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In Memoriam
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LCpl.
Marty Mortenson
(reprinted from
CantonRep.com, July 6, 2005)
'I'm Not Going to Come Home': One Marine's
3rd Iraq Tour
By Sylvia Moreno The Washington Post
Lance Cpl. Marty Mortenson, of Flagstaff, Ariz.,
was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on April 20; it was his third tour in Iraq. Before
he left on the tour, he told a friend: "It's like three strikes, you're out. I have a
feeling I'm not going to come home." Courtesy Fallen Coalition.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.--Shaded by a towering blue spruce
in Wheeler Park stands a granite monument that honors this city's men and women who have
died in combat from the Spanish-American War to, as the memorial reads, ``Iraqi Freedom.''
The name of Lance Cpl. Marty G. Mortenson was
etched into the stone on the eve of Armed Forces Day in May. A month earlier, on April 20,
Mortenson had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
Just a few months before he died, Mortenson sent
his mother an e-mail: ``I am really sorry about (forgetting) your birthday ... I am so
streesed out that it is really bring(ing) me down. ... I have had so much on my mind ...
going off to war 4 the 3rd time isn't easy.''
Mortenson was on his third tour--his third pump,
in Marine jargon --in Iraq. He had spent his 20th, 21st and 22nd birthdays in Iraq. Before
he left on his last tour, he told a friend: ``It's like three strikes, you're out. I have
a feeling I'm not going to come home.''
A generation ago in the Vietnam War, grunts had to
survive 13 months and then knew they were going home for good. But the nature of an
all-volunteer military has changed deployments and expectations for America's troops.
With the military's numbers at their lowest level
in modern history, no draft to bring in new recruits and no end in sight to the U.S.
deployment in Iraq, more American troops are likely to be going on multiple tours. The
Army has sent multiple units to Iraq for second tours. The Marines, which deploy units for
shorter stints, are embarking on third tours. Three infantry battalions and three rotary
wing squadrons of Marines are on their third pump in Iraq.
At least 13 troops on their third tours, most of
them Marines, have been killed.
``We're not expanding numbers, and we're not
reducing our commitments around the world,'' said University of North Carolina history
professor Richard Kohn, a former chief of Air Force history at the Pentagon. ``We're
taking it out of the hide, as they say in the military.''
``If they have to go back a second or third time,
particularly a third time, is it really fair?'' he said. ``I would call that an
extraordinary burden.''
Approximately 17,000 of the nation's 191,000
Marines are stationed in Iraq. ``We certainly understand the individual sacrifice to go
over three times, but seven-month rotations ensure the right mix of people go over, and it
keeps the deployment cycle down to a manageable rate,'' said Maj. Jason Johnston, a Marine
Corps spokesman. ``As time goes on, we will see more and more of this.''
For Mortenson and the members of the 1st
(infantry) Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, Calif.,
the orders for Iraq came in January 2003, in March 2004 and in February of this year.
``I remember before we went in, nobody's ever been
in combat and we didn't know exactly what to expect. But we were all motivated that we
could do it. We were really eager to go,'' said Lance Cpl. Eric Young, 22. Like Mortenson,
he was a squad automatic weapon (SAW) gunner in Alpha Company.
A year later, the second tour was greeted with a
certain amount of confidence, he said. ``We had an idea of what to expect this time: the
heat, everything bad about Iraq.''
But learning about a third tour was tough.
``Those of us who had gone through (the first and
second deployments) were pretty convinced we weren't going to go back,'' said Young, whose
enlistment ends in August. ``Honestly, I was kind of pissed off about going back.''
Cpl. Matt Buchanan, 22, a machine-gun squad leader
in Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, agreed. He was shot in the arm
during his third tour this spring and was sent back early to wait out his September
separation from the service.
`I thought, you have got to be kidding me. I could
not believe they were doing that,'' Buchanan said. ``I can accept that because it comes
with the job. But the worst part was telling my family.''
Mortenson enlisted in May 2002 and was in the
first large U.S. ground force to go into Iraq on the first night of the war in March 2003.
The battalion secured a facility in the Rumaila oil fields along the Iraq-Kuwait border
and pushed more than 300 miles north to Baghdad. Before returning stateside in August,
they had engaged in fierce fighting and had taken over a mosque where Saddam Hussein had
been sighted.
By fall 2003, Mortenson knew his battalion was
headed overseas again, this time to Okinawa by mid-December and perhaps on to Iraq. The
training cycle in Okinawa, however, was cut short.
``We were discouraged that he was going to miss
another Christmas, and then he was only in Okinawa a month and he called and said,
'They're moving up Iraq,' '' said Mortenson's mother, Ruth.
By March 2004, Mortenson and Alpha Company were in
Fallujah. They commandeered an old potato chip factory they nicknamed FOB (Forward
Operating Base) Wounded Knee and ran security patrols out of it.
Duing that first battle for Fallujah in April
2004, Mortenson bailed out his entire platoon. A SAW gunner, Mortenson sprinted more than
300 feet under intense enemy fire to set up his machine gun to provide cover fire for his
unit. He earned the nickname ``Mad Dog'' and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps
Commendation Medal for Valor in Combat.
Mortenson was back at Camp Pendleton in late
summer 2004. He told a National Public Radio reporter who was interviewing Marines upon
returning from their second tour: ``I've been there twice, and no, I don't want to go
back.''
His mother recalled what he told her: ``I've had
it.''
But by Christmas, Alpha Company knew it was headed
back to Iraq. ``You're thinking, we've had two pretty rough times. Is he going to have to
go back?'' Ruth Mortenson recalled. ``And he said yes.''
Mortenson spent his pre-deployment time off at
home in January, snowboarding the mountains outside Flagstaff in a T-shirt. He wanted to
soak up all the cold he could before going back to Iraq, his family said. He baby-sat his
nephews and built them forts in their living room. He took his ``dream girl,'' a former
classmate he knew would never agree to a real date with him, to lunch.
By March, Mortenson and the rest of his unit were
in Ramadi. He asked his parents to send phone cards and batteries, and he tried to calm
their fears. He wrote on March 27: ``the ieds or ... road side bombs, they happen all the
time and arent very effective, the enemey only uses them because they can detonate them
from far away from the safety of us ... i am fine dont worry.''
In Flagstaff, the Mortensons immersed themselves
in their work and in their prayer and Bible study groups. ``We went on with our lives,
trusting we would hear from him eventually and he would be all right,'' his mother said.
In April, Mortenson began writing home about life
after the Marines, and by the middle of the month he knew his third tour was to end in
mid-October. He wrote that he was interested in joining the National Guard, working as a
firefighter or attending community college to learn auto body work. ``i am trying to put
out ideas because on may 19th I only have a year left. that only leaves me with 6-7 months
when I get back ... not a lot of time,'' Mortenson wrote on April 18.
Early on the afternoon of April 20, Mortenson and
Cpl. Kelly Cannan, another third-timer in Iraq, were on their way to catch reported
terrorists at a cafe in Ramadi when a roadside bomb went off beside their Humvee. Cannan
was killed instantly. Mortenson, with a massive head wound, died hours later at a military
medical facility in Baghdad.
In Arizona, two Marines arrived early on the
evening of April 20 at the Mortensons' home. They asked for Ruth, the beneficiary listed
on her son's $250,000 military life insurance policy.
Five hundred mourners packed Flagstaff Christian
Fellowship for Mortenson's funeral on April 27. The family's scrapbook is six inches
thick, with hundreds of sympathy cards and e-mails from friends and public officials such
as Flagstaff's mayor and City Council members, President Bush and California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
Ruth Mortenson recalled those days before
Christmas when she first heard that her son might have to go back a third time and her
worries were renewed. ``If they go back, can they put him someplace easy?'' she remembered
thinking. ``But Marines don't go to easy places.''