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thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:06 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Michael J. Williams: Vacaville
'Omar' was determined to prove himself

Carl T. Hall

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Michael J. Williams was a decade older than many of the others with whom he fought. His fellow Marines called him "Omar," short for "Old Man River."

He spent six months getting in shape before he enlisted. He was going on what he considered the biggest adventure of his life -- and he was determined to be ready.

Williams, who spent part of his childhood with his father in Vacaville, joined up at 29, right at the Marines' age cutoff, determined to prove himself. He had a girlfriend and a successful flooring business in Phoenix, where his mother lived.

He had a drug problem, too, said his mother, Sandy Watson. The demons he battled sometimes seemed to be getting the better of him.

"It was so hard to reach him when he was in a dark place," she said. "It would have been easier for him to continue on the road he was on. It took a lot of courage to do what he did."

He had approached the Marines before 9/11, but the attacks convinced him more than ever that he was destined for the military. After his long preparation, he went to boot camp in October 2001. He shipped out for Iraq in February 2003.

Nothing was easy. He broke his ankle during his first weeks of training. He was given a smallpox vaccine aboard a military ship, had a nasty reaction and was nearly sent home before he recovered.

On March 23, just four days after President Bush announced the start of the war, Williams was assigned tough duty outside Nasiriya when his company was ambushed.

Lance Cpl. Williams, 31, initially was listed as missing in action. His remains were recovered five days later.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:08 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Jeramy A. Ailes: Gilroy
Sharing his salary -- and his spirit

Nanette Asimov

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Silently, the Marines lined up outside the house in Fallujah where insurgents were rumored to be. Lance Cpl. Jeramy A. Ailes was first at the door. He opened it.

An explosion ripped the silence. The Marines retreated at a run. Ailes, they soon realized, was not among them.

"Nobody will probably ever know exactly what happened," Ailes' mother, Lana, said in a quiet voice about the moment on Nov. 15, 2004, that forever changed the lives of the family in Gilroy.

Nor will those who killed Ailes ever know that the 22-year-old they killed was a good-hearted soul who had learned to speak and read Arabic.

During his first tour of duty, Ailes handed out $10 bills to 30 Iraqi families with little to eat. On his second tour, he distributed soccer balls to Iraqi children.

"He was a best friend to many at home and over in Iraq," said Lana Ailes.

Once, Jeramy saw a little Iraqi girl struggling to carry a heavy bale of hay. Her father walked beside her. Appalled, Jeramy spoke to the man, who took the hay from his daughter.

"Jeramy was an advocate for what was right," said his mother.

He was also a fun-loving kid who liked to surprise his sisters with a squirt from the backyard hose. An accomplished fisherman, Ailes loved snowboarding, and once flew a plane solo. He won welding medals in school, and aimed to master the art of underwater welding after the war.

Ailes also was intent on protecting his fellow Marines from harm. And that's why, on that November day, Ailes stood first at the door.

"He thought of others before himself," his mother said.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:09 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Mick Bekowsky: Concord
The average American kid

Cecilia M. Vega

Sunday, March 18, 2007

After two tours of duty, Marine Cpl. Mick Bekowsky was tired and homesick. To keep in touch with the life he left behind in Concord, he wrote and called as much as possible.

He talked about things 21-year-old guys talk about, like his truck and a trip with friends to Las Vegas. And he always made sure to ask how his little sister's softball team was doing.

"soon I will be out of here," he wrote his mom, Joan, in an e-mail from Iraq -- sent on his 21st birthday. "i am looking forward to california more than anything. this iraq thing is getting old."

Bekowsky was among the first American servicemen to enter Iraq during the 2003 invasion.

He enlisted in 2001, just a few months after high school graduation -- before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The military seemed like a natural fit. He was, after all, a boy's boy. Macho. He liked hunting, race cars and fishing. His family called him an average American kid.

"I didn't think anything of it," his mother said. "What's the chances of us going to war? I thought, he'll get a good career and an education. Then, a month later, the planes crash into the World Trade Center."

When he called or wrote home, he never talked about a fear of getting hurt or dying. He didn't want to worry his family.

"tell everyone i said hi and I love them," Bekowsky wrote on his birthday. "i love you mom ... i love you."

The last letter he sent home was shorter than usual. He was expected to return in less than a month. Instead, the postman brought the letter one day after the military delivered the news his family hoped they would never hear.

Bekowsky was among seven Marines killed Sept. 6, 2004, in a suicide car bombing outside Fallujah.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:12 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Kyle D. Crowley: San Ramon
'He believed what he was doing was the right thing'

Henry K. Lee

Sunday, March 18, 2007

The night before he shipped out for Iraq, Kyle D. Crowley called his grandmother in tears.

"Are you afraid," she asked.

No, the young Marine replied, he wasn't afraid of going off to war. He was afraid of what the war might do to him.

"He didn't know if he would be alive when he got back," said his grandmother, Pat Willett, 72.

Willett tried to reassure the 18-year-old lance corporal. She told Crowley that his twin brother, Shane, who was just 4 months old when he died of crib death, would watch over him. "I told him that he'd be OK because his brother was going with him," she said, crying at the memory.

Crowley died April 6, 2004, in a firefight east of Ramadi.

He had attended California High School in San Ramon before graduating from nearby Del Amigo High School. He signed up with the Marines straight out of high school.

"He wanted to fight," said his father, Mark Crowley. "He believed in the rights and liberties of those that he loved and even those that he didn't know. He believed what he was doing was the right thing and, by God, you couldn't shake him from it.

"I want Kyle to be remembered as an 18-year-old Marine who was a hero, and he unselfishly gave his life for his country and his loved ones and his friends."

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:13 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Andrew S. Dang: Foster City
Brief, fatal tour in Iraq inspired younger brother

Vanessa Hua

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Andrew S. Dang always finished what he started.

His unwavering determination led him to co-found a robotics club, to join the football and wrestling teams at Aragon High School in San Mateo (where he graduated in 2002), and to jump into a lagoon on a dare.

And to enlist in the Marine Corps.

He wanted to join the Air Force, but when the recruiter was slow to respond, he joined the Marines instead. He was patriotic, and he believed serving was a noble calling that would be good for his career. He planned to study science and maybe launch his own aerospace business someday.

Lance Cpl. Dang was killed March 22, 2004, by a rocket-propelled grenade during a firefight near Ramadi. He'd been in Iraq two weeks and he was 20 years old. His younger brother Anthony joined the Marines a few days later. It upset his mother, but she came to understand it was Anthony's decision to make.

Anthony did his own stint in Iraq last year, from February to September. He said he felt his brother's presence during a few close calls.

"Sometimes we would be under mortar fire, and you could hear the shells land closer and closer ... and hope the next one does not know blow you to pieces," he wrote in an e-mail from Okinawa, Japan, where he is stationed now. "I always knew Andrew was looking over me. I wish I could thank him somehow."

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:14 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Erick J. Hodges: Concord
Marine's stuffed bulldog survives him back home

Jill Tucker

Sunday, March 18, 2007

A small stuffed bulldog sits on Marina Beyer's dining room table, just one of the visual and emotional cues that lead her back each day to memories of her son Erick J. Hodges.

She can't remember the dog's name, but she can still see her son clutching it after a fire burned the family home in 1986. It was one of the few things that survived the blaze. Now it's outlived her son.

Marine Lance Cpl. Erick Hodges died Nov. 10, 2004 during the battle of Fallujah. He'd turned 21 the day before.

Memories fill Beyer's mind each day -- images of Erick as a small boy, sparked perhaps by a father speaking tenderly to his son in line at a drug store. Other days she remembers the prankster her son was, how at 13 he took his two younger brothers trick-or-treating in July. A neighbor called to complain. The boys came back with a rock, a potato and a lot of candy.

In the Marines, he continued the pranks. At one point he was denied leave for pulling one. He went home anyway, and got away with it. No one noticed his absence without leave. His mother doesn't know what he did to get in trouble, but she told his superiors about the episode at the memorial service. They laughed.

Hodges graduated from Mt. Diablo High School in Concord in 2002. He had enlisted in the Marines before that, not long after 9/11.

He was in Fallujah on his second tour when he was killed. Days before, his picture appeared in newspapers and even without a caption identifying his name, his mother knew it was him.

"There he was," she said. "Just the way he was standing I could see it was him."

There were measures of both comfort and pain in seeing him there. The little bulldog on the table causes the same mix of emotions.

"I have this dog still," she said. "It just amazes me that here is the only thing left."

The little dog, and the memories too.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:17 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Travis J. Layfield: Fremont
A feather tattoo portends a fallen warrior

Henry K. Lee

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Travis J. Layfield had some Lakota Indian blood in him, and it showed in the feather tattoo on his shoulder that meant "fallen warrior."

That's just what the 19-year-old Marine lance corporal became on April 6, 2004, when he was killed during a firefight in Iraq's Anbar province.

He came from a military family. His grandfather was a Navy Seabee during World War II. Layfield joined the Navy cadet program in Hayward when he was 11 and enlisted after graduating from Washington High School.

After he was deployed to Iraq, Layfield told his loved ones not to worry. Everything would be fine, he said.

"He was comfortable in his own skin," said his mother, Diane Layfield. "He did more in his 19 years and knew what direction he was going than most people know in a lifetime. This was something he always wanted. He was really devoted to becoming part of the military and serving his country."

Following his death, Layfield's family learned that he and an ex-girlfriend had a son, Dylan. He's 4 now.

"His legacy lives on," Diane Layfield said.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:18 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Bumrok Lee: Sunnyvale
He always told girlfriend to remain careful and safe

Ryan Kim

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Bumrok Lee was the protective type.

Whenever he walked his girlfriend across the street, he took her by the hand, like a parent with a child. When they strolled along a sidewalk, he walked closest to the street.

"He said just in case a car makes a bad turn he'd rather it was him than me," who might be hit, said his girlfriend, Sakura Dao Pham.

Even when he was deployed to Anbar province in Iraq, he tried to make sure Pham, an Army Reserve medic, stayed safe in Baghdad.

"He would always tell me to be careful and be safe," said Pham, 23, who was serving in Iraq at the time herself.

They met in junior high school and began dating during their senior year at Homestead High in Cupertino. Lee joined the Marines and was shipped out to Iraq in February 2004. They never saw each other in Iraq and communicated only by e-mail.

Marine Cpl. Lee, 21, was injured May 29, 2004, when his vehicle was hit and exploded while on a military operation. In a twist of fate, he was sent to the Baghdad hospital where Pham was a medic. She wasn't on duty the day Lee was admitted and did not learn that he was there until he died four days later and a friend e-mailed her about his death.

Pham is left only with memories of good times with Lee, his laughter and the way he always looked out for her.

"He was just really sweet. He learned that from his grandma," said Pham. "She held his hand when they crossed the street and he tried to do that with whoever he's with."

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:20 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Joseph Menusa: San Jose
Good on battlefield, if not on the ball field

Matthew B. Stannard

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Joseph Menusa was no good at baseball.

You wouldn't know it to look at him -- handsome and fit, with muscle built up during hours in the gym. The Marine gunnery sergeant looked like he would be as at home on a ball field as the chestful of ribbons he wore proved he was on the battlefield.

But no, said his wife, Stacy Menusa.

"All the guys that have ever served with him, they all laughed every time Joe played a sport because he was not a jock. It was always funny to sit there and watch him try," she said, laughing. "He'd get mad because everybody would be laughing at him."

But he played anyway. For the fun of it, and for what it meant to him and to his fellow Marines.

"Even on a sports team, this is your unit, your platoon," Stacy Menusa said. "Those little things like that are what create the memories that people will remember."

Menusa died after taking a junior Marine's exposed position to direct fire and protect unarmored bulldozers against attackers. It was March 27, 2003, and he was 33 years old. The war was but a week old.

Joe Menusa couldn't play baseball, but his son sure can. Even at 2 years old, which is how old the boy was when his father died.

"Joe was even amazed that his child could do this at such a young age," Stacy Menusa said. "We got to the point where we were pitching really fast at him and he could hit it. So that was one time that Joe actually did get to see his son in action."

Stacy and Joshua Menusa -- now 7 -- went to Menusa's grave recently to mark his birthday and Valentine's Day. They left flowers, and Stacy encouraged Joshua, as she often does, to talk to his father. Tell him about baseball, she said -- Joshua is in a farm team for little league, the Devil Rays.

"Mom, daddy already knows about my baseball," Stacy Menusa recalled her son saying. "He said he knows his body is there, but he knows that in spirit he's always with him."

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:22 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Patrick T. O'Day: Santa Rosa
Corporal became a U.S. citizen -- 2 weeks after he died in Iraq

Jim Doyle

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Lance Cpl. Patrick T. O'Day was a young immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in death.

Born in Scotland, he moved to Santa Rosa in 1987 when he was 3. He graduated from Santa Rosa High, married his high school sweetheart and joined the Marine Corps. Five months later, he returned unannounced to Vicki Carpenter's English class, proudly wearing his dress blues.

"He was there to show me that he had done what he set out to do," Carpenter said of her former student.

O'Day and three fellow Marines died March 25, 2003, when their tank plunged off a bridge and landed upside down in the Euphrates River near Nasiriya. Hundreds of people attended his memorial service in Santa Rosa. At age 20, he was buried with military honors to the sound of a bagpipe. His 19-year-old widow was pregnant with their first child.

"He had a lot of integrity," said Will Dunn, a high school counselor. "He was not without faults as we all are, but he cared a lot about his family and it showed in his action. He was very proud to be moving on, and I think he had a bright future."

O'Day was awarded U.S. citizenship two weeks after he died.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:26 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Dustin M. Shumney: Benicia
Marine remembered as officer, gentle man

John Koopman

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Dustin M. Shumney could have been on a recruiting poster for the Marine Corps. He was one of those clean-cut, All-American guys: a star high school football player while growing up in Benicia, devout Catholic, dedicated officer and family man.

He was an officer, a professional Marine who won a Bronze Star for heroism during a fierce battle in Fallujah. He was a hard-charging warrior who cared as much about Iraqi civilians and kids as he did the men he commanded.

"He was very touched when he went to Iraq," said his mother, Shama Shumney of Benicia. "He got to know the people of Fallujah, and he felt very strongly that he wanted to help them. There were a lot of elderly people and children, and I know he spent a lot of time trying to get them food and keep them safe."

The warrior ethos seemed to keep Shumney grounded. His wife, Julie, said he felt the war had been glorified, at least in the early days. But, in fact, there was no glory in war, he told her.

"He felt it was a living hell, not only for the U.S. troops, but also for the civilians," Julie Shumney said.

Shumney served two tours in Iraq with the Marines. He was given the Bronze Star with combat "V" for his actions during fierce house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. After his unit cleared one floor of a building, insurgents on the second floor opened fire on his men, killing one and wounding six others. Grenades rained down from the second floor, along with machine-gun fire. Shumney coordinated return fire and called for a bulldozer to smash through a wall so his wounded and trapped Marines could evacuate to safety.

"He was an All-American boy," Julie Shumney said. "He was very patriotic and old-fashioned. He believed in God, country and the Marine Corps."

She said her husband believed in his mission, and that if someone had to die in combat, better it was him than someone else.

"Dustin was the kind of guy who would give his life for his friend," Julie Shumney said. "If you could ask Dustin, I think he would say, 'I was just doing my job.' "

First Lt. Shumney died Jan. 26 in a helicopter crash near Rutbah in Anbar province. It was his second tour in Iraq. He was 30 years old.

Ellie

thedrifter
03-18-07, 06:27 PM
Portraits of Sacrifice
Phillip G. West: American Canyon
He made others laugh, was serious about Corps

Demian Bulwa

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Phillip G. West felt compelled to make people laugh.

It could be a joke or a prank, or it could be the donning of a pair of tight red Speedos, to match the color of his hair, instead of the usual looser-fitting swimming trunks as he worked as a lifeguard at the community pool in his hometown of American Canyon. "He wanted that shock value," recalled Erik Monroe, a close friend. "He did a good job of putting smiles on people's faces. He would do whatever it took."

But West couldn't have been more serious about the Marine Corps. He decided to join up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- when he was just 16 -- and his resolve only strengthened with the invasion of Iraq.

West's belief in his choice was so firm that he often quoted a line from the Vietnam War movie "Full Metal Jacket," uttered by a drill sergeant to recruits: "Marines die, that's what we're here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means you live forever."

"He definitely believed it," recalled another friend, Eric Superticioso, who repeated the words at West's memorial service. "He was very proud to fight for his country. He went after it and he did it. He died for something he believed in himself.

"Knowing it was something he wanted to do," Superticioso said, "gave me a little bit of comfort."

Lance Cpl. West earned an official commendation in October 2004 for protecting fellow Marines by detecting a bomb planted by insurgents. His commanding officer wrote of his "exceptional performance."

A month later, on Nov. 19, the rifleman was killed by enemy fire in Fallujah. He was 19.

Ellie