Marines lose a friendly face from Whidbey Island

[thedrifter]

Marines lose a friendly face from Whidbey Island
Highest-ranking woman to die in Iraq was public affairs officer

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTER

To journalists covering the war in Iraq, Marine Corps Maj. Megan Malia McClung was a professional yet friendly face, working hard as a public affairs officer to help them do their jobs.

Many of those same journalists now are writing about her after McClung, 34, who listed Coupeville on Whidbey Island as her hometown, died Wednesday in Iraq. She is apparently the highest-ranking woman of any branch of the service to die in Iraq.

Marine Lt. Col. Bryan F. Salas, who helped pin on McClung's gold oak leaves when she was promoted to major in Iraq in June, said she is the only woman graduate of the Naval Academy to die in Iraq as a result of hostile action.

According to Defense Department statistics through Dec. 2, 60 of the more than 2,900 U.S. military deaths in Iraq have been women.

She is the 146th member of the military with ties to Washington to die in Iraq.

In her job, McClung "was an advocate of media coverage of military operations," and managed the embed program in which reporters hook up with military units, developing public affairs plans for operations, Salas wrote by e-mail from Iraq.

Her death also numbed a community of marathoners. McClung, Salas said, also found time to organize the Marine Corps Marathon in Al Asad Airbase in October. She finished second among women.

The Defense Department in disclosing McClung's death Monday said she was killed in Al Anbar province supporting combat operations. Media and other military sources say she was killed in downtown Ramadi by a roadside bomb while doing her job -- escorting reporters.

She was in her last month in her Iraq deployment.

McClung's family declined to be interviewed, directing inquiries to Marine Corps officials. Funeral arrangements are incomplete but are planned for Arlington National Cemetery, Salas said from Iraq.

McClung's name has filled Google pages on the Web since her death, including notes from numerous journalists who appreciated her work.

Many cited her energy and professionalism -- and remembered a personality as bright as her red hair.

The Washington Post on Oct. 27 reported that McClung in May came up with the idea for a marathon race in Iraq to parallel the popular Marine Corps Marathon held in Washington, D.C., each fall.

The Iraq "shadow race" was dubbed the Marine Corps Marathon Forward. Participants were considered part of the U.S. marathon, their finishes added to the list of those who completed the race in the U.S.

In an online endorsement for a joint-pain product, McClung said she had trained 20 years in gymnastics and later took up the Ironman Distance Triathlon.

McClung had been serving as public affairs officer for the Army's 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division. Her home unit was the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force based at Camp Pendleton.

McClung, who was single, graduated in 1995 from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. She had been serving in Iraq since January.

Details about her connection to Coupeville, however, were unclear Monday. Officials in the Coupeville School District found no record of her.

Although listed by the military as a member of the Marine Corps Reserve, blogs and other Web sources indicated McClung had spent some time previously in recent years as a civilian contractor in Baghdad for Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

P-I reporter Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or mikebarber@seattlepi.com.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

December 12, 2006

First female leatherneck officer killed in Iraq
Marine spokeswoman was escorting media

The Associated Press


SAN DIEGO — A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marine Corps has died in Iraq, becoming the first female Marine officer to be killed in the conflict.

Maj. Megan M. McClung, of Coupeville, Wash., died Dec. 6 in Anbar province, the Defense Department said in a news release.


McClung, 34, was a public affairs officer assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The exact circumstances surrounding McClung’s death were not immediately released, but Camp Pendleton spokesman Navy Lt. Cmdr Cliff Carnes said she was escorting media when she was killed. The journalists she was with were not seriously injured, he said.

“She was a Marine’s Marine,” Carnes said. “She exemplified everything that it was to be a warrior, she was a great personality and a great friend.”

Her boss in Iraq, Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, said McClung was an advocate of media coverage of military operations, and while in Iraq she managed the Marine media embed program.

Michael Fumento, a freelance reporter who has been to Iraq three times, met McClung in Baghdad last year. He described her as smart, kind and extremely efficient.

Carnes said McClung, who was unmarried, was in the final month of a yearlong deployment to Iraq.

McClung joined the Marine Corps in May 1995 after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy. A call to her family home in Coupeville was unanswered.

Three other female Marines have been killed in Iraq, according to the Defense Department’s most recent numbers.

Lance Cpl. Juana Navarro Arellano died in April after being shot in Anbar province. Lance Cpl. Holly A. Charette and Cpl. Ramona Valdez died in June last year when a suicide bomber attacked their convoy.

Sixty U.S. servicewomen have been killed in Iraq. Fifty-two of these women were in the Army.

Details of McClung’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery were being finalized.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Orange County Marine's death transcends tragedy
The parents of Maj. Megan McClung, who died in Iraq, take comfort in their daughter's commitment.
December 14, 2006

I was saying to a friend recently that any soldier's death in Iraq from this point on would be a particular tragedy. I also surmised that the commanding officers might well be extra cautious in assigning troops to dangerous missions.

It wasn't dressed up as insight. Just a layman's opinion that, with approval of the war turning so markedly downward, even those on the ground in Iraq might consciously pull up on the reins.

Today, even this far down the pike in Iraq and with the chorus of dissent louder each week, we don't need to debate the merits of the war or how it was conceived or how it's been waged to arrive at a conclusion about Marine Maj. Megan McClung.

I've just finished talking to her parents.

On Dec. 6, McClung died when the Humvee she was riding in hit a roadside bomb. She was 34 and a 1990 graduate of Mission Viejo High School. Two other Marines died with her.

By my thesis, theirs would be tragic deaths.

But I am in serious reassessment mode after reading comments in The Times from her parents, who live on Whidbey Island in Washington. "Please don't portray this as a tragedy," her mother, Re McClung, said. "It is for us, but Megan died doing what she believed in, and that's a great gift…. She believed in the mission there — that the Iraqi people should have freedom."

For someone being called on the phone at a time of sorrow, there's an incredible eloquence and depth to those words.

Here's what I take from them: There are certain irreducible elements of a person's essence that can't be separated out and conveniently lent to arguments over politics and war.

One of the irreducible elements in McClung's life was her belief in the cause, her dedication to the mission. That's military talk that a lot of people don't understand, but it's a point of view that should be draped in honor. I'm not talking about medals or other trappings, but in the honor of being true to one's self.

In that sense, McClung's death can't possibly be seen as tragic. War room decisions made by people who don't do the fighting can have elements of tragic miscalculation and warrant recriminations, but at the level of the individual soldier, how dare we minimize his or her belief in risking their lives to help others?

I won't do it. I might wonder how the government could miscalculate virtually every aspect of the Iraq war, but I won't condemn a Marine who believed at her core that hers was a beneficent mission.

I phoned Mike and Re McClung late Wednesday to ask if they wanted to add anything. "I'm glad that made you rethink things," Re McClung says, referring to her earlier comments in the paper. "It makes me feel very good."

The McClungs, who moved from Mission Viejo last year, understand full well that the country is divided over the war. But they are reflecting these days on the larger issue of people committed to a cause and backing it up with deeds. "A lot of people go through life and they've got all kinds of regrets at the end," Re McClung says. "Things they wish they'd said, wish they'd been, wish they'd done. Megan lived life every day setting priorities and doing what she knew was right."

The McClungs believe their immediate sorrow will in time be eased by recalling their daughter's selfless desire to help the Iraqi people. "How much more nobly could she die?" Re McClung says. "If you have to lose a child or brother or sister or mother or father to death, how could you wish it to be any other way than doing what they believed in and loved the most when they died?"

In another context years ago, I wrote about a young Newport Beach woman's death at the hands of an angry mob in South Africa where, ironically, she'd worked to end apartheid. Some considered it a senseless death that someone so young and committed had been killed at the side of a road. I argued that it was more of a glorious death — that she died for a cause she believed would make the world better.

Just as it was with Amy Biehl, so it is with Megan McClung.

A deep-seated belief that she was helping strangers. A willingness to put herself on the line, so that her actions would reflect those beliefs.

That's not my definition of tragedy.


Orange County columnist Dana Parsons appears occasionally in the Inland Empire edition. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marine died backing her beliefs
Maj. Megan McClung, proud to be in Iraq, was a public affairs officer known for her enthusiasm and athletic prowess. She was killed by a roadside bomb Dec. 6.
By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
December 14, 2006

She was known for sprinting along the Tigris River in Iraq, competing in a triathlon in Brazil and doing a back flip in North Carolina to prove to police she was sober.

With her copper-red hair, athletic ability and sense of humor, Maj. Megan McClung was a memorable figure to the troops and journalists she worked with as a Marine Corps public affairs officer.

A few weeks ago, the 34-year-old organized a marathon at the al-Asad air base in Iraq to honor fallen comrades.

On Dec. 6, she joined the list of fallen herself. While escorting reporters around Ramadi in a convoy of Humvees, the 1990 Mission Viejo High School graduate was a victim of a roadside bomb, making her the first female Marine officer to be killed in the war.

Tributes have poured in from around the globe.

"Her athleticism was a metaphor for her life," Lt. Col. Bryan Salas said in a eulogy that was read in Fallouja on Tuesday and forwarded to her parents. "She took it to the wall. She ran hard to the finish line, and she was always a winner."

Journalists regarded McClung as one of the finest public-affairs officers in Iraq, said Lawrence F. Kaplan, writing at the New Republic magazine's website. "She did a difficult job cheerfully and she did it well," he wrote.

On Whidbey Island in Washington, her parents, Mike and Re McClung, struggled to describe their daughter's life. "We can't really put 34 years into a sound bite," they said in a telephone interview.

"Please don't portray this as a tragedy," her mother said. "It is for us, but Megan died doing what she believed in, and that's a great gift…. She believed in the mission there — that the Iraqi people should have freedom."

Born in Hawaii, McClung grew up in Mission Viejo, where she demonstrated an early knack for sports, taking tumbling classes at age 2 and gymnastics at 5.

"She was always breaking through the ceiling when people said she couldn't do something," Re McClung recalled. In high school, hoping to build her upper-body strength for gymnastics, Megan signed up for a weightlifting class, only to be told no girls were allowed.

So she showed up at a school board meeting to request that the ban on females be overturned, her mother said. The school board agreed.

From there, McClung became the first woman to attend the Admiral Farragut Academy in New Jersey. In 1995, she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy.

Military service runs in her family's blood. Her maternal grandfather was a Navy pilot, her paternal grandfather served in the Army and her father was a Marine infantry officer.

McClung's specialty was working with the media, a task she carried out with consummate professionalism and a keen sense of humor, by all accounts.

She also remained an avid athlete.

In the late 1990s, as a public affairs officer at the Marine Corps Air Station in Havelock, N.C., McClung entertained journalists with a story about being pulled over by a police officer and doing a back flip to prove she was sober, said Sigrid Hughes, who wrote for the local paper at the time.

McClung's father said he couldn't confirm the story, "but it sounds like something Megan would do."

Others who knew her recalled McClung's running ability.

Over the years, she competed in Ironman competitions in Brazil, Kona and Camp Pendleton, her parents said.

In Iraq, she liked to run along the Tigris River at nightfall. "Even in the midst of war, Megan was … a running-fool," one blogger recalled. "She was dedicated to her running, rain or shine, freezing or scorching hot."

Hughes' husband, Scott, who also worked with McClung in North Carolina, recalled a three-mile race in which McClung "took off like a shot" from the starting block. "All of the rabbits, including myself, laughed and sprinted after her," he wrote in an online memorial. "Four of us threw up trying to catch her; no one did. She kept running and smiling. That is how I will remember her."

A memorial service is scheduled for Monday at Quantico, Va. McClung will be buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery.


roy.rivenburg@latimes.com

[thedrifter]

December 18, 2006
Funeral at Arlington for female officer killed in Iraq

By Beth Zimmerman
Staff writer

The funeral for Maj. Megan McClung, the Corps’ first female officer killed in the Iraq war, will take place Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.

According to a base spokeswoman, McClung’s funeral is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. A memorial service was scheduled for 2 p.m. Monday.

The funeral is open to the public, but McClung’s family has requested privacy. “They understand she knew a lot of people,” but they’d like to spend the time at the cemetery with their daughter, Quantico spokeswoman Capt. Teresa O’Valle said.

McClung, 34, a tri-athlete and energetic leader known for her friendly professionalism, was a public affairs officer with Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based I Marine Expeditionary Force. She was killed by a roadside bomb Dec. 6 while escorting a media group in Ramadi.

Her peers in Iraq held a memorial for her Dec. 12. Her boss, Lt. Col. Bryan Salas, said during the memorial that McClung was, above all, a “warrior.”

“Her running ability, her athleticism, was a metaphor for everything in her life. She took it to the wall; she ran hard to the finish line and was always a winner,” Salas said.

Pendleton spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Cliff Carnes last week called McClung — a Naval Academy graduate — a “Marine’s Marine.”

McClung, who was unmarried, was in the final month of a yearlong deployment to Iraq, Carnes said. She was commissioned in 1995.

McClung is the highest-ranking female service member to be killed in Iraq. According to Defense Department statistics, three other female Marines have been killed since the war began.

In lieu of flowers, her family requests donations to the Marine Corps League Foundation’s “Marines Helping Marines” Wounded Marines Fund. Send them to:

“In memory of Major Megan McClung”

Wounded Marines Fund

Marine Corps League Foundation

P.O. Box 3070

Merrifield, VA 22116

Ellie