Tales from the front

[thedrifter]

Mon, Apr. 07, 2003

DANIEL C. RHODES - Champaign, IL
By Jeff Seidel
Knight Ridder Newspapers



Name: Daniel C. Rhodes
Hometown: Champaign, Ill.
Age: 22
Branch: Marines
Rank: Lance corporal
Job: Combat engineer


---


SOUTHERN IRAQ - For two hours, Lance Cpl. Daniel Rhodes lies on the ground holding an M-16 rifle. His left elbow is aching. Half of his body is numb. Both knees hurt. Two grenades stick in his ribs. And a canteen rubs against his hip.


His Kevlar helmet rides low on his forehead, and he has to push it back to see. He's on a team, spanned across the desert, providing security for combat engineers, who are about to blow up a portion of road in southern Iraq.


Rhodes spots some Iraqi civilians in the distance, about 1,000 meters away, walking toward his position. Rhodes thinks: What are they doing?


He counts three civilians.


He sees a man on a donkey, waving his arms wildly, flailing them up and down, as if he's throwing a grenade. The man wears traditional Iraqi clothing with a scarf draped around his neck.


The two other people are smaller. It looks like a child and a woman wearing hoods or scarves over their heads.


Rhodes has been warned about Iraqi commandos wearing civilian clothing. They lull you into a false sense of security and then take you prisoner. Or worse.


The family keeps getting closer.


Maybe this is what they always do, Rhodes thinks. Maybe this is their back yard and they are looking for their sheep.


But he doesn't know. And that's the dilemma.


The man is just 30 meters away when he stops and gets the point. He turns around and leaves.


"Why did he just do that?" Rhodes says, getting mad. "You start to think, `I could have taken him out, if I would have misinterpreted something he did. ... Man, I could have shot him. And that defeats the purpose of why we are here."


---


(Jeff Seidel writes for the Detroit Free Press. Send feedback to Seidel and Richard Johnson at portraitsofwar@freepress.com)


Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

Mon, Apr. 07, 2003

JEREMY WESTLAKE - Browning, IL
By Jeff Seidel
Knight Ridder Newspapers



Name: Jeremy Westlake
Hometown: Browning, Ill.
Age: 28
Branch: Marines
Rank: Staff Sergeant
Job: Company armorer/combat engineer



---


CAMP VIPER, southern Iraq - Charlie Company stands in formation, in enemy territory, in the middle of a war.


"Sergeant Westlake, front and center," 1st Sgt. Brian McCoic says.


Forty-five Marines stand at attention in the sand, in front of a ditch that is about 4 feet deep. It's the "Oh no!" hole, in case of a missile attack. It would offer some protection, but not much. The Marines face three rows of white, two-man pup tents, set up in trenches.


Staff Sgt. Jeremy Westlake walks to the front of the formation, squaring his turns. He salutes Maj. Mike McCarthy and McCoic.


McCoic reads a proclamation, promoting Westlake from sergeant to staff sergeant.


"You've been looking for this for a long time," McCarthy says, pinning the chevron on Westlake's flak jacket. During a normal promotion, the chevron would be pinned to his collar. But the Marines had been wearing biochem suits for weeks on the recent day the promotion took place. "I expect more out of you. I know you'll give more. It's more responsibility."




McCoic says he hopes to move Westlake into a platoon where he can lead more Marines.


"He's becoming a staff NCO (noncommissioned officer)," McCoic says. "Corporals and sergeants make things run. Staff NCO's set things up more. They are more like teachers."


Westlake has known about his promotion for months, but he's excited by the ceremony. "To get it out here is entirely cool," Westlake says.


After the ceremony, he takes off the metal chevron and puts on a plastic one in the middle of his flak jacket. The metal ones chip.




Westlake, 28, is a combat engineer for Charlie Company, 6th Engineer Support Battalion. He grew up in Browning, Ill., and joined the Marines as an escape. "My town had about 300 people, and I wanted to get out of the little podunk town," he says. "I wanted to go places, see things."




Westlake was on active duty from 1993 to 1998, deploying to Haiti in 1994, Bosnia in 1995 and Liberia in 1996.


"When I went to Haiti, I had just joined, and we took people out of the embassy," he says. "It was pretty exciting, considering I was a little private first class."




He left active duty in March 1998 and checked into the reserves a few days later. He works as a corrections officer at the Jacksonville Corrections Center, a minimum-security prison near Springfield, Ill.


"I'm very happy to be back playing in the Marines again," he says.


"For me, it's going back to what I've done for years. For some of these guys, who have never been overseas, they were shell-shocked. But they've taken on an active-duty attitude."


This is his fifth overseas deployment, but it's the first time that he's been gone as a husband and father. Westlake and his wife, Molly, have a daughter, Justice May, who will turn 3 on April 26.


"She is everything to me," Westlake says. "I worry about being gone from her. She's a reason not to get whacked. You don't want your little girl to grow up without a dad."




When he joined Charlie Company, Westlake became the company armorer. "We didn't have a real armory for a couple of years," he says. "I'm in charge of the upkeep on weapons, the paper trail."


And he's in charge of trying to keep them all working. Of 112 M16 rifles in Charlie Company, Westlake says, about 20 need parts, but still work.


"Out here, the sand gets into everything," Westlake says. "That's the biggest problem with rifles; the sand constantly gets in there. It keeps the bolt from sliding back and forth."


Most of the equipment that Charlie Company uses is old. One of the .50 caliber guns was made in 1936.


"This unit has been to Korea and Desert Storm, so I think the .50 cal has been in both," Westlake says. "I need some parts for it, but it works smooth. All our gear is old, worn down. I have weapons that are broken down and can't get parts."


After getting promoted, several members of Charlie Company prepare to leave on a mission to blow up a decoy tank. They will get a chance to fire their weapons, to make sure they work.


"I've got to earn my money," Westlake says. "What do I get after this promotion? Fifty bucks more a payday?"



(Jeff Seidel writes for the Detroit Free Press. Send feedback to Seidel and Richard Johnson at portraitsofwar@freepress.com)


Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

Thu, Apr. 03, 2003

ALEX BUHLMAN - Farmington, IL
By Jeff Seidel
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Name: Alex Buhlman
Hometown: Farmington Hills, Mich.
Age: 19
Branch: Marines
Rank: Pfc.
Job: Combat engineer


---


SOUTHERN IRAQ - Pfc. Alex Buhlman was watching the History Channel when he saw a show on combat engineers.


"It showed what the combat engineers did in World War II," said Buhlman, 19, of Farmington Hills, Mich. "The engineers stopped an advancement by blowing up a bridge. I thought, Man, that looks cool."


It stuck in his head.


When he joined the Marine Reserves, he wanted to become a combat engineer.


"We do a lot of cool stuff, like build things and blow things up," he said.


Buhlman, fresh out of boot camp, is sitting on a sand berm in southern Iraq, protecting a supply base.


"A lot of guys say, `He's fresh, just out of boot camp, what does he know?' " Buhlman said. "But I just had all the training and I haven't had time to forget it. It took me a while to gain their trust. I think they got used to me and I got used to them."


Buhlman is with Charlie Company, 6th Engineer Support Battalion.


"When I was little, I remember watching the first war, being really interested in it," Buhlman said. "For some reason, I remember eating Pizza Hut pizza, watching the Gulf War."


It's strange the things you remember 12 years later, when you are half a world away from childhood.


"There's a big difference," he said. "When you see it on television, you think it's tanks and planes, and the ground troops don't do much. You think it's all mechanized. But you don't think about bunker clearing."


Buhlman has done his share of bunker clearing, approaching a sand bunker with a shotgun to find out if the enemy occupies it.


"It's a scary moment, but to this point, none of the bunkers has been filled," he said.


"When we crossed the border into Iraq, I was thinking, I hope we'll be all right. I hope we don't see anything," Buhlman said. "But it was really exciting. Everybody was alert and awake, locked and loaded. I'm all about experiences. Life's about experiences. I'm not a real church guy, but I think life is more about learning than staying away from sin."




Buhlman's father, William, is a leading writer of metaphysical out-of-body experiences. His mother, Susan Buhlman, is a material manager at General Motors.


Buhlman signed up for the Marine Reserves midway through his senior year of high school. "I wanted the experience. I wanted something exciting; I joined at the right time, I guess," he said.


He drove to Maryland for boot camp on June 24. He graduated on Sept. 20 and then had a 10-day leave, so he went back to Michigan. After four weeks of combat training, he had seven weeks of combat-engineer school. He got out Dec. 14 and drove back to Michigan for a week.


He drove back to Maryland for his first drill weekend, where he learned that he had been activated. "I didn't get a chance to say good-bye to my family," he said.


So his family went to see him.


"My parents were pretty calm," he said. "My dad would let out a sigh, like, `oh, man.' He couldn't believe his son was going to war. I'm sure there were tears, but there was nothing frantic."




When he gets back, he plans to buy his dream car, a red 1970s Corvette Stingray with a T-top.


"I've been looking for about a year," he says. "That's the first thing that I'm going to get. I've been thinking about it since boot camp, and that seems like a lifetime ago."


---




(Jeff Seidel writes for the Detroit Free Press. Send feedback to Seidel and Richard Johnson at portraitsofwar@freepress.com)



Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

Thu, Apr. 03, 2003

BOB MARTIN - Peoria, IL
By Jeff Seidel
Knight Ridder Newspapers



Name: Bob Martin
Hometown: Peoria, Ill.
Age: 22
Branch: Marine
Rank: Corporal
Job: Combat engineer


---


VIPER CAMP, Southern Iraq - Cpl. Bob Martin stands in a U-shaped machine-gun nest, dug in the sand, staring at a crest in the desert.


He's heard there is a battalion of Iraqi soldiers lurking nearby in armored vehicles, somewhere to the south.


"If they are coming, they are coming right over that crest," he says to two Marines on watch with him.


He squints into a pair of binoculars. Nothing there.


A strong wind kicks up a blinding sandstorm. He puts on a pair of goggles caked with dust and dirt. He leans into a Mark19, a machine gun that launches grenades.


He gets out an AT4, an antitank rocket, and lays it on the sand. He jokes that it's "Marine proof" - with pictures on the side on how to hold it, how to aim and how to fire.


But there is one rule when trying to bring down a tank: the closer you are, the better.


So he sits and waits.


Martin, 22, of Peoria, Ill., is a combat engineer in Charlie Company, 6th Engineer Support Battalion. He is guarding a critical supply camp, which will provide fuel to about 50,000 Marines. The war rages around him.


"Every day here is worse than the day before," he says. "I'm sick of waiting for something to happen. We are just waiting for somebody to come over that crest. We want to be part of the war."


He scoops up a chunk of sand and crushes it in his fingertips.


"I just got a letter from my mom," Martin says to a Marine. "They caught bin Laden's right-hand man, the guy who planned the World Trade Center attacks."


The news is weeks old, but it seems new. In the age of the Internet, these young Marines have never been so out of touch.



And Martin has never been so tired. That's the one thing he misses, a full night of sleep. Last night, he got about four hours after a sergeant woke up him and told him to help strip a seven-ton truck in the dark, removing the roof and benches, turning it into a flatbed truck.


He has no idea why.


"It would be a lot easier if they told us what our mission was," he says.


For weeks, Martin has worked security - eight hours on, eight hours off, eight hours on again.




Martin sleeps on the ground, in a sleeping bag, inside a waterproof shell. The Marines in Charlie Company move so much they don't bother to put up tents. And the truth is, he doesn't mind it.


Every morning after breakfast, he takes the blue pill, as the Marines call it, a medicine to prevent malaria.


Standing 5 feet 10 and weighing 180 pounds, he figures he has lost about 15 pounds eating prepackaged MREs, or meals ready to eat.


Back home in Peoria, Martin, who is in the Marine reserves, is a surveillance officer at a department store. When he gets out of Iraq, he plans to finish his studies at Illinois State University. He's studying business administration and wants to own his own business.


Martin is convinced he will be home in July because reserves get more benefits if they are gone for more than 180 days. Charlie Company was activated Jan. 14. Earlier that January day, he married Brooke Martin.


"We went down to the courthouse and got married. We are still going to have the big wedding when I get back," he said.




They were supposed to be married June 14, but they decided to make it official before he went, in case something happens to him, so she could receive benefits.


In his combat vest, he keeps a pair of her pink panties in a plastic bag. She sprayed them with his favorite perfume. When everybody else in his squad saw the bag and smelled the perfume, they wrote home, asking their wives and girlfriends to send the same thing.


Two Chinook helicopters fly by, carrying troops and equipment, right over the crest he's been watching.


"If there was a battalion out there, sure as heck, these Chinooks wouldn't be out there," he says.


His shoulders relax. He leans against his gun and takes another breath of sand.


---




(Jeff Seidel writes for the Detroit Free Press. Send feedback to Seidel and Richard Johnson at portraitsofwar@freepress.com)



Sempers,

Roger