Iraq War: Four years of battle abroad and at home

At first, it went swimmingly, like Afghanistan, a smooth projection of America’s technological power. But for many of our servicemen and servicewomen, Iraq has become a place for trials, anguish and what is politely called the “ultimate sacrifice.” For the first time since World War II, the U.S. has sent large numbers of National Guard and the reserves into combat.

To mark the anniversary, Examiner reporters talked to dozens of these warriors in Maryland, Virginia and Washington. These are some of their stories.

‘You find yourself looking up and the whole world has gone crazy’

Dick Linn has been to seven military funerals since he buried his son Karl in Culpeper National Cemetery two years ago.

He attends to show solidarity with the families, to let parents know they’re not alone and, in a small way, to reconnect to the greater world around him.

When Dick Linn was younger, he protested the Vietnam War and joined the Peace Corps. Now he wonders whether he could have been a more responsible citizen, instead of just making a living and providing for his family.

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“You try to do the right thing, you put your nose to the grindstone,” Dick Linn said, “and then suddenly you find yourself looking up and the whole world has gone crazy.”

Karl Linn signed up as a Marine reservist after the attacks of Sept. 11. He was small, weighing only 125 pounds. Karl fulfilled his military duties from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he had earned a full scholarship in mechanical engineering for his success in robot-building competitions.

By the time Karl was shipped to Iraq, the military had built him up to 135 pounds.

Two months later, his Lynchburg-based unit was searching at night for insurgents in a small village on the banks of the Euphrates River in western Iraq when they were bombarded by rocket-launched grenades and gunfire. Linn, 20, was one of four Marines who died in the firefight.

Linn is buried next to his grandfather, who served in the U.S. Navy in the Atlantic during World War II.

Dick Linn said he’s gone through cascading emotions: shock, anger, disbelief and doubt.

In the beginning, Dick Linn sometimes believed that Karl was still alive, that his death was really a cover story for a secret mission.

“Your mind plays tricks on you,” he said. “Like you’re in a worm-hole in space. You feel lost.”

Dick Linn has joined the Patriot Guard Riders and stays in touch with soldiers and parents on the Internet. The former Vietnam War protester planned to stage a counterprotest against Iraq War demonstrators in D.C. over the weekend. Even if you don’t agree about the reasons the country went to war, he said, America has a responsibility to see the mission through.

“I’m not for war,” he said. “But you can’t back out. You have to finish what you started.”

– Scott McCabe

‘We wanted to get into the fight’

School couldn’t hold John Lora’s interest after he returned from Iraq.

Lora, 23, dodged mortar fire, lost a former roommate in an ambush and was at the Mosul base when a suicide bomber walked into the mess tent and killed 22 people.

Lora was taking a shower when the bomb exploded. In the chaos, smoke poured from the chow hall and people ran in all directions. Lora put on his body armor and checked in with his platoon.

“We wanted to get into the fight,” he said. “You can’t have 1,000 soldiers on a base just looking at each other.”

Although the base cut off outside communication to prevent classified information from getting out, an embedded reporter leaked photos of bodies from Lora’s unit, the 276th Engineering Company out of West Point, Va.

Families back home desperately tried to reach the soldiers in Mosul.

“All of Virginia was in a panic,” Lora said.

Another time, when insurgents had burned the Mosul police stations and chased the Iraqi army out of the city, Lora and his unit were called to guard one of the bridges on the Tigris.

U.S. troops had inadvertently forced the enemy to the bridge, where Lora and his engineering unit were exposed and without the firepower to get into a long shootout. They were easy targets for the insurgents who fired from the rooftops above.

The soldiers hunkered behind guardrails, poles and vehicles. For eight hours, Lora endured waves of rockets, grenades and bullets.

“That was kind of rough,” Lora said.

Back in Virginia, life seemed odd at first. Loud noises made him jump. Classes at Radford University that he once enjoyed “seemed pointless, silly.”

“It felt like I was just sitting around,” Lora said. “It seemed trivial. I guess I missed the excitement.”

He left school and got married last year. Last week, he graduated from the police academy and is now an officer in Portsmouth.

Lora was glad he had the opportunity to go to Iraq.

“I felt like we were fighting a war and rebuilding a country that was being ravaged by terrorists,” he said.

– Scott McCabe

Apache down, black smoke rising over Baghdad

Two Black Hawk helicopters, one carrying a British general, were thundering over Baghdad when an urgent voice crackled loudly over the radio.

“Apache down. Apache down. Two pilots on board.”

The pilots from the Maryland National Guard had logged hundreds of combat hours transporting the Iraq war’s VIPs — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and country singer Toby Keith — but the two passengers on the ground were perhaps their most important.

“Apache down. Immediate air and ground support needed.”

The Apache Longbow had been shot down in Yusufiyah, an al-Qaida-infested area known as the Triangle of Death, the same place where insurgents had taken out another Apache and posted a video of gun-wielding terrorists dragging the pilot’s burning body from the flaming wreckage. A month earlier, insurgents had ambushed two U.S. Army soldiers and mutilated their bodies.

On the horizon, about 15 miles away, Army Chief Warrant Officer Fran McDonough, of Silver Spring, could see the black smoke rising.

“Do what you have to do,” said the British general.

The Black Hawks turned and swooped toward the smoke, hugging the ground to avoid gunfire.

Mobs were running toward the crash, while others fled, afraid of the firepower on the way.

The Apache was upside down and on fire, the pilots nowhere to be seen. The crowds were closing in.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Mickey Fedor, of Damascus, ordered the helicopter carrying the general to circle above at about 200 feet. He was going to take his Black Hawk down into the wreckage.

Fedor warned his gunners that the soldiers likely died in the crash.

“Find them and drag them in,” he said.

Sgt. Tracy Kelly jumped out and approached the blazing wreck.

Out of nowhere, two Apache pilots popped up, covered in mud from the canal where they hid. They climbed in, shaken but uninjured, and the Black Hawks peeled away.

“Everyone’s got a reason for being somewhere,” McDonough said. “That was ours.”

– Scott McCabe

Walking tall, but more slowly

Michael Walcott stood proudly when he joined the Army Reserve in 2001. Now, standing hurts.

Walcott injured his left leg and his back in September 2004 when he came under mortar fire from insurgents. Walcott ducked for cover and his leg jammed violently in a hole.

Doctors told him that he had four swollen discs in his spine and the injury made his left leg longer than his right.

Walcott, 35, of Richmond, avoids walking more than two blocks at a time; doing anything else causes him pain.

Walcott has been battling the Veterans Administration for increased financial support since 2005.

The Department of Veterans Affairs pays for his treatment, but Walcott says it refuses to recognize how those injuries limit his ability to work. Before his service, Walcott supported his wife and their two children as a corrections officer. Now he says he is unable to work and survives off his wife’s nursing income and between $200 to $300 a month from the VA.

Walcott’s two sons are 5 and 7 and they ask him to play with them all the time, but his injuries make it hard to keep up, he says.

“[The kids] want to go outside and play football but I know I can’t because I would be exhausted and in pain.” Walcott said. “You feel like less of a father in a way.”

Walcott said he’s still proud to have been a soldier.

“With what I have to deal with, yeah, it’s tough,” Walcott said, “but I wouldn’t take it back.”

– Alan McCombs

Thinking of duty and family

A family history of military service, and two decades as a soldier himself, doesn’t make the separation from family any easier for Russell Bennett.

Bennett, 45, a senior master sergeant in the D.C. Air National Guard, is in Iraq building and securing bases. He was deployed in October and assigned with the 557th Expeditionary Red Horse Squadron, which has its headquarters at Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad.

“I think of my wife and son all the time. Thinking of them makes it easier to do the job here,” Bennett said in an e-mail. “Thinking of them makes you more watchful of your surroundings because you want to get back to your family and friends.”

For 12 years, Bennett has been on active duty with the Air National Guard, where he works fulltime as a drug program supervisor.

Bennett comes from a military family. His father, Robert “R.C.” Bennett, of Clinton, served in the Korean War; two uncles served in World War II.

Bennett’s family understands his need to serve.

“Let’s cut through all the trash,” said R.C. Bennett, 70. “The man is a patriot and believes in what our country is doing.” – Alan McCombs

Nearer, my God, to Thee

David Martinez, who ran away from home at 16, said he joined the Army Reserve in 2002 four years later to “stay out of trouble.”

But he found a different kind of trouble in Iraq: gunfire, mortar attacks and roadside bombs.

“I had no clue we were going to make it back,” Martinez said. “Soldiers were dying everywhere and all around.”

When he and the 302nd Transportation Company, based in Fort Eustis, Va., were activated in December 2003, 400 soldiers had died in Iraq. By the time Martinez came home, 1,700 had died.

After a fellow reservist died in an attack, Martinez decided to commit his life to God. He attended religious services and was baptized.

“I was so far away from the church and I didn’t even know how to spell Jesus,” Martinez said. “But when I went out there, it was a blessing and a great testimony.”

But a February 2005 homecoming tested his faith. He saw crumbling marriages and romantic breakups and struggled to re-establish his family relationships. Also, Martinez was diagnosed with manic depression and anxiety.

Martinez said he’s slowly reclaimed his life from war. He talked to his mother for the first time in 20 years and changed his last name to hers. He now works in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, attends community college and hopes to teach religious studies.

– Natalie McGill