Da Goddess

There Are No Second Guesses When You're Dead

Kevin O'Brien is the object of my affection this week.

I even wrote him a love letter (here's an excerpt):

Thank you so much for giving voice to those who wish they could tell that young Marine in Fallujah that they stand behind him.

.....

We owe our military the support, confidence, and respect they deserve for working under the most difficult of circumstances. We shouldn't give them any reason to second guess their actions or their defense of our freedoms.

What the heck am I talking about and why the love letter? Because of this.

For those of you who can't or won't click to news links....see below.

Thanks to Mostly Cajun for this one.

The same choice, another war
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Kevin O'Brien
Plain Dealer Columnist

As you might guess, the column I wrote two weeks ago -- about the Marine in Fallujah who was videotaped shooting a wounded Iraqi that he believed was playing dead -- generated a ton of response.

The vast majority of those who wrote and called were supportive of the Marine. They said that if they'd been faced with the same situation, they probably would have done just what the Marine did.

A little affirmation is always nice to hear, but one call meant much more than the rest.

It came from a man who had been a Marine in World War II. He said he was going to tell me a story that he'd never told anyone else -- not even his kids. He told me his name, but I didn't write it down. In fact, I didn't take any notes during our conversation, but I was so deeply affected by it that I wrote down everything I could remember moments later.

What he shared with me were the sort of things a man might prefer to forget, but can't.

He was a member of the 4th Marine Raider Battalion in 1943, during the invasion of New Georgia Island in the Solomons. The long, bloody fight for Guadalcanal was over, but Japanese air power remained a threat throughout the region. Gen. Douglas MacArthur ordered the Japanese airfield at New Georgia's Munda Point seized.

The 4th Marine Raiders actually landed twice on New Georgia, on two different dates with two different assignments. My caller's story began with one of those landings.

After the infantry had secured the beach and moved inland, he came ashore in the evening with a 12-man follow-on unit. They were unloading crates of hand grenades from a landing craft on a beach lit tered with the bodies of Japanese defenders.

As they worked in the pitch-black night, the Ma rines were startled by a sud den moaning. And a second later, when one of the Japa nese soldiers they had been stepping over for an hour or two began to stand up, it scared the hell out of them.

My caller said his finger found the trigger before he even had time to think. He shot the moaner. Afterward, he wondered if he'd killed a man who was no threat. Chances are the soldier wasn't about to take on a dozen Marines by himself. Chances are he was just delirious.

Still, my caller said that one thing he never wondered about was whether he had done the right thing. He was protecting himself and his fellow Marines, and would have done the same thing if faced again with a similar situation.

Nothing like that ever happened to him again, though, because his war ended only a few days later.

During an attack on a Japanese strong point as his unit fought its way inland, he and another Marine volunteered to try to bring in some wounded men who were in an exposed spot under enemy fire. The two left everything behind -- guns, canteens, grenades, everything. They knew they'd have to move fast and carry the wounded men back, so they didn't want to take along any more weight than necessary.

Before they could get to the wounded men, they were pinned down by machine gun fire. My caller had started to try to crawl back to his squad when a Japanese mortar round landed near him, mangling his leg.

Now another Marine was stranded in no-man's land.

He was stuck out in the open for three days while the fighting raged, during which time his leg became infected and gangrene developed. When the Japanese finally were pushed back and his comrades got to him, the leg was too far gone to save.

He was evacuated, came home and picked up his life where he'd left off, "raised a beautiful family," and said he doesn't regret a day of his life.

He said he has made it a practice to keep his wartime experiences to himself, but that story about the Marine in Fallujah got to him. He says the kid did the right thing under the circumstances, and I can think of no better authority to pass judgment. After all, he was literally in that Marine's boots 61 years ago.

He also says that if that kid in Fallujah, and all of his buddies, can do their job without being made to second-guess themselves, they'll have a better chance to come home and resume their lives, too -- marked by the experience, no doubt, but alive to ponder it. He hopes they will, because every time one of our guys gets killed over there, it just tears him up inside.

I told him I was honored to be the only person he'd ever told about that night on the beach on New Georgia. And I thanked him for serving our country. It was humbling to have a hero call to thank me just for writing something. Next to his contribution -- and the contribution of that Marine in Fallujah -- my words are nothing.

Posted by DaGoddess at December 2, 2004 10:17 PM