When the War Comes Home

For a Marine Reserve Company That Saw Death in Iraq, Returning to Life in Ohio Is an Unexpected Battle
by Peter Slevin

COLUMBUS, Ohio–Alone and in clusters, collars up to block the rain, thousands of people lined the streets on a gray October day in 2005 to welcome their warriors home. For 13 miles, they rose to wave, a few to salute, as the buses rolled slowly past. More than one tough Marine, homeward bound after a brutal tour in Iraq, shed a tear.

At McDonald’s, customers thanked them. At nightclubs, people bought them drinks. Someone invited a group to the Super Bowl. A film crew produced a powerful documentary titled “Combat Diary.” The mayor of Columbus, father of a Lima Marine, called them “true heroes.”

The fact is, no one expected Lima Company to see so much combat, to become so decorated or so wounded, and certainly not to be adopted so strongly by the city. Lima was a reserve unit, an amalgam of students and workers, almost all from Ohio, who mustered every month to train for duty that might never come.

When it came, the citizen-soldiers found themselves posted at a Soviet-built dam on the Euphrates River in western Anbar province, home to some of the most violently contested territory in Iraq…

Between Feb. 28 and Sept. 30, 2005, the company launched patrols and fought joint operations amid 1,700 square miles of mostly Sunni areas from Hit and Haditha to the Syrian border, targeting anti-American insurgents and their supporters. In addition to the 23 dead, 31 Lima Marines were wounded, 17 of them badly enough to be sent home.

After the headlines and the public worrying, many well-meaning Columbus residents honored Lima’s men and felt they knew them. The Marines were grateful but dubious, especially of the questions: “What was it like over there? How many Iraqis did you kill?”

A Dissatisfied Warrior


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/29/AR2006102900785.html