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I Remember
And I’ll never forget. The men of 3d Battalion, 25th Marines whose lives were taken in the War on Terror in 2005.
Major Ricardo Crocker
SSgt Joseph Goodrich
SSgt Anthony Goodwin
SSgt Kendall Ivy
Sgt Aaron Cepeda
Sgt David Coullard
Sgt James Graham III
Sgt Bradley Harper
Sgt Justin Hoffman
Sgt Michael Marzano
Sgt Nathaniel Rock
Sgt David Wimberg
HM2 Jeffrey Wiener
Cpl Jeffrey Boskovitch
Cpl Dustin Derga
Cpl David Kreuter
Cpl Michael Lindemuth
Cpl Bryan Richardson
Cpl Brad Squires
Cpl David Stewart
Cpl Joseph Tremblay
Cpl Andre Williams
HM3 Travis Youngblood
LCpl Timothy Bell Jr.
LCpl Eric Bernholtz
LCpl Dustin Birch
LCpl Nicholas Bloem
LCpl Roger Castleberry Jr.
LCpl Daniel Chavez
LCpl Michael Cifuentes
LCpl Wesley Davids
LCpl Daniel Deyarmin Jr.
LCpl Christopher Dyer
LCpl Nicholas Erdy
LCpl Grant Fraser
LCpl Lance Graham
LCpl Jonathan Grant
LCpl Jourdan Grez
LCpl Thomas Keeling
LCpl Ryan Kovacicek
LCpl Christopher Lyons
LCpl Brian Montgomery
LCpl Aaron Reed
LCpl Edward Schroeder II
LCpl Devon Seymour
LCpl Kevin Waruinge
LCpl William Wightman
PFC Christopher Dixon
I went to school with a Roger Castleberry. He would have been in his forties by 2005, though.
Semper Fi
Wow! What a reminder – may God bless and rest their souls.
Think I counted 48…so many who gave their lives to fight terror. Glad you made it home, @skyler, and Thanks from a grateful fellow American.
Yes, 48 killed and about 120 or so evacuated for wounds.
That’s quite a list Skyler – the cost is high. Rest in peace Leathernecks.
We were the focus of the enemy’s efforts as we were astride the main route from Syria to Tikrit/Mosul. We were one battalion occupying about 70 miles of the Euphrates river with one company detached to guard Al Asad, and another company detached to most often operate further west with another battalion. When we left we were replaced by one Marine battalion, one army national guard battalion and three high quality Iraqi battalions to cover the same area. It seems peace broke out in the region once they had more people. While we were there, the senior Marine General would visit often and told us there were a lot of army generals in Baghdad who didn’t really understand there was still a shooting war going on. It took a while, but the Al Anbar sheiks got sick of the beheadings and butchery and finally decided to change allegiances.
Unlike Afghanistan, the Iraqi people have a lot of promise. They are educated and have a remnant of a rule of law and civilization. I hope that they are able to take advantage of what these men did and bring peace and prosperity to their people.
There was a time when that was true enough of the Afghanis, too.
There’s a lot of hope yet for Afghanistan too.
Thank you for remembering Major Ricardo Crocker in your post. We were college friends at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
As he was a peer, I knew him more than most on this list. His death had an especially tragic nature because he was attached to us from the Civil Affairs Group. His job was to work with the local leaders, find out what they needed such as schools, water treatment, etc.
We had just entered a city in force to drive out the terrorists who had recently taken over. Our operations officer frequently expressed his frustration with the tactic; he called it “whack-a-mole.” We would enter a city, occupy it for a week or two, then leave again after purging the terrorists and re-establishing support with the local leaders. After a while the terrorists learned to not fight, and go away and come back as soon as we left. Eventually, we stopped whack-a-mole and just stayed put once we entered a city, but that was later. In our whack-a-mole period, we relied heavily on civil affairs group to contact local leaders.
I think the city was Haditha that time. Ray’s job was to assess the damage done so we could repair it immediately. For instance, tanks were often too heavy for the roads and would break water pipes. He would assess that damage and we’d either repair it or preferrably we would hire locals to repair it. He went to the second story of a building to look over a part of the city and a sniper killed him. I doubt they had any idea who he was, he was just an American to the shooter.
For the most part, the people liked us but were more afraid of the terrrorists than they liked us. We might pay them, but the terrorists would kill them or their family, so they often obeyed the terrorists rather than cooperate with us. The Anbar Awakening occurred in large part because of the work that Ray (edit: and others in his group) did in the area. The result of his work lagged the time he did it, but there’s no doubt that his efforts paid off when the sheiks finally decided enough was enough, and to back the US rather than submit to the terrorists’ fear.
Thank you for being their witness – now they live in our hearts!