In his first deployment he was part of the initial invasion, moving from town to town. Later in his 2nd deployment he was stationed in Fallujah. This is where he got his first confirmed and possibly most controversial kill. About 50 yards away he saw a woman and a kid walking towards his platoon. Then he saw her pull a pin to a grenade and decided to pull the trigger. He was later quoted saying, "the woman was already dead. I was just making sure she didn't take any Marines with her”. In his account he pulled the trigger twice. He then went to Ramadi in his third deployment; the city had changed since his first time he had visited during the initial invasion. His fourth and final deployment had been in Sadr where one of his comrades was killed and another was blinded. This is where he got his longest confirmed kill. A terrorist was atop a building holding an RPG about to attack a convoy. Needless to say he dropped him. He went home to start a PTSD recovery center. One day while out on a shooting range he was murdered by Eddie Ray Routh. A funeral was held in the Cowboys Stadium in…
He made it through in processing with his new unit and just disappeared. SGT Bush thought it would be okay to just hang out in his barracks room for six months. There was a lot going on in the unit at the time, and no one noticed until he came up on the list for CQ NCO. They went to his barracks room and knocked on his door, and Bush was just watching television during the duty day. Then they chaptered him. They also took his rank and pay before he was kicked…
A P E T H E PATH A few months after he arrived in Vietnam, a Claymore land mine detonated near him, and he was struck in his right hand, forearm, and foot. He was taken to a hospital in Camron Bay for recovery. That was where he first…
E. the lead is heavier than the iron, and therefore there would be more atoms.…
The Gunny had wanted to be a Marine since he was an 8 year old little boy in Memphis. He learned to stalk and hunt out of the need to put meat on the table for his mom and grandmother. At 17 he joined the Corps and went to boot camp in the spring of 1959. After 13 weeks in San…
"Hurry up! We gotta go. We are to bypass 3rd ID in Baghdad and take the northern part of Iraq."…
In August of 1968 O’Brien was sent to Vietnam and served in the U.S. Army Fifth Battalion, 46th Infantry. O’Brien was sent to “Pinkville” where just a year earlier Lieutenant William Calley and his squad “Charlie Company” slaughtered, raped, and abused 500 innocent Vietnamese citizens. When O’Brien got there his squad and him “all wondered why the place was so hostile.”() After moving up ranks to Sergeant; O’Brien in his thirtieth month was struck by grenade shrapnel and sent home with a Purple Heart.…
His early life was mainly just farming and hunting he had explosive mood swings and a bad temper. He joined the service in 1942 after normal boot camp he went to advanced rifle training.His first combat was in casablanca in Africa he didn't do much action wise. During an invasion in Italy he was scouting a killed two Italian commanders fleeing from the front and this had a major impact on their war efforts after their deaths. He had gotten…
His autobiography oddly starts off not in the humble beginnings of a poor sharecropper from Hunt County, Texas. Rather it starts where he was most suited, on the battlefield. Having spent months in Third Infantry Division in N. Africa (Casablanca, Morocco) training for his big break into the war, he finally got it in the form of orders for his Division to participate in the assault on Sicily on July 10, 1943 and eventually into Italy to drive German forces further to the rear. He expressed every emotion of excitement that a young proud warrior would express entering into battle, but soon these emotions would be replaced with coldness and fear. Nevertheless he rose above every emotion to rise to every occasion and do what was needed. During his assault on Sicily and the main Italian peninsula he made his first kill. As two Italian officers attempted to escape on horseback he let off two deadly shots, killing both of them. Having carved great marksmanship skills hunting as a young child and building great work ethic from picking cotton, plowing, and garage work, he had been molded for this specific purpose. Throughout the beginning of this book he has several flashbacks alluding to the foundation of his…
The violence found and experienced in war is an entity so vigorously potent and robust that it can easily consume and ruin even the most capable human beings, let alone children who are still developing their own minds. In Ishmael Beah’s novel A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, the retrospection of a boy’s attempt to survive and flee from a war in Sierra Leone expresses the consequences of extreme violence and war that influence the physical, psychological and social characteristics of a person. Certainly, Ishmael’s many violent experiences teach a lot about the intended consequences or repercussions of acts of violence. In the novel, the transformation of Ishmael from an innocent boy to a mindless killing machine due to exposure to…
He really wanted to get away from the guns, drugs and filth, so he decided to join the marines. Ultimately, it was not what he expected, and before he knew what was happening, he was driving a Humvee through Iraq in the middle of the Gulf War.…
O’Brien tells his story when he was in the Vietnam War though books that he has written. For example in “The Things They Carried” there is a character named Tim. One of the interviews from Library of Congress Tim O’Brien states that “he goes back and forth about Vietnam and also about his first girlfriend.” He was in 4th grade when he was in love and that using his girlfriend as an example that Vietnam was not that easy like losing his girlfriend at nine years old. In the story Bob Kiley was known as Rat. O’ Brien points out that Rat that had a good friend with him in the Vietnam War. They both were good soldiers and when Lemon would volunteer Rat would volunteer as well. He lets people know that his friend and he were goofing around like always. Lemon showed Rat that the war can be fun but also very serious. There will be times to goof around and there will be times to be services during the war. He tells people that when they were goofing around they felt like kids again. Lemon and Rat “were giggling and calling each other motherfucker”. They would go a nature hike in the woods and started messing around. They heard a noise and next thing a bomb killed his friend. Rat had taken his friend back with the other soldiers. Hs friend named was Curt Lemon. He told Sander and the other soldiers what happen to Lemon.…
When you are someone’s support system you take on multiple roles that indirectly deteriorate your self preservation. Being a listener or a shoulder to cry on, requires sacrifices that, in the moment, you do not even recognize as imposing. Voluntarily and willingly being there for someone begins with the unwavering doubt that you and your own problems cannot and will not prevail over your person’s immediate crisis. Depending on the duration of your duty, a somewhat selfish thought of inconvenience is bound to surface. But, that wave of retraction is almost always combatted by a riptide of dedication and loyalty that brings you back to sea, where all you can do is tread. In turn, the suppression of self regarding issues regularly comes with a layer of obligation and a sting of bitterness.…
My Grandfather never complained. No matter how bad it got, he never said anything. When he was young boy, he was thrown into the brutal and treacherous lifestyle that made up a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Treated like a POW, his life was miserable. When he was released from the camp he had to pick up the pieces that was his life. Everything changed. He was just a young man to make his own in the world. He struggled for jobs, was discriminated against, fought in the Korean War, and yet provided for his brothers and sisters with a smile on his face. He eventually started his own automotive repair company becoming successful. My grandfather became a successful man, attaining everything he wanted except one thing. A college degree. His father wouldn’t let him obtain an education. My grandfather promised himself he wouldn’t limit the…
“Hey mom I need a story about one of our family members who have been a great influence to me and our family.”…