Fire fighters who can take the heat head to Iraq

[thedrifter]

Fire fighters who can take the heat head to Iraq
Submitted by: 2nd Force Service Support Group
Story Identification #: 200543134146
Story by Sgt. Kristin S. Jochums



CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq (April 3, 2005) -- Chris Linto grew up knowing that he wanted to be a firefighter, but if asked a year ago, he wouldn’t have pictured himself here.

“I grew up across the street from the district fire chief,” said the 32-year-old Montgomery, Ala., native. “We always went to the fire station to see him and I would get on the trucks, it grew on me and I knew it was what I wanted to do.”

When the opportunity was presented to him, he jumped at the chance to fight fires in Iraq.

“They were looking for experienced fire fighters to come over here,” said Linto, an 11-year fire fighter and a 10-year Montgomery Fire Department fire fighter.

Linto, along with 27 other fire fighters employed by Wackenhut Services, Incorporated, make up the Camp Taqaddum Fire Department.

Prior to coming here, the fire fighters go through a week of training in Houston where they go through administrative classes and brief them on what to expect.

“Basically they told us it’s gonna be hot,” Linto chuckled.

The fire fighters are on call 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. They are split between two stations: one at the Kellogg, Brown and Root compound and the other on main side here.

“Service members do a lot for us and this is a service we can provide to them here,” he continued.

A week after the current group arrived, the fire fighters were on their way to a training drill at Entry Control Point 2 when incoming enemy fire postponed their training.

Not more than two minutes after they pulled out of the fire station parking lot a rocket hit, throwing shrapnel into the side of one of the trucks and on the side of the fire station, said Linto. “That let us know that we were really here.”

Despite getting a lot of the same calls they would at home such as false calls, strange odors, smoke in the air caused by burn barrels and drifting smoke from neighboring villages, the fire department receives Iraq-unique calls such as rocket attacks, generator fires and tent fires.

Some of their training from home has to be set aside due to the different environment here. The major differences are the types of tactics they use.

“Where I am from we do a lot of interior-attack fire fighting and here we really can’t do that as much because we have ordnance we have to worry about,” said Linto.

When not fighting fires, they are busy training and constantly striving for personal and professional improvement.

Part of the training they have to overcome is that they are a hodge-podge fire department and they have to learn to work as a team. Along with learning to overcome different styles of fire fighting, another challenge they face is learning how to fight fires along side the Marine Corps’ Aircraft Rescue Firefighters.

“Back home everyone is on the same page as far as the way you lay lines and the way you do things,” said Linto. “Here everyone is a bit different, but the training we do together helps.”

“We had an incident where a rocket hit a tanker and the ARFF was using their vehicle to spray from one side and we were getting it from the other,” said Linto. “It was a perfect two-pronged attack. It couldn’t have worked out better.”

Their training includes inspections on their equipment, work on laying lines and going over what can be done in certain places around the base. The water supply here is different than in the states because there are no fire hydrants.

The water supply is convoyed in and placed into water bladders by Lake Habbaniyah. The fire fighters fill their tanker trucks there and then store the water in a 9,000 gallon tank next to one of the departments.

Recently the fire fighters found a 20,000 gallon tank at the scrap yard here which they are trying to put somewhere on base to give them added water resources.

“We are trying to strategically place water tanks around the base to help cut down our water supply problem,” said John P. Garber, the fire captain here.

With their continuous training, strategic placing of water tanks and the addition of another station, their response time has been reduced.

“Now that there are two locations on base and because of all our training, our response time has gone from 15 minutes to between seven and nine minutes,” said Garber.

“The response time is good for the location because some of the vehicles are not made for the type of terrain here,” said Garber, a 45–year-old Beaufort, S.C., native. “We have to take care of the vehicles because if they go down that is it. The trucks are built for municipal type streets.

“Right now we are doing really good with our vehicles,” he added as he knocked on wood.

The weather also plays a major factor in fighting fires.

“If you fight fires in a 140 degree heat it’s going to take a lot out of you pretty quick,” Garber, the fire fighter of 26 years added.

Spending so much time training with the ARFF has brought them together, even in friendly competition.

“We play volleyball with the ARFF guys, we have a bit of a rivalry with them right now. The last time we played we beat them,” said Linto. “The next time we play they said they are going to bring their ‘A’ game.”

The one thing the ARFF did beat the fire fighters at was a video game challenge.

“They challenged us to Halo 2,” Linto said. “They beat us down pretty bad, so as a joke they put 4 crosses in a pile of dirt outside with our video game call names. It’s pretty funny.”

Even when having fun they are always prepared.

“We take a truck to the flight line when we play volleyball, so if anything happens we just respond directly from there,” Linto said.

The fire fighters pointed out that there seems to be a lot of mutual respect between them and the service members.

“I didn’t know what it would be like to be on a Marine base but after being here I have gained so much respect for them,” said Linto. “Service members walk by our tables at chow and thank us for being here and for what we do, but we have the same respect for them because of what they do.”


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Recruiters Shift Focus To Parents
USA TODAY
April 5, 2005

WASHINGTON - Faced with wilting recruitment and ongoing violence in Iraq, Army and Marine Corps recruiters are turning their attention to those most likely to oppose them: parents.

The two branches are shifting from a strategy that focused first on wooing potential recruits to one aimed at gaining the trust and attention of their parents by using grass-roots initiatives and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns.

The public relations push comes as the Army and Marines, which absorb the brunt of the casualties in Iraq, encounter one of their worst periods in recruitment.

Among their initiatives:






* Four new "influencer" TV ads by the Army, aimed at moms, dads, coaches and ministers. The ads air this month.

* A decision to pair Army recruiters with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans on visits to the homes of potential recruits. The idea: Tell parents "the Army story," says Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart. * A nine-minute video, "Parents Speak," in which parents of Marines say the Corps has been good for their children.

* A direct-mail campaign by the Marines to parents of high school juniors and seniors. The Marines highlight the benefits of joining and ask for an opportunity to talk to the students' parents about a military career.

Studies for the Army show parents are the top obstacles to recruiting. "Opposition to . . . military service is increasing significantly among both moms and dads," says a study of 1,200 potential recruits by the firm Millward Brown.

Another look at potential recruits, by GfK Custom Research, found that the biggest influences in candidates' decisions to join were mothers, named by 81% of respondents, followed by fathers, at 70%.

"Reach the parents with the Army's new message, particularly moms," the study urges.

Both branches are trying to convince parents their children will be instilled with integrity and job skills and that service in Iraq is not a death sentence.

Still, recruitment numbers sag. In February, the Army missed its recruiting goal for the first time in nearly five years. The Army missed its March goal by 32%.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Missing Soldier's Case To Be Reviewed
USA TODAY
April 5, 2005

BATAVIA, Ohio - Each morning before she leaves for work, Carolyn Maupin says a prayer that someone will find or rescue her son Matt, the only U.S. soldier classified as a captive in Iraq and unaccounted for.

Now she has another wish -- that the Army will continue to believe he is alive.

On Wednesday, almost exactly a year after Spc. Matt Maupin disappeared, the Army is scheduled to convene a panel to decide whether he should remain classified as a captive or be considered dead.

"We don't want him to be forgotten," Carolyn Maupin said. "I am just afraid that if they move on, then what will we say when he shows up alive and we aren't there waiting for him?"

Top Army officials said Maupin has not been forgotten.

"We continue to look for Spc. Maupin, but we cannot provide any further details about those efforts," said Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman.

Still, the law requires the Army to re-examine his case after a year, and a panel of officers will meet in Washington to review evidence linked to Maupin's disappearance.

They will decide whether to reclassify him as "deceased, body not recovered."

If reclassified, he would join 1,531 other servicemembers who have died in the war in Iraq.

Maupin, who joined the Reserve in 2003, was captured April 9, 2004, after a firefight with Iraqi insurgents that killed two other soldiers from his platoon.

He was later shown as a hostage in a video broadcast on an Arabic-language news channel.

Thousands of well-wishers have written or called his family.

In February, when the 724th Transportation Company out of Bartonville, Ill., his Reserve unit, came home, it did so without Maupin. That doesn't mean the Army will give up on him in Wednesday's meeting, said Sgt. Mike Bailey, 49, a member of the unit who said he got to know Maupin fairly well.

"I am an old Ranger, and we don't leave a soldier behind," Bailey said. "I don't think the Army will, either."

If the Army decides that Maupin is dead, it may be in part because of a second video that was shown on Arab television in June. That video purports to be footage of Maupin's execution, and it shows a uniformed figure with his back to the camera fall into a shallow grave.

"It just doesn't look like Matt," Carolyn Maupin said. "In my heart, I just knew it wasn't him. I still believe he is alive and out there somewhere."

Rob Lindley, a friend of Maupin's since sixth grade, said he is not surprised Maupin's disappearance has drawn so much attention.

"Matt gave a face to the war," Lindley said. "You can see him there in that video, you can empathize with him. He could be anybody's son, anybody's best friend."



Ellie

[thedrifter]

Convicted GI Haunted By Decision
Chicago Tribune
April 5, 2005

Former U.S. Army Capt. Roger Maynulet knows it is the image that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

The highly decorated combat soldier will always remember his split-second decision to shoot Karim Hassan Abed Ali Al-Haleji and watch him bleed to death.

The court-martialed officer will forever be bound by the decision he made on May 21, 2004. That's when the Chicago native chose to ease the suffering of the wounded Iraqi man who lay before him on a dirt road in Kufa, Iraq, in what he said was a mercy killing.

"He was unconscious, and he had his mouth open. It was not something pleasant to look at. You project yourself on him. I saw a guy who was suffering," said Maynulet, who was convicted and received a dishonorable discharge last week.

"I knew I couldn't fix this guy. It was an unbelievable feeling of helplessness."

Speaking to the Tribune from the small home in Germany he rents with his wife, Brooke, a former Army captain from Freeport in northwestern Illinois, the sordidness of the Iraq war is a long way from this German village where farm tractors clog one-lane roads.

As he and his wife start to think about their lives after the military, the same feeling continues to haunt him that he had nine months ago when he and Al-Haleji crossed paths. Amilitary jury of four colonels and two majors convicted Maynulet of voluntary manslaughter Thursday in a tiny courtroom in neighboring Wiesbaden, where his unit, the 1st Armored Division is based.

"I thought I was doing the humane thing," Maynulet said. "I still believe it was morally right but obviously it was legally wrong. I hope to God I never have to be put in that situation ever again."

He and his soldiers had been on a classified mission to "capture or kill" an enemy leader who sources have told the Tribune was Moqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whose Mahdi militia was exacting many U.S. casualties.

U.S. soldiers mortally wounded Al-Haleji and Maynulet killed him.

During the mission, "I'm thinking of a million different things," he said. "As a commander, you eventually learn to prioritize. It's like looking at a dashboard when you drive and you're scanning your instruments."

Overhead, a military drone with a camera captured his actions, creating a videotape that was played nearly continuously at Maynulet's trial.

Watching the videotape was difficult for Maynulet and impossible for his mother, Carmen, who refused to look at it. Her younger son Daniel, an Army private, is set to deploy to Afghanistan later this year.

Maynulet said he expects Al-Haleji's family, which includes his seven children, to be angry with him. But hasn't tried to reach out to them because he has nothing to say. The man made a choice to be part of the enemy, Maynulet said.

"What people have to realize is that this guy was part of the Mahdi militia run by Sadr that was killing Americans every day."

Maynulet always thought that part of his job was to rebuild and care for the innocent civilians who were injured as part of combat. His father, who served as the chief of staff for Edgewater Hospital before retiring, was a physician who told his son about his efforts to save lives.

The citation for the Bronze Star that Maynulet, 30, received in August pointed out several occasions when he treated injured Iraqis, including insurgents. Often, he treated injured people whom other units had left in the field, Maynulet said.

But the May 21 mission was so important that he did not have a chance to treat the wounded Iraqi he later killed, Maynulet said.

Instead, he ordered his medic, Sgt. Thomas Cassady, to treat him.

In testimony, Cassady said he disregarded the order because he was "spazzed" out when he saw the gravity of the man's injuries. Cassady, who testified under a grant of immunity, admitted lying nearly 30 times and committing perjury.

After pausing for several seconds to think about Cassady and to take a slow breath, Maynulet called the six-year Army veteran and former Marine a good soldier.

He blames himself, Maynulet said.

"I was his commander... I still think I need to take responsibility for the fact that I didn't push him enough. I didn't question him," he said.

At his trial, telling the details of the mission was difficult because he had to verbalize what happened that day. Still, he said it was nothing compared to combat.

"It's no substitute to the fear and the feeling you get when people are trying to kill you," he said.

Another emotional moment at the trial came when the jury returned and said that they had found him not guilty of the charge of assault with intent to murder but found him guilty of a lesser charge. That meant his potential prison sentence was cut in half.

"I thought I made it," Maynulet said.

Before the jury foreman read a court document announcing the conviction, he paused for the longest seconds of their lives, Brooke and Roger Maynulet said.

"I wish he didn't pause. That would have been easier. That's when we thought it's finally over," said Brooke Maynulet, 32.

But the end didn't come until the jury returned with the punishment and ordered him out of the Army, without serving prison time. Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, must review the court-martial transcript and approve the findings. A military appeals court also must approve the findings.

For the next several weeks, Maynulet will focus on writing a book proposal about his experiences. Other than that, he is not sure what he wants to do for a job. Brooke Maynulet is considering earning a commercial pilot's license.

Maynulet knows that he will always have to notify potential employers about his conviction and dishonorable discharge. But he hopes they would take the time to ask him about the details.

Packing away his uniform will be tough because it signifies almost half of his life--nearly 10 years on active duty and several more in the ROTC program at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

"You never want to say that your work is what defines you. But in the military it does," he said. "It's very significant for me to be kicked out of my family."

[thedrifter]

Pentagon Too Slow On Anthrax Alarm
Associated Press
April 5, 2005

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon was too slow to inform local officials about the anthrax scare in Defense Department mail facilities last month, and gave antibiotics to workers without coordinating with public health officials, an assessment of the false alarm concludes.

Moreover, the Homeland Security Department "needs to be involved earlier in such incidents," according to a summary of the report obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

"Perhaps the greatest information concerns of the state and local governments involved the adequacy of updates from DoD on the testing taking place, and DoD's role in making prophylaxis (antibiotics) decisions alone," the summary said. The report prepared under the direction of Maryland, Virginia and District of Columbia officials is expected to be released Tuesday.

The assessment examined local and state response to the two-day, mid-March scare that prompted nearly 900 Washington-area workers to take precautionary antibiotics and invoked memories of the 2001 anthrax-by-mail attacks that killed five. It did not assess blame for the false alarm, according to an official involved with writing the report.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch said the Defense Department is cooperating fully with an ongoing federal review of the scare by the Homeland Security Department.





Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that at a meeting two weeks ago, "all entities agreed that coordination during this event was greatly improved over the anthrax response in 2001."

"However, we are always looking for ways to improve, and will review the report to determine how it could enhance coordination," Roehrkasse said. The department is in charge of coordinating federal response to terror attacks with state and local authorities.

The report summary described confusion and frustration among state and local officials after sensors mistakenly detected anthrax contamination in a military mailroom at the Pentagon and a separate alarm was issued at a nearby satellite facility in Fairfax County, Va.

It highlighted a conference call between 80 participants, who were allowed to speak at will, often sharing outdated information, with only vague guidance from the Defense Department over whether the scare was legitimate.

"The state and local governments were not sure if they were getting the latest information from DoD, or whether DoD itself was having problems getting clear test information, or both, at various times," the summary said.

One official involved in writing the report said many local and state officials also questioned the Pentagon's decision to distribute antibiotics to civilian contract employees without coordinating with public health departments. Doing so, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity, led to a heightened sense of alarm by workers who were not told whether there had been actual exposure to anthrax.

The report also found that the alarm raised in Fairfax County was not triggered by purported detection of anthrax. the official said. Instead, that facility closed down after suffering an equipment problem that they feared was linked to the Pentagon incident, the official said.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Inmates, Guards Clash At Prison
Associated Press
April 5, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prisoners at Iraq's largest detention facility protested the transfer of several detainees deemed "unruly" by authorities, throwing rocks and setting tents on fire in a disturbance that injured four guards and 12 detainees, the military said Monday.

Friday's protest was the first of at least three violent incidents at Iraqi prisons during the past four days, with the latest occurring Monday at the notorious Abu Ghraib facility. A suicide bomber driving a tractor blew himself up outside the prison, wounding four civilians.

On Saturday, insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib with rocket-propelled grenades and two car bombs, wounding dozens of U.S. service members and prisoners, the U.S. military said.

Friday's protest at Camp Bucca - which holds about 6,000 prisoners, nearly two-thirds of all those in Iraq - caused only minor injuries before being brought under control, authorities said.

Murtadha al-Hajaj, an official at radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office in the southern city of Umm Qasr, near Camp Bucca, said several al-Sadr supporters were wounded during the confrontation. He said they were protesting a lack of access to medical treatment and claimed U.S. guards opened fire, although he did not know if they wounded prisoners.





U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill said he did not know if the guards opened fire, but he denied that any detainee was deprived of medical treatment.

Last month, the U.S. military said guards discovered a 600-foot tunnel - dug with makeshift tools - leading out of Camp Bucca. The tunnel reached beyond the compound fence, with an opening hidden beneath a floorboard, but no one had escaped, authorities said.

The other facility targeted by insurgents, Abu Ghraib, was at the center of the prison abuse scandal last year after photographs were publicized showing U.S. soldiers humiliating Iraqi inmates, including having them pile naked in a human pyramid. The United States holds nearly 3,500 prisoners at Abu Ghraib and about 7,000 elsewhere in Iraq.

Rudisill said prison officials heard Monday's explosion, but he said it wasn't close enough to cause any damage to the prison. The blast killed the tractor's driver and injured four Iraqis, police 1st Lt. Akram al-Zubaeyee said.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said 10 of its fighters died in Saturday's assault on Abu Ghraib, while the U.S. military put the urgents' casualties at one dead and about 50 wounded. Forty-four American soldiers and 13 prisoners were injured in the fighting - the latest in a series of large-scale attacks by insurgents in Iraq.

In an Internet posting, Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed about 20 militants scaled the prison's walls and one of them reached a prison tower and yelled: "God is great!" It said two of its fighters were wounded and 10 were killed, including seven suicide bombers.

The statement, which appeared late Sunday, was impossible to independently verify, and it conflicted with the U.S. account.

The U.S. military denied anyone got inside the prison and said no inmates escaped. It said only one suicide bomber participated, while others fired assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Rudisill said he did not believe any attackers were captured. He said the wounded insurgents either escaped on their own or were dragged away by other militants.

The military said the insurgents staged simultaneous assaults on multiple locations at the prison, focusing on two guard towers and then using a car bomb to try to penetrate a gate.

Combat helicopters helped push back the attack, which was the largest at Abu Ghraib since insurgents fired mortar rounds into the compound nearly a year ago, killing more than 20 detainees and injuring nearly 100.

Also, the military said a detainee evacuated from an unnamed facility to the 115th Field Hospital died Monday after suffering gunshot wounds two weeks ago during an attack on U.S.-led coalition forces. The incident is under investigation, the military said in a statement.

Some Iraqi lawmakers have called for the release of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and the National Assembly's newly elected speaker, Hajim al-Hassani, told Al-Jazeera television the topic will be among the first discussed by lawmakers.

"There are some problems regarding the security issue and troubles concerning Abu Ghraib detainees," he said. "These issues will be the main subject we are concerned about in the National Assembly."

President Bush called al-Hassani on Monday to congratulate him on becoming parliament speaker.

"The two leaders expressed confidence that democracy will succeed in Iraq," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "The president reiterated our commitment of continued support for Iraq as they move forward."

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, also congratulated al-Hassani, saying his election was "a hopeful sign as you begin the assembly's tasks, including laying down the constitution."

The selection of al-Hassani, a Sunni Arab, ended weeks of bickering and cleared the way for the formation of a government more than two months after Iraq's first free election in 50 years. Legislators next meet Wednesday, when they plan to name Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as Iraq's president.

Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said Monday that most of Iraq's neighbors - including Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia - are helping Iraq's government fight terrorism.

"The terrorist attacks have been limited now because of the cooperation of the neighboring countries," said Shaalan, who previously accused Iran and Syria of supporting insurgents in Iraq.

He also welcomed an edict issued Friday by Sunni clerics that called for Iraqis to join the police and army. "The Iraqi army will accept the new waves of volunteers," Shaalan said.

The edict, read by a cleric in the Association of Muslim Scholars, instructed enlistees to refrain from helping foreign troops against their own countrymen. It said Sunnis should join to prevent the police and army from falling into "the hands of those who have caused chaos, destruction and violated the sanctities."

On Monday, a bomb exploded at a cafe in the northern city of Talafar, killing two civilians and injuring 13, local official Salem al-Haj Eissa said. He speculated the bomb was intended for Iraqi army soldiers who frequent the cafe but said no soldiers were thought to be there.

In the same city, on Saturday, an American soldier was killed and another was wounded by insurgent gunfire, the U.S. military said Monday.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

New Cotton Fabric May Absorb Toxins
Associated Press
April 5, 2005

LUBBOCK, Texas - Cotton, the fabric of your life, could soon have the potential to save it. Scientists at Texas Tech University's Institute of Environmental and Human Health on Monday unveiled a new composite cotton fabric they say will protect against biological and chemical agents.

The fabric, developed with the U.S. Department of Defense in mind, also brings a fresh market to cotton farmers in West Texas, the nation's largest producing region.

"We are the first to bring cotton into the national defense arena," said Seshadri Ramkumar, the researcher at the institute who developed the fabric. "This is a big thing."

The nonwoven fabric is "exactly" the type the defense department placed in its decontamination and science technology strategy, he said. A thin piece of carbon is encased on either side by the nonwoven cotton.

The fabric can be used as a wipe to remove dangerous contaminants from a variety of surfaces, including human skin and intricate equipment on fighter planes. The fabric is lightweight, soft, flexible and able to be draped over unusually shaped objects.





The material neutralizes and absorbs toxic chemicals used in chemical warfare and pesticides.

Another use could be the inner lining of a protective suit.

"This is a win-win day for Texas Tech," said U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, who attended a news conference announcing the technology and its licensing to a Texas company. "It's a win-win day for the American people."

Now, the military uses a cloth made from carbon, which leaves skin and other surfaces dirty.

The fabric passed tests for bacteria, yeast, fungus and mold but has not been tested for anthrax and other potentially deadly biological agents. But enzymes specifically targeting a particular agent can be applied.

"Once it has been tested for nerve agents, sure it can" save lives, Ramkumar said.

Cotton watchers in West Texas said the fabric presents an exciting avenue for area producers.

"It's an opportunity to add value to our locally grown fiber and add a new income source to our area economy," said Roger Haldenby, a spokesman for the Plains Cotton Growers, which serves a 41-county region.

In recent days, the university licensed a Waco-based company, Hobbs Bonded Fibers, to market the fabric.

Carey Hobbs, the company's chief executive officer, said negotiations with government officials could begin within a couple of months.

"This is something that could be very meaningful and contribute to the country's mission right now," Hobbs said. "This is an opportunity you look for your whole business life."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Legend of Golden Greek lives on 50 years later
Submitted by: MCB Camp Lejeune
Story Identification #: 200544133814
Story by Mr. Brian Berger, Lejeune Sports Editor



MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (April 4, 2005) -- It had been a long plane ride from Boston to Camp Lejeune, N.C. for Georgia Agganis. She was 71-years-old now, dressed in black on a warm summer day. She was heading for a ceremony where her son, Harry, was going to have the baseball stadium at the Marine training center named for him. Oh, how she wished he could have been here to see it.
--from The Golden Greek: An All American Story

When Harry Agganis’ mother came to Lejeune for the dedication of the baseball stadium here on June 19, 1956, he was a household name. You had to see him play to believe it, the oldtimers say, like the current generation might say fifty years from now to their grandkids about the on-field Houdini-acts of Michael Vick or Barry Sanders, or Bo Jackson and Walter Payton.

Agganis, born on April 30, 1930, was nothing less than a legend in his own time and is still considered one of the best athletes ever to come out of Massachusetts. An All-American first baseman and quarterback, the two-sport star was drafted in the first round of the NFL draft by the World Champion Cleveland Browns to become Otto Graham's eventual replacement.

A clean-living member of the Greek Orthodox Church, by all accounts Agganis was a man of humility and dignity, beloved by his teammates, a hometown hero from Lynn, Massachusetts who never let the fame go to his head, and a devoted son to his widowed mother. He was, as the late Ted Williams said, an “All American, on the football and baseball field and in every way.”

Harry’s feats on the football field were so amazing, that crowds of 20,000 would turn out to watch him play high school games at Boston’s Manning Bowl in the years following World War II.

He received 75 college scholarship offers from around the country and Notre Dame’s Frank Leahy proclaimed him “the finest prospect I’ve ever seen.”

Despite efforts to recruit him from the top colleges in the nation, Harry elected to stay close to his mother and chose to attend Boston University.

In 1949, his sophomore season, he averaged 5.4 yards per carry, accounted for 17 touchdowns and led the nation in punting with a 46.5 yard average.

“He was sensational at shaking off tacklers, shedding them like a duck sheds water,” one report noted at the time.

He also had 15 interceptions that season and played nearly 60 minutes a game. The Boston University newspaper noted that the only thing Agganis didn’t do was call penalties.

When September fell in Boston in 1950, the B.U. football program was on the verge of cracking college football’s elite and earning a major bowl game bid, and Harry Agganis was poised to lead them there. But half a world away, American troops had been fighting the North Koreans since July and Harry, who had joined the Marine 2nd Infantry Organized Reserve Battallion in 1948, after high school, was about to be called up.

“The services had called into duty many well-known athletes who were reservists,” Nick Tsiotos and Andy Dabilis noted in The Golden Greek: An All American Story. “Quantico, a rival of Camp Lejeune, had stacked its baseball and football teams with All-Americans, including…quarterback Eddie LeBaron.”

Jim Landrigan, a football star from Wakefield, Mass. stationed at Lejeune advised Camp Lejeune football coach Bruno Andruska that Quantico already had a star quarterback and he should try to bring Agganis to Lejeune.

Sure enough, that fall Agganis arrived at Lejeune as a private, had a regular tour of guard duty and basic training, but was primarily on base to play sports. Crowds of civilians began to swell when the team took the field as word spread of the scrambling Greek quarterback with a gun for an arm.

With Agganis, and a surrounding cast that included other great athletes like Wally Williams and Minnie Minihan, Lejeune rolled to an 87-0 win over Turner Air Force Base, a 55-7 victory over Bolling Air Force Base, and a 27-13 win over Ft. Jackson.

Lejeune lost that year to Quantico, a team stacked with numerous All-Americans, but Harry continued to impress his fellow Marines with both his on-field brilliance and his character off the field.

“He never smoked, never drank, and I never heard him use a word of profanity,” said Tech Sergeant Florio Sampieri. “Watching the Golden Greek play was a great thrill to me. The kid was great.”

“He was such an inspiration and you really looked up to him,” said Gerald Solomon, a 19-year old stationed at Lejeune in 1950. “You were proud to be a Marine because he was one.”

That spring, Agganis led the Lejeune baseball team to a 72-17 record, batting .362 against teams with pitchers who had played major league baseball.

Harry received a dependency discharge and returned to B.U. in the fall of 1951, just days before the start of the football season. He would be named an All-American that season.

Harry closed out his college football career in the 1953 North-South Senior Bowl, playing 59 minutes, throwing two touchdown passes, intercepting two passes and winning Most Valuable Player honors.

Drafted by the Cleveland Browns and offered a then-record contract deal, a stellar and lucrative career in football seemed certain, but Harry chose to stay by his mother and accepted a less lucrative offer to play baseball in the Boston Red Sox organization.

After one year excelling in Louisville, Agganis was called up to the Majors in 1954. In the Sox home opener, he smashed a triple deep into the outfield that would have been a home run if he hadn’t been forced to slow down for the runner in front of him.

His second season had all the markings of being a breakout year for Harry, who was hitting .313 despite being hospitalized for 10 days in May with a bout of pneumonia. He returned to the Red Sox and played reasonably well after getting out of the hospital, despite fatigue and incessant coughing. Agganis batting average continued to improve and he was hitting the deep ball consistently.

But on June 2, Agganis returned to the hospital. He was diagnosed with pneumonia in his right lung--the first time he was hospitalized it was in the left lung--and it was complicated by phlebitis, a swelling in the leg.

He would never the leave the hospital.

On June 27, 1955 while attempting to stand for the first time in weeks, the blood clot in Agganis’ leg broke free and shot into his lung, blocking blood flow and causing significant pain.

Doctors worked frantically to save him, to no avail. Harry Agganis had died at the age of 26.
Before he died, Agganis pulled a nurse close and whispered, “Take care of my mother…be sure she is alright.”

“Today is a black day in sports,” sports broadcaster Bob Gallagher announced on Worcester’s WNAB radio. “How great would he have been? He might have gone on to break, set or tie many major league records…but as a man, he couldn’t have been greater.”

Tens of thousands turned out to pay their last respects. Ted Williams cried. He was not alone.

“A character such as Harry Agganis never dies,” Boston Mayor John Hynes said. “He is perpetuated in the hearts of everyone who admires a good man.”

Today, the name Agganis lives on in the numerous scholarships and awards that bare his name, and a new arena at Boston University.

“I played in the Agganis All-Star Game as a high school football player,” Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” hockey team said. “People to this day argue that Harry was the greatest athlete to ever come out of the Boston area. There’s a feeling here about him that’s like Ted Williams. People just had so much respect for him. He was a Marine, a Red sox player and an honest kid from Lynn that brought something special to the table other than just being an athlete.”

Outside of New England, though, few people know the name and even fewer know about the man behind the name.

That wasn’t the case in June of 1956, when Lejeune’s Agganis Stadium was dedicated, along with a plaque reading:

“Endowed with peerless talent, Corporal Agganis exemplified the finest in competitive spirit and sportsmanship. An All-American football player, and later a professional baseball player, his outstanding accomplishments in the field of athletics were an inspiration to other Marines who served and were teammates with him during his career in the Marine Corps.”

So that Harry Agganis would not be forgotten.

To learn more about Harry Agganis, read The Golden Greek: An All American Story by Nick Tsiotos and Andy Dabilis, Hellenic College Press.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marine returns home after tour in Iraq
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By Ron Maloney
The Herald-Zeitung
Published April 05, 2005

Canyon Intermediate School fifth-grade teacher Debbi Haecker wears a gold pin with the U.S. Marine Corps cheer, "oohrah" on it.

A balloon and a big old, festive "welcome home" sign are taped to the front door of her garage.

That's because her son, Travis, was sitting on the couch in her living room Monday, playing with Wilma, her daschund - and no longer fighting insurgents in Iraq.

His unit, B Co., First Regiment, 23rd Marines, an Austin-based reserve unit, returned from Iraq Thursday.

A proud mom watched her boy, now 25 and an infantry corporal, roll the dog on its back, scratch its belly and rub its face and ears.

"It's funny seeing him sitting there, playing like a boy, realizing he was a big, bad Marine," Mom said.

It might be funny now - now that he's home. It wasn't so funny a few years ago when he signed up for the Marines or, especially, last year when she found out he'd be going to Iraq.

"I didn't want him to go into the Marines," Haecker recalled. "I said, 'As soon as you go into the service, we'll get in a war.'"

The 9/11 attacks happened while Travis was in infantry school.

He returned to New Braunfels and to EMT school in San Antonio - and within months was deployed to Cuba to guard the fence at Guantanamo Bay, where he stayed for nearly a year.

At the end of that, Travis signed up for a paramedic course and began the application process for becoming a San Antonio firefighter.

Then, last May, his unit was activated again. This time, Travis would have to withdraw from the paramedic program and the firefighter application process.

"I was surprised," Travis acknowledged. "There's always talk it could happen, but they always tell you to keep on with your life. Then they call, and say, 'You have 72 hours to deploy...'."

Still, even though he has so far spent more than two years on active duty during a "reserve" hitch, Travis said he has no complaints.

First, he said, he knew the deal when he signed the paperwork.

"I signed up for it and I agreed to it," he said.

Secondly, he said he'd feel a little funny being home while his fellow Marines went to Iraq. Reserve units, Travis said, are different from active duty units because they are tied to a geographical area - in his case Texas and Louisiana - and the people in the units work together for years and know one another well.

"We've been together four years now," Travis said. "I know all their families."

Debbi said she was pretty unhappy to know her son would be going to Iraq because she'd been following the situation on the news and knew it would be different than in Cuba.

"I was more stressed out because I knew he was in the infantry and I knew what had been happening over there," she said. "It scared me because I knew he'd be shooting at people and being shot at."

Still wrestling with the dog, Travis boxed its ears and tried an ironic joke solders everywhere tell each other to lighten the conversation.

"Getting shot at is OK," he said. "It's getting shot that sucks."

Travis said the thing that surprised him most about Iraq was that his reserve unit wasn't relegated to a support role like in Cuba. In Iraq, his unit was a combat unit - one that was part of the first wave into the fight to remove an insurgent enemy in Al Falusia.

While Travis was in Iraq, he'd communicate with his mom or his dad, Ronnie Haecker, by e-mail - and occasionally, for short conversations by satellite phone, from a rooftop in Iraq.

Mom came to understand the drill: Her boy wouldn't tell her exactly where he was, only where he had been or where he might be going. The worst times, she said, were those when he let her know he'd be "out of reach." That was code for combat.

"I'd check on the news every morning, and I'd look for him," Debbi said. She would concentrate on the images, often shot in the eerie greens and blacks of night vision equipment, trying to pick out his face.

"It was the worst when he was in Al Falusia," Debbi said.

Travis said his superiors told him Operation Phantom Fury, the encirclement and pacification of Al Falusia, would take three days. It lasted three weeks.

The way to survive in combat, he said, was to keep focused - and pay attention to details.

"You're always tired and hungry," he said. But in combat, you have to set that aside. Your superiors - non-commissioned officers - would watch your work to be sure you didn't get sloppy or lackadaisical, he said.

"I think the thing I'm most proud of is we're the only unit in our regiment that brought everyone home," Travis said. "We all got combat ribbons, we gave out more than 20 Purple Hearts (the American ribbon given to people injured in action) and sent nine people, I think, home with serious injuries. But we never lost one."

Debbi said she was just glad he was back, unhurt.

"I was really nervous," she said. "But he's proud to be a Marine, and I see now why he did it. I'm proud of him."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Puppy Reunites With Marine Who Rescued Him In Iraq
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April 4, 2005

SAN DIEGO -- A San Diego Marine has been reunited with a puppy he helped rescue from the war zone in Iraq.

IMAGES: Marine Reunites With Puppy

The reunion was called Operation: Get It Done, and at its center of it was the 6-month-old puppy called Lava. It took four months and a lot of assistance from the Helen Woodward animal shelter in Rancho Santa Fe to get the puppy to the United States.

Marines discovered the puppy in an abandoned house in Fallujah during combat. They said he was in bad shape. Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman took the puppy in and nursed it back to health.

"He was just great to play with, and he ran around a lot in the yard of the house we were occupying," said Kopelman. "He was just someone to come home to and kind of play with, and put everyone at ease at the end of a tough day."

Kopelman told NBC 7/39 that lava gave the Marines much more than he took.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Instant recognition at Marine's return
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By Karen Kucher and Cheryl Clark
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS
April 4, 2005

CAMP PENDLETON - As she waited yesterday for the buses to arrive with 129 Marines back from Iraq, Anne Everett worried her husband, Ben, might not recognize her.

After all, in seven months she'd lost 55 pounds of pregnancy weight and dyed her red hair blonde. And she was holding their much larger daughter, Audrey, only six weeks old when 1st Lt. Ben Everett left for Fallujah in September.

So Anne devised a plan. She'd hang back as Marines tumbled out of the buses to find their loved ones and let the crowd thin away.

Then there she and Audrey would be, smiling "in the background," Anne in a new linen dress, the same sunshine yellow "as the roses he always gave me.

"I just hope I don't cry too much," she said.

But when the buses finally arrived, about two hours late, she couldn't contain her excitement.

Her eyes darted across the crowd of young men - many with the same short haircut and tan cammies - until they found the right one.

Anne forgot about the plan. Instead, she hurried forward, shouting Ben's name until his eyes lit up.

And they held each other close and kissed, as they had imagined for so long.

For Ben, this second tour of duty in Iraq with the 3rd battalion, 5th Marine Regiment was intense. Nineteen of the battalion's 1,100 members were killed and 244 were wounded, including 59 with injuries that required medical evacuation back to the United States, a Marine spokesman said.

And it had been a long trip home - from Fallujah by plane, starting five days ago, to Kuwait, and on to Germany and then Maine. The troops finally landed at March Air Force Base in Riverside County early yesterday.

The last leg, by bus to Camp Pendleton, seemed to take forever. And Ben was tired.

He leaned over and gazed at his daughter with awe. But Audrey wasn't sure and looked to her mother for reassurance. "I'll soon be her favorite," Ben laughed.

"My life has changed a lot since I left," he said. "I don't really think it had sunk in. But it will now. I have a 9-month-old baby I don't know how to hold."

Audrey has learned to crawl and play peek-a-boo and eats solid food. She babbles incessantly - a noise so unfamiliar to Ben that during a recent phone call, he repeatedly asked Anne what the noise was.

The baby said "da da" for the first time a few weeks ago - not to her father, but to another Marine on base.

While Ben was away, Anne met regularly with a Marine spouses support group. She painted most of the rooms in their town house at Camp Pendleton. She bought a clothes dryer when the old one broke and picked out a new sport utility vehicle to replace the family's old car after it developed too many mechanical problems.

The couple tried to stay close during the deployment through letters, e-mails and phone calls. But there were 52 days - from Thanksgiving through mid-January as their fourth wedding anniversary and Anne's 27th birthday came and went - without a single phone call.

Anne spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's with family back in Illinois. She was there when Ben's grandfather unexpectedly died.

It turned out that Ben's battalion was part of the operation that battled and won control of Fallujah from insurgents. As the executive officer of the weapons company, Ben helped plan and coordinate artillery and mortar fire and air support for the battalion.

His unit held memorials in Iraq for the men who died. "They were all heroes, every last one of them," Ben said in a recent e-mail to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

In recent weeks, Anne has worked with other Marine spouses to make sure the single Marines who live in barracks would come home to neatly made beds. They baked dozens of cookies and put together gift packages, staying up until 3 a.m. yesterday to get everything done.

Now that Ben is back, there's so much to do, and to plan. On Saturday, they'll celebrate his 27th birthday.

"He wants to go to In-N-Out Burger, and to Chili's restaurant for margaritas and eat chocolate chip cookies," she laughed. "Is there a theme here?"

They are planning trips to Monterey or San Francisco and to New Jersey for her brother's wedding. They will crowd in a lot of family activities before August, when Ben is scheduled to return to Iraq.

Would she ever try to talk him out of it? "No. I would never do that," she said. "I knew, when I met him and married him, because he told me, 'The Marines come first. Then you.' "


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines at Ali Al Salem meet Corps' senior leaders
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Submitted by: MCLB Blount Island
Story by Staff Sgt. Michael Reed

ALI AL SALEM, Kuwait (April 4, 2005) -- Gen. Michael W. Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, and Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps John L. Estrada stopped here to change aircraft before continuing on into Iraq.

Marines from Marine Corps Central Command Coordination Element Kuwait greeted the Corps' top leaders and took advantage of the aircraft transition to talk and snap a few photos with the commandant and sergeant major.

For Cpl. Ceasar Hidalgo, administrative clerk, and many of the other MARCENT Marines, it was their first time meeting the Corps' top Marines.

According to the Kissimmee, Fla., native, the meeting was a highlight in his career.

Gen. Hagee and the sergeant major will spend the week meeting with Marines, touring bases, receiving briefs, and observing training throughout Iraq.

"There was one other time I has even seen the Commandant, but it was through a glass window," said Hidalgo.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Student deserted reserves
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The Daily Northwestern
April 05, 2005

A McCormick senior is being held at military barracks in Virginia on charges that he deserted his unit when they were called for duty in Iraq last June.

Charles Lee, 22, said during a phone interview from a Marine base in Quantico, Va., that he turned himself in Wednesday to police. The day before, authorities had arrived at the Marine reservist's Hoffman Estates, Ill., home at the request of the Marines.

Lee told THE DAILY he is not a deserter.

"They had informed me that I was free to go (last May)," Lee said. "I insisted: 'You told me I was off the hook.'"

Lee's parents and brother, James, 19, visited him in Virginia over the weekend. James Lee said the family was shocked at his brother's arrest.

"Legally, we thought our bases were covered," James Lee said of his brother's refusal to go into active duty. "It wasn't like he went into hiding after that. He went to school, drove around, lived life as usual."

Now the Lees are waiting for more information about when Charles Lee will be discharged. Charles Lee expects to talk to his lawyer on Tuesday.

"It does make me nervous," said Lee, who is being held with about 70 other former Marines also accused of desertion. "There's not much I can do until Tuesday."

The biomedical engineering student said he thought he was no longer obligated to serve after last May.

During that time, he said he began the discharge process by signing an administrative separation packet. He said he turned in gear and received a checkout sheet.

"That's pretty much a sign of you're free to go," Charles Lee said.

Then Lee was called to active duty in June 2004. Many members of his unit, the Chicago-based 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, were being deployed to Iraq's Babil province, south of Baghdad.

Of the 1,100 deployed Marines from Lee's unit, 12 died in combat, according to Regiment spokesman Maj. Rick Coates. One died in training at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Lee said he requested to see his orders in writing and the administrative office wouldn't comply. Lee refused to go into duty unless he saw them.

Coates said reservists who have not completed the discharge process still are required to report to active duty.

"(Discharge) is a request," said Coates, who declined to comment specifically on Lee's case. "The answer could be 'No.' They still have to live up to their requirements."

After joining the reserves in summer 2001, Lee started at NU.

"National duty? Maybe," Lee said. "Money? Maybe. But it was because I didn't want to wonder, 'What if?' I didn't want to be left hanging when I was older."

Difficulties balancing academics with reserve duties caused Lee to request a discharge, Lee said. At the beginning of each month, he had to do weekend-long training missions. He was paid $250 a month.

The military eventually took a toll on Lee's academic career, he said.

During finals week of Spring Quarter of his freshman year, Lee had to miss his calculus final when the Marines called him away to complete his cooking specialization training for eight weeks in Fort Lee, Va. He failed the final after returning to school the following fall, he said.

Lee said he was dismissed from NU after Winter Quarter 2003.

That July, Lee said, he told his commanding officer that he wanted to quit. In October he sent a letter requesting discharge.

After he met with the academic standing committee and was readmitted to NU, Lee stopped going to his monthly drills. He said his commanding officer, who left his post, previously told him he could stop attending drill weekends and make them up over Spring Break instead.

He didn't hear from the military until they called him to duty in June.

Desertion is punishable by up to three years of confinement, according to the Web Site

usmilitary.about.com. Coates, the military spokesman, said in situations like Lee's, a soldier most often receives an "other than honorable" discharge in about a month.

Prior to his arrest, Lee had planned to graduate in June 2006. Now he will have to withdraw for the quarter, he said.

He said he will be relieved once the discharge is complete.

"It's just something that needs to get done really," Lee said. "I do need to be discharged so that I don't have to deal with this crap ever again."

Reach Francesca Jarosz at f-jarosz@northwestern.edu.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

The story of Sgt. Smith's last hours
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By Mark Sappenfield
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
April 5, 2005

WASHINGTON - The last time Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith had slept for any length of time was two days before, and for the men of his platoon, the hours in between had passed only with teeth-grinding tension.

Just the previous night, there had been the long, slow haul to Baghdad through hours so dark that even night-vision goggles were useless. Nose-to-tail, their convoy had crept across the Iraqi marshes amid fizzing bullets and the pop of indiscriminate gunfire, hemmed in their one-lane road by the landscape, the enemy, and the unyielding blackness.

Yet when morning broke and B Company of the 11th Engineers arrived unscathed at Saddam Airport - some even snapping photos along the way - Sergeant Smith was still uneasy. Things were too quiet, and the airport's high walls obscured the battlefield around him.

Like almost every choice he made, Smith's next decision was straight from the military textbook - punching through a wall with a bulldozer to look around. Yet it set in motion events that would eventually claim his life as he stood in the turret of a crippled vehicle, holding at bay almost single-handedly an advancing force of as many as 100 Iraqis.

When President Bush presented Smith's family with the Medal of Honor at the White House Monday, exactly two years after Smith's death, he honored the 33-year-old sergeant for what he and others in the military have deemed one of the most valorous acts ever performed by an American soldier.

Less than 3,500 of the 42 million soldiers who have served the United States have won the Medal of Honor - the highest medal the military bestows for bravery and sacrifice. Before now, none have received it for action in Afghanistan or Iraq, and only two have received it for action since Vietnam.
A sergeant and his men

For those who knew Smith, it is the perfect testament to a man who devoted his life to his colleagues and country. And in a time when the military is increasingly reliant on smart bombs and satellites, it is a reminder that the substance of America's military might - sacrifice - has remained essentially unchanged since the days of boots and bayonets on the beaches of Normandy.

"That's just Sergeant Smith," says Col. Will Grimsley, who knew Smith and reviewed witness accounts of the battle for the medal nomination. "Clearly, he was one of those guys who led by example."

In truth, he was one of those guys who generally drove his troops to their wit's end. During rifle inspections - of which there were many - Smith took to inspecting the cleanliness of his soldiers' weapons with a Q-tip. If one soldier failed, everyone in the platoon paid the penalty.

"If one guy in the platoon wasn't up to standards, we'd be out in formation at 9 p.m.," says Sgt. Daniel Medrano, who was a specialist in 2003.

The lesson of teamwork and attention to detail, though, was obvious - and learned from experience. Smith hadn't always been the overbearing sergeant. As a child, he had a great love of blowing things up with cherry bombs and was prone to taking things apart just so he could put them back together again. Even during his first years in the Army, his love of motorcycles and fast living seemed to trump any inclinations toward more sedate soldering.

Then came the first Gulf War, which left Smith a changed man. Twelve years later, as he sat in his tent on cool Kuwait nights with Lt. Brian Borkowski, waiting to reprise the same invasion with a new Army, he spoke of the friends he lost in the first war - and how no training could prepare the lieutenant for what would come next.

"A lot of people do things just for face," says Lieutenant Borkowski. "He was more genuinely motivated. He was in the first war, and what motivated him was to make sure things were done right."
April 4, 2003: Saddam Airport

When Smith and his troops arrived at Saddam Airport on April 4, 2003 - their final objective - he turned to Borkowski with his concern. Their patch of the airport was a four-lane highway divided by a median and bordered on both sides by high walls. With the walls, they were blind, and the ease with which the company had arrived at its destination was almost unsettling.

"It was very, very quiet. Every two minutes or so, there was gunfire, but it was so sporadic that it made it kind of eerie," says Borkowski. "We started to realize that we had surprised the heck out of [the Iraqis], and they were just waking up to find Americans all around them."

As Borkowski hurried off to a nearby reconnaissance mission, Smith called for a bulldozer to plow through one wall. On the other side, he found a courtyard, and, not long after, he received a call: build a makeshift prisoner-of-war camp for a group of newly captured Iraqis. The courtyard would do nicely.

There was simply the matter of inspecting it and figuring out what was behind a gate on the far side. When one of the company's personnel carriers crashed through, it found what Smith had feared: a nest of several dozen Republican Guards.

At first, the firefight seemed nothing out of the ordinary. Borkowski listened to reports coming over the radio with no great alarm. After all, the forces at Saddam Airport that day were the vanguard of the American Army, and as the morning progressed, skirmishes were breaking out everywhere.

Gradually, though, the reports turned worse. The personnel carrier that had barged through the gate had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and the three soldiers inside had been wounded. What's more, a Bradley fighting vehicle brought in at the beginning of the firefight was now out of ammunition.

What had begun as a minor flashpoint was becoming the site of a significant Iraqi strike. Not only were the Guards occupying Smith and his men outside the broken gate, but they had also taken a tower that overlooked the courtyard and the road, pinning down the remainder of the troops from the high ground.

"It was a mounted counterattack against what was perceived to be a weak flank," says Colonel Grimsley.
Composure in the line of fire

The consequences were dire. If Smith's troops broke, the Iraqi troops would be able to move potentially unimpeded from the courtyard gate all the way to a nearby command center, flanking a mortar unit, and overrunning a station that held both the wounded and several embedded journalists.

Specialist Medrano was among the soldiers trying to get the wounded soldiers out of the damaged personnel carrier and down the road to the aid station. During his three years in the Army, he had spent all but a few months under Smith, subject to his meticulous weapons checks but also a witness to another side of the hardened soldier - a side that sometimes cracked jokes, a side that stayed up nights in Kosovo talking with Medrano about family, a side of a sergeant that embraced a lowly specialist.

"All the training I did, and all the things I learned were from him," he says. "He was always trying to take care of you."

At that moment, as Medrano was lifting one of the wounded to safety, he glanced up at Smith, who was now manning the gun atop the personnel carrier. "We made eye contact, and he just waved me off," says Medrano. "He was telling me to take care of these people."

With the help of several other soldiers, Smith backed the vehicle into the courtyard so that he could cover both the tower and the gate. For perhaps 10 minutes, he fired more than 300 rounds to prevent the Iraqi forces from spilling through the bulldozer-made hole in the wall and on to the command center.

"Not all soldiers would jump on top of a vehicle that has already gotten hit while bloody people are being taken out of it," says Medrano. "He did it because he knew if he didn't, we would get slaughtered."

Led by another sergeant, Medrano and two other soldiers used Smith's covering fire to move cautiously to the base of the tower, where they took out the Iraqi soldiers. But by that time, Smith's gun, too, had fallen silent. He had been shot in the head, the only US fatality in the firefight.

President Bush presented the Medal of Honor to Smith's son, David. To Colonel Grimsley, it is a medal that speaks not only of the heroics of one man, but of a whole army: "I would tell you that there are thousands of Sergeant Smiths out there."

Even so, he acknowledges, Smith - and his act of valor - were indeed uncommon. "You see 100 people, and certain people stand out," says Grimsley. "Certainly, he was a guy deeply devoted to his soldiers and his profession.... It was an incredibly selfless act of service."
Facts about the Medal of Honor

More than 3,400 Medals of Honor have been awarded since the decoration was created in 1861, of which more than 600 have been given posthumously.

Military officials rigorously review any nomination for the medal in a process that can last 18 months or more. Only about 840 have been given since World War II, when the requirements were made more stringent.

The other two post-Vietnam Medals of Honor went to Army Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon and Army Sgt. 1st Class Randall D. Shughart, two Delta Force troopers who died defending the crew of a helicopter that was shot down in Mogadishu, Somalia, in events depicted in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

2d FSSG Marines seize 15 weapons caches
Submitted by: 2nd Force Service Support Group
Story Identification #: 20054585424
Story by 1st Lt. Katherine L. O’Neill



CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq (April 5, 2005) -- Marines from Combat Logistics Battalion 8 and 8th Engineer Support Battalion, 2d Force Service Support Group (Forward), responded to 15 separate weapons cache sites approximately 12 km southeast of Camp Fallujah March 29.

This is one of the largest cache sites uncovered since II Marine Expeditionary Force assumed command of Iraq’s Al Anbar Province from I MEF. Items seized included 24 - 82 mm mortars, 10 -130 mm High Explosive warheads, six - 120 mm mortars and more than 30 rocket propelled grenades, as well as components to create a bomb.

The items containing explosives were destroyed on-scene and the Marines confiscated pictures of ordnance, a map of the area, books on weapons systems, photographs of missiles, and personal journals, to use for intelligence gathering purposes.

“This has been one of the larger cache sites uncovered since our unit arrived in theater,” said Staff Sgt. Matthew D. Small, explosive ordnance team leader with 8th ESB and attached to CLB - 8, “We found optical equipment, Improvised Explosive Device making material, documentation and maps which will aid the intelligence community in better understanding our enemy and their capabilities, develop procedures that counter insurgency and perhaps, uncover more caches. It may be a slow process, but daily we are finding ordnance that is no longer in the hands of insurgents.”

Explosive ordnance disposal teams and military police squads work together and conduct counter-IED operations, demolition and unexploded ordnance recovery operations. The MPs provide security for all EOD response calls in the area of operations, which allows the EOD team to concentrate on the mission.

According to Lance Cpl. Selvyn O. Wyatt III, a military policeman with CLB - 8, EOD teams and MPs have close working relationships, and he appreciates what EOD does. “It is dangerous for us and EOD, but it is good to go out there because we see the impact and difference it makes. We are stopping the insurgents from completing their missions and giving someone a chance to go home, ” said the Germantown, Md. native, who joined the Marine Corps in July 2003.


Navy and Marine Corps EOD teams have been integrated during this deployment, allowing Navy detachments the opportunity to gain knowledge in more land based ordnance while helping to fill the necessity for EOD technicians operating in the area of operations, said Small.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Ryan A. Reese, an explosive ordnance technician with 8th ESB and Bowie, Md. native, said, “It makes me feel like we are getting something accomplished over here and that our job helps keep the guys who are out there everyday on patrol safer.”

This was not the joint service team’s first response to a weapons cache, but it was the first large cache they have worked on as a team, said Small, a Richlands, N.C. native. The unexploded ordnance and cache calls, we respond to are difficult to prepare for because we do not know what or how much we are going to discover, Small said.

“We were told there were six to seven unexploded ordnance found by the engineers attached to 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, little did we know, we were going to spend six hours digging up ordnance items, IED materials and intelligence information,” said Small, a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom II, “As a three-man team we adapt to the situation, plan accordingly, and that’s what makes the job fun.”

The Marines found more than a hundred IED components, including batteries, switches and detonators. “Every IED component found means one less IED that can be made,” said Small, “I’d like to say I think we mitigated the threat of at least a couple of IEDs being constructed.”

Ellie