Marines' homecoming bittersweet
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
KANE'OHE — For 500 Hawai'i Marines, the touchdown of their flights yesterday marked the official end to a 10-month deployment in which they faced intense house-to-house fighting in Fallujah and the loss of 46 Marine brethren.
Photos by Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
But it may take years, perhaps a lifetime, for them to come to terms with the combat experience. A bedsheet banner hung in the hangar that served as a family reunion hall may have summed it up best: "To HELL and Back, Parent Group 1/3."
About 500 Marines who served in Iraq arrived home yesterday to cheers from family and friends at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i. The units saw heavy fighting in Fallujah and helped provide election security.
The Marines from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment and 1st Battalion, 12th Marines yesterday completed the return of the 900 who deployed to Okinawa last July and later fought in Iraq.
Wives waited with "welcome home" banners for husbands whom they weren't sure how the war had affected, parents came from as far as Kentucky and New Jersey, and the Marines themselves got their first taste of Hawai'i and home again.
Capt. Tom Tennant, who lost 26 C Company Marines and a sailor in the Jan. 26 crash of a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter in western Iraq, said returning "doesn't even feel real. It feels like a dream."
For all the eagerness to get back to family and friends, Tennant, 32, said sailing back to Okinawa, the three weeks spent there, and all of it spent together, was a blessing in disguise.
"The best way for us to heal was, I think, to heal as a group together, to get through the initial shock of (the losses) and just process all the incredibly shocking things that we had been through as a group, as a family," he said.
Rosemary Beales of Eatontown, N.J., wore a photo of her son Cpl. Justin Beales, who returned from Iraq yesterday.
Eight 1/3 Marines were killed in a suicide car bombing on Oct. 30, and another 11 were killed in Iraq — most in Fallujah.
Staff Sgt. Ralph Scott, 33, hugged his wife, Ingrid, and didn't let go as he talked about how great it was to be home. The Florida man said the killing of eight Marines in the suicide bombing, and the desire to avenge those deaths, carried the Marines through intense house-to-house fighting in Fallujah in November to wrest control of the city from insurgents.
"It was full-fledged combat, bringing justice and punishment to those who needed it, and I think the outcome showed we did a pretty dang good job of it," Scott said.
A total of 157 Purple Hearts have been approved for 1/3 Marines, Marine Corps Base Hawai'i officials said. A wounded Sgt. Rafael Peralta, 25, grabbed a grenade in Fallujah and held it to his body as it went off to shield fellow Marines. He has been nominated posthumously for the Medal of Honor.
Rick and Holly Henninger flew out from Lexington, Ky., to surprise their son, 21-year-old Lance Cpl. David Henninger.
Roger and Rosemary Beales, from Eatontown, N.J., welcome their son, Cpl. Justin Beales, home from Iraq at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i.
"I had two brothers come back from 'Nam. They were spit on and called baby killers when they came back," said Rick Henninger. "I didn't want David to come back that way. I didn't think it would happen, but I didn't want him to not have somebody here when he came back."
The 1/3 Marine with A Company told his parents he had been in firefights, but didn't tell them the details. He lost a couple of friends in Fallujah, and wants to meet their parents when he gets leave, his father said.
Rick Henninger said his son "seems to be doing all right. He still has his sense of humor," but he added that "you have to be that macho Marine when your buddies are around. We won't see the real David till we have him alone."
Jill Lott, 23, waited for her husband, Cpl. Bud Lott, 24, as a band played and several hundred Marines and families gathered in the hangar. The couple had been high school sweethearts in Georgia, and it was Bud Lott's first deployment to a combat zone.
"Roller coaster" is how she described the deployment. "Terrified at times not knowing what was going on. You hear about a firefight or something that happened, and you try to find out names, and that's so hard to find out.
"Even though I knew someone had been killed, but there was no one at my front door (to inform a spouse of the death), I still felt for the families," she added.
Retired Marine Col. Timothy Conway measures his son, Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Conway, to see if he grew any during his deployment to Iraq. The elder Conway and his wife, Kaye, live in Kane'ohe.
A good friend of her husband, Cpl. Michael R. Cohen, 23, was killed Nov. 22 in or near Fallujah when he was hit by small-arms fire.
Asked if her husband is a changed person, Jill Lott said, "I don't know. I'll find out when he gets here."
Kelly Gleason, who waited for her husband, Sgt. Kevin Gleason, 24, with their 22-month-old son, Ashton, in a stroller, said he had been shot in the buttocks and got hit with shrapnel in the back of the leg in Fallujah.
"I'm going to be more appreciative of him, and I'm sure he's going to be more appreciative of us. I could have easily lost him," Kelly Gleason said.
Gleason added the combat probably has affected him, but she, too, was waiting to see how.
"I can't imagine how it wouldn't," she said. "He'll probably value life a lot more."
The 1/3 Marines, who were the battalion landing team for the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, deployed to Okinawa in July as part of a regular seven-month rotation.
With the loss of eight Marines in a suicide truck bomb attack, the Marines killed in Fallujah, and finally, 27 Hawai'i Marines and a sailor killed in the helicopter crash, it was one calamity after another.
Tennant was at Camp Korean Village near the Syrian border with about 60 Marines from the company. The remaining 60 were scheduled to come in at midnight for Iraq election security duty four days later. One helicopter made it, and the other did not, crashing in a sandstorm.
"When the crash happened, we were devastated, but I got the Marines together," Tennant said. "I told them what had happened, there were no survivors, but it was our mission to make sure we accomplished what we set out to do to support the elections. And the Marines, they really just sucked it up."
The New York man added that "it hurts. I know all the Marines there were on the verge of tears for days."
He also said he's very proud of what his Marines accomplished in Iraq.
"I think we distinguished ourselves with a great degree of individual and unit valor," he said.
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
