The first comes from the Boston Globe which took a look at a Marine Reserve infantry battalion as its members readjusted to civilian life. The unit, First Battalion/25th Marine Regiment, served a seven-month deployment in and around Fallujah in 2006 (disclaimer: my own former unit belonged to the same regiment). The article is profound in the way it contrasts moments in Iraq with the repercussions at home. Additionally, we are given vivid narrative descriptions of the Marines’ experiences.
For the second time that day, an explosion of shrapnel tore up through the belly of a Weapons Company Humvee. Murray was thrown more than 50 feet from the vehicle, “like a Kung Fu fighter flying around on fire,” as he later put it. Goldman was popped from the turret like a champagne cork. Burke remained trapped in the passenger side of the crippled Humvee as it careened to a stop. He was pulled out just before it burst into flames.
Murray remembers trying to crawl to the curb for protection as insurgents opened fire. Sergeant Scott Parish of Andover, Mass., ran out and covered Murray, returning fire. Humvees circled like a wagon train to protect the wounded.
Back at Camp Baharia, Wills was lying on his bunk, writing in a journal about the devastating loss earlier in the day of his friend Valdepeñas.
“Moments ago,” he wrote, “we learned Whiskey 3 was hit. My little buddy Val is gone. Hill is in critical. I can’t believe this.”
Then Wills heard an explosion outside the wire. A desperate voice came over the radio, calling in “mass casualties.”
Later we learn of one Marines’ reaction to this violent episode. He was a member of the unit already stateside after being wounded earlier in the deployment.
Stubbs heard the squeaking sound of a pen on a white board in the command center. He watched an officer write out the news: “KIA - Shoemacher, Valdepeñas, Walsh. Gravely wounded: Burke, Murray, Hill.”
“I read that and it was like getting punched in the gut,” Stubbs said. “I went outside and coughed up my breakfast. I couldn’t stand up. I was a mess. It’s harder to be far away on a day like that and know there is nothing you can do.”
The second story comes from the Military Times as it follows the 15-month Iraq deployment of an active duty Army infantry unit. A particularly moving passage describes how one soldiers dealt with the deaths of his comrades. Some of the guys channeled their emotions into unlikely jobs. For Sgt. Erik Osterman, that meant cleaning out the humvees and Bradleys that came back to Apache after Americans had died in them.
Osterman, a former bartender and concealed-carry weapons permit instructor with an intense gaze, said he made the decision instinctively.
He would do it so his troops would not have to.
Osterman asked the first sergeant to get him every time a truck needed to be cleaned out, and then he’d send the guys off on errands while he hosed out the blood. The cook supplied him with scrubbies and bleach.
He would do it in an attempt to erase any reminder of death when his troops went back outside the wire in the same vehicles.
“They’re not going to roll like that,” Osterman said. “That would be all they see.”
On a side note, the above article is part of a decent multimedia presentation complementing the story which is the first of four parts.
