Marines turn to battle-tested for advice

ABOARD USS TARAWA — Marine Sgt. Erick Jones has spent the last six months thinking about Iraq.

He knows his job; he’s a mortar section leader.

He knows how to shoot. He knows how to move and communicate day and night, rain or shine. He knows how to operate in the desert, under blazing hot conditions, in blasting clouds of sand and wrapped up in a rubber gas mask and charcoal-lined chemical suit.

He also knows he harbors fears.

“Saddam Hussein can do anything he wants, but don’t gas me,” Jones said. “I wouldn’t want to be gassed and doing the funky chicken. I’d rather be shot.”

Still, he says, that’s combat. Or at least he thinks it is. He’s never been in combat. The only shots he’s had fired at him were blanks in training scenarios. The infantryman with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit is one of many joining the buildup of forces massing in Kuwait for a possible war with Iraq.

War means combat — the experience of life and death. His only true points of reference are those warriors who were in the same position 12 years ago — fighting the same troops to liberate Kuwait.

“We have staff NCOs we can trust,” Jones said. “They give us what they know.”

What they know is this: 12 years ago, they shared the same fears. They faced the same unknowns and they, too, were untested.

“Continuity is difficult to maintain,” explained Marine Col. Thomas D. Waldhauser, 15th MEU’s commander. “The average 18-year-old may have been in the fourth or fifth grade during the Gulf War. He’s got fears and challenges and gear that he’s confident in. When it all comes down to it, it’s who’s on his right and left.”

That’s how Petty Officer 2nd Class Ryan Burns remembers his war. He’s been in the Navy for three years, but served as a Marine artilleryman, assigned to Task Force Ripper, the task force that breached the Iraqi minefields and entered Kuwait City.

“We had one Vietnam veteran in our battalion during the Gulf War,” Burns explained. “That was the extent of our combat experience. We relied on ourselves and our leadership. We put our faith in each other and in our training.”

Burns now hears many of the same questions he once asked. What is it going to be like? How will I react? Will I be scared?

The answer to the questions vary, say veterans. The war facing them this time is different than the one in 1991. Technology has made weaponry more lethal. The possibility of weapons of mass destruction is greater and this time, the Iraqi army has nowhere to run.

“I think it’s a very real possibility,” Marine Sgt. Matthew Maruster, a platoon sergeant with the MEU, said of facing a chemical attack. “He said he’d use it, and we’re going on his turf this time.”

For his part, Maruster is telling his Marines to be mentally prepared, to go over their role in the fight in their minds and rehash it again.

“If you’re prepared for the worst-case scenario, it’ll be easy when everything goes right,” he said. “We’ve been getting our warning orders and it clicks in your head … this isn’t an exercise. We’re going to be doing something for real.”

Despite fears and even doubts, veterans of the Gulf War know the Marines are more prepared than they think. Marine 1st Sgt. Jim Sweet was an infantryman during the war and said the fears were the same then. Even now, he admitted, he still worries.

“That’s human nature. Everybody raises questions,” Sweet said. “You can’t see the round, but it hits. The same with chemicals. You can’t see them. You can’t always smell them. That’s a fear we all have, including myself. I can plug a hole in myself, but I can’t stop chemicals if I breathe them in.”

Sweet doesn’t see himself as a war hero or even as a combat veteran in the same caliber as other wars, although he wears the medals commemorating the liberation of Kuwait and a Combat Action Ribbon. He said the Gulf War didn’t last long enough to leave indelible impressions. His mentors were Vietnam veterans, Marines who fought day in and day out for months and years at a stretch. Ground combat in the Gulf War lasted 100 hours.

Still, he doesn’t shy away from the questions, even though he said they are actually few and far between. The doubts are natural. The questions are reassuring that the Marines are thinking two steps ahead.

“I think it would be bad news if the questions weren’t there,” Sweet said. “If they didn’t have concerns about themselves and thought they were bulletproof … well, those are the ones I’d be concerned about.”