When Pat Walsh, a Bayonne resident, enlisted in the Marine Corps, he didn’t know he was going to war. But when he reported to boot camp on Sept. 11, 2001 and the commander told him about the attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., Walsh knew he would likely see action.
What he did not know was that during his tour of duty he would meet two men who would help make war bearable for him, two men who would become his best friends – each living through the same sometimes terrifying moments.
Although Walsh and his buddy, Jason Wheeler, returned to the United States just prior to the massive U.S.-led invasion of Fallujah in September, both men recalled last week the constant grind of combat, the close encounters, and the buddy – Mark Engel – who had not survived.
In the battalion
Walsh and Wheeler are members of the Marines’ 2nd Light Armor Reconnaissance Battalion, a combat unit with frequent if not constant contact with insurgents.
“We were always on call,” said Wheeler, a Boston native with a sharp sense of humor and a tendency to speak his mind on nearly any subject. He met Walsh at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where their unit is based while in the United States. Walsh had served in a previous combat zone in Liberia in 2003, though Walsh said he had sat on board a ship for most of the time. The ships had been part of a peace keeping effort and sat off the coast of Liberia for a time in order to support a peaceful resolution to a change of power there.
After a brief stay back in the United States, Walsh was ordered abroad and set out for Iraq on Feb. 27, 2004, part of a combat operation that put them at the heart of the conflict in and around the city of Fallujah.
Their duties in Iraq differed significantly from many of the armed forces that had preceded them.
They had no rebuilding assignment. They were not there to train local police or rebuild power stations. Instead, they were there to protect the soldiers on the ground, the convoys that carried necessary supplies and disarmed bombs set by the nearly always invisible enemy.
“We did a little of everything,” Wheeler said, though both he and Walsh remembered vividly the intensity of urban combat which made up their daily routine.
The early efforts by the United States military were designed to “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. While earlier military efforts included a combat role, Walsh and Wheeler’s function was to rebuild the civil infrastructure that would allow the country to eventually operate again in a non-war mode.
Walsh said the tenor of the war changed just after they arrived in Iraq when the enemy kidnapped and killed four civilian contractors, then hung the bodies on the side of a bridge for the world to see.
“After that, the war changed focus,” Walsh said.
He, Wheeler and Engel were part of the first invasion into Fallujah in April, although their unit was nearly constantly engaging the enemy before and after that effort in attempts to protect other units or probe the enemy’s defense of the city.
Wheeler remembered the April attack. “We made it a third of the way into the city before we were ordered back,” he said.
Combat was a routine
Their duties, for the most part, required them to be ready for immediate call. When not on patrol, they could be called to action whenever some event required them. One such case was an attack on a convoy, which their unit rescued from attack twice in one day. This required Wheeler, Walsh and Engel, along with about nine others, to defend themselves from more than 60 insurgents.
They had several close calls, such as the time Walsh and Wheeler nearly drowned when their vehicle overturned into a pond.
“The driver took the turn too tight,” Wheeler recalled, as Walsh said vehicles drove without lights, relying on night vision goggles that could see the heat of an enemy, but not always an obstacle in the road.
Middle of the night
Often they were called up in the middle of the night.
“If we got a call, we had to be ready to get out there quick,” Wheeler said.
The unit might get five minutes notice before being plunged into the middle of a combat situation.
“A lot of times we had to sleep with our clothing on,” Walsh recalled. “We’d jump up and head out.”
The unit’s home base was the rubble of an old palace that had been plowed up to provide protection for the soldiers inside. Mortar attacks came by day or night as insurgent snuck up as close as possible to lob explosives into the base.
Roadside bomb sweeps scared the soldiers because of the ever-evolving tactics that the enemy employed. Early on, detecting and detonating booby traps was relatively simple, but as the war went on, both sides adapted and the roadside car bombs and other booby traps became more sophisticated and more dangerous.
Both men expressed their satisfaction at raids in which they managed to catch these bomb-builders.
Patrols could last from three days to a week, and vigilance became more and more necessary. Farmers tended to be the least hostile, living their lives as they always had in their struggle to make a living from the earth. City dwellers, however, tended to dislike Americans.
Combat situations varied, with some weeks more intense than others, although both men recalled one week in which they suffered through four firefights. Both men lost weight due to the heat, lack of hunger and lugging around as much as 55 pounds in gear. Both men recalled close calls in which people near them died.
Fans of different baseball teams
Although Wheeler and Walsh had come to be close friends during their tour of duty, they disagree on one important item: baseball.
Wheeler has been a die-hard fan of the Boston Red Sox and Walsh, equally opinionated in favor of the New York Yankees.
Engel, a native of Colorado, never said which team he favored, but constantly teased Wheeler and Walsh over their sports war inside their quarters, where each of them had posted the logo of their favorite team on the wall above his bunk.
In a year that saw a battle between those two teams, the two men had a lot to talk about, following the games via the Internet or when lines were down, using statistics family members had sent them from home.
Mail from home served as continuing psychological support, and in this Walsh, Wheeler and Engel were lucky. Family members in Bayonne and Basking Ridge made certain that their unit received regular packages of small personal items that made life more bearable. Nancy Walsh wanted to do something for Pat Walsh an
d organized the effort in Basking Ridge. Later, a local Bayonne effort was organized. Wheeler and Walsh said they received so much that they became popular as they shared their wealth with other soldiers.
Engel always made them laugh
Most soldiers lived their lives day by day, hoping to get through each day. While all set small goals about surviving until they got home, Engel routinely spoke about living to see his 22nd birthday.
“This is not unusual,” Walsh said. “We all talked like that at times.”
Engle, however, didn’t make it – his vehicle hit a land mine in early July and he died of wounds a few days short of his 22nd birthday.
Engel had talked about going back to college when he finished with service. Wheeler and Walsh recalled Engel’s gift for gab and how Engel had always managed to make them laugh, even during some very tense moments.
Both men will be returning to civilian life shortly, have made plans to seek careers, but both believe they are largely the same people they were before they went to war.
“I guess I’ve come to appreciate those small things I used to take for granted before,” Walsh said.