parlor and had the artist dye a rifle-helmet-and-boots memorial into his upper arm. Beneath is written "Never Forget," for Lance Cpl. Valdez and three other Marines who died that day in April 2004.

Somehow, the needle's prick relieved the sorrow of loss and the guilt of survival. "When I was feeling the pain of the tattoo, it was actually making it OK that those guys got killed and I didn't," recalls Sgt. Lemieux, now in Ramadi, a nest of the insurgency, on his third combat tour with Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment.

For many Marines in Iraq, memorial tattoos are becoming a way to give ink-and-skin permanence to friends taken young. "It's like death -- it's forever," says Cpl. Joseph Giardino, a 23-year-old Chicagoan whose back reads "Some Gave All" in tattoo blue. The message had referred to two friends who lost their lives during his last tour of duty. Now it is also for two Marines killed here on his current tour, one by a hidden bomb and the other by a sniper.

"Fallen But Not Forgotten" marks the upper arm of Cpl. Francisco Villegas, 30, a three-tour veteran from Las Vegas. The words refer to the 17 Marines killed during Third Battalion's second tour of Iraq. Just three days after he stepped off the plane at the tour's end, Cpl. Villegas went to Paradise Tattoo in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

"It's kind of like the respect and loyalty thing," he says, sitting in his flak jacket and helmet at a base here. "You find some way to remember your brothers."

Lance Cpl. Kelly Miller's tattoo commemorates the day his squad leader, Cpl. Jason Dunham, smothered a live grenade to save him and another Marine. "Remember the Fallen," it says, just above where shrapnel tore through his right triceps. "USMC 4-14-04." Another Marine from the platoon had the tattoo artist make a copy of Cpl. Dunham's own tattoo, an ace of spades superimposed with a skull gnawing an eight-ball. (See the archived story on Cpl. Dunham.)

Marines have long been partial to tattoos of all sorts. But Sgt. Lemieux, a 22-year-old from Tupper Lake, N.Y., says his memorial tattoo -- "Never Forget" -- is a sort of warrior's warning label, to let civilians know what he has been through without having to explain. "It's for my guys," he says. "But it's also never forget the cost of war, to get people to understand what they're asking for when they support war."

The sergeant hopes that if he goes home in a box, his buddies will take their grief to the tattoo parlor: "It would feel good to know that they cared that much."

Similar sentiments bound Mike Torres, Curt Stiver, Jesse White and Jeremy Dillon -- who called themselves "wicked ... super-friends" and gave each other their own gladiator salute before patrols. For strength, a fist in the air; for honor, a fist over the heart; for wicked strength, a fist with devil horns. Lance Cpl. Torres's nickname was Tex Man, being from El Paso, Texas, but the other three thought of him as their guardian angel because he kept them going through frightening times.

On July 5, 2004, Lance Cpl. Torres was riding in the open bed of a lightly armored Humvee when it was hit by an insurgent rocket. The day comes back to Cpl. White in brilliantly focused snapshots: A Navy corpsman tending to wounded Marines. A motionless leg with a black ammunition pouch, the kind only Lance Cpl. Torres had. Someone saying Lance Cpl. Torres was OK. Someone else saying he was one of three dead. Yelling, "What am I going to tell Stiver and Dillon?"

Later, the three escorted Lance Cpl. Torres's casket to the airfield and gave him a gladiator salute as the plane took off. Months after, they went together to the Skin Factory in Las Vegas to make sure their friend would always be with them -- and to show their tattoos to his mom. "It was natural," says Lance Cpl. Stiver, now 21.

Lance Cpl. Dillon, a 20-year-old from Maine, went with a variation on the helmet-rifle-boots memorial: a rifle with an attached grenade launcher, like Lance Cpl. Torres's, a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and, instead of the usual dog tags, a rosary.

Lance Cpl. Stiver, a machine gunner from Oshkosh, Wis., had so many tattoos that he had lost count, so he chose some of the last available real estate on his body, his chest, for a portrait of Lance Cpl. Torres in a cowboy hat and sunglasses. The artist worked from a photo taken during infantry school.

Cpl. White has already selected the tattoos he'll get if his remaining super-friends are killed before the battalion heads home in a couple of months. For Lance Cpl. Dillon, whose nickname is Rooster, he has in mind a tough-looking bird. For Lance Cpl. Stiver, it's a skull with devil horns, inspired by a favorite rock group.

To remember Lance Cpl. Torres, Cpl. White, a 21-year-old from Bloomington, Ind., chose a tattoo of a stylized Sacred Heart for his upper arm, with the caption, "Tex Man 1983-2004."

"There's not a day goes by when we don't think of Mike," says Cpl. White. "If ever a day did go by, all we have to do is take our shirts off."

Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com

[StevenPreece]

Guys, when I served as a Birtish Marine I always wanted a full military funeral if I was killed in actionl. Fortunately for me I was not. When I served, I served with some of the best friends in the world. Looking back, I know that now more than ever before.

I have the greatest of respect for the U.S. Marines, our brothers in arms. I feel the hurt for them too when they are killed in combat.

With the greatest of respect

Steven Preece

[Seeley]

I know all of those Marines. I served with them. Great Marines.