Boston Globe April 06, 2003
They leave lost hopes, but a duty fulfilled
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff and Peter Demarco, Globe Correspondent
The Army was a means to an end for Private First Class Brandon Tobler. As so many of his friends started college, the Oregon native signed up for the reserves, attracted by the promise of money for school in the future. That future ended in a blinding sandstorm in Iraq, when his Humvee slammed into the rear end of another vehicle. At 19, Tobler was among the youngest American soldiers to die in the Iraq War.
At 42, Staff Sergeant Phillip Jordan, most recently of Connecticut, was the oldest of the fatalities. For him, the Marine Corps was a calling that led him to serve in the first Gulf War, in Kosovo, and in Afghanistan. But his years of experience didn't prepare him for the tactics of Fedayeen Saddam cadres who pretended to surrender and then opened fire.
For Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez, a former Guatemalan street kid, the military was a way to gain respect and to show gratitude to the United States. It was also a path to citizenship, which he was awarded after he died trying to secure an oil pump station in the port city of Umm Qasr.
Joined by loyalty and fate, the stories of American war dead from the Iraqi campaign paint a picture that is as varied as America itself. They also offer a snapshot of who fights on the front lines of America's wars and who, thus far, has made the ultimate sacrifice.
Tobler, Jordan, and Gutierrez are three of 71 American military deaths in the Iraq War, including 70 who had been identified by the Pentagon by last night and a Vermont resident identified by his family. Between them, they leave at least 43 children, 25 widows, 3 fiancees, and 3 unborn babies.
''Most of the people who are carrying weapons and exposing themselves to fire are under 30,'' said John Reppert, a retired brigadier general now on the faculty of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. ''Most of them are Southern. Many of them have family members who have served in the armed forces, and almost all of them saw the military as a steppingstone to something else in their lives.''
Many of the deaths so far in Iraq resulted from helicopter crashes, and the list of the dead includes a disproportionate number of older, college-educated, and white soldiers, reflecting the demographics of the flight crews, Reppert said. Also, because many of the Marine units in Iraq are from California, those killed include a higher-than-average number of Latinos.
In addition to those killed, others are missing, captured, or seriously wounded, and their fates and the ultimate effects of combat on their lives are yet unknown. But the stories of those known to have been killed so far helps put a face on the front lines, one that tends to be male, young, and economically disadvantaged. Complete information was not immediately available about service members whose deaths were reported late yesterday.
Although 16 percent of the US military is female, there is just one woman among those killed: Private First Class Lori Ann Piestewa, a 23-year-old from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Just five were from New England. At least four were not yet US citizens, and for them military would have been a step toward citizenship, because such service reduces waiting time. And last year, President Bush signed an executive order making it easier for the families of foreign nationals killed in combat to apply for citizenship for the soldiers.
Roughly 13 percent of those whose race could be determined were African-Americans, although African-Americans make up about 22 percent of the armed forces and 17 percent of the total casualties in first Gulf War.
''That's sort of representative of who is on the front lines of the military,'' said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit defense policy think tank. ''Young people ... people who joined the military when they graduated from high school so they could eventually go to college, people for whom military service is part of a family tradition, people who wanted to be part of something larger than themselves.''
Seeking a better life and a chance to serve
Brandon Tobler - artist, dreamer, only child - was in many ways a typical soldier. The Portland teenager was the son of a Vietnam veteran and the grandson of a World War II veteran. As with many families of those who have died in Iraq, money was tight at home. Tobler's mother is a part-time teacher's aide, and his father is a factory worker. Tobler delayed getting his driver's license so his parents would not have to pay extra for insurance.
When he graduated from high school in 2001, joining the reserves, living at home and working part-time at Best Buy were his best options, said his uncle, Scott Tom.
''The Army Reserve was perfect, because he could earn money for college; he wouldn't put more of a financial burden on his parents,'' Tom said.
More than a third of the dead were under the age of 24, many of whom, like Tobler, joined straight out of high school. Their numbers are lower than those of the overall military; nearly half of all soldiers are under 24.
''The combat arms have always placed a premiun on youth,'' said David R. Segal, director of the Center for Research of Military Organization at the University of Maryland. ''Young people are stronger and faster and less encumbered by families and more willing to take risks.''
About a third of those killed hailed from military families, with at least one close relative and often several who served in the armed forces.
In the reserves, Tobler grew to love the camaraderie, the sense of duty, wearing his uniform to church on Christmas, and being his dad's ''little warrior.''
''He had a really romantic view of what the Army would be,'' said Angela Larisch, one of his best friends from childhood. ''The rest of us, all his friends, we never quite understood.''
Tobler's family and friends had thought he had been called to go to war. But after his death, Army officials told them that Tobler had volunteered to be one of 10 in his unit to go.
''It surprised me, because we had a conversation about the war, and he was very unsure of its motives,'' Larisch said. ''But he was very, very loyal, and he had a strong sense of duty and purpose.''
Before he died, he told his parents by e-mail, ''If I can save one life, if I can do something that makes a family sleep easier at night without fear, then I have done my purpose.
''If you see a soldier, one of my comrades in arms, please thank them for the service,'' he wrote. ''Because we soldiers give up sooo much to come out here and sometimes make the ultimate sacrifice.''
Thursday, Tobler was buried with a 21-gun salute in the same church where he had been baptised 19 years earlier. Thinking about it made Tom break into tears.
''Nineteen years just went by just like that,'' he said.
The front lines are also disproportionately filled with men like Staff Sergeant Phillip Jordan: professional soldiers for whom the military becomes a way of life. The vast majority of the dead were in the regular military, at least 24 from Southern states.
Jordan was a husband and father, a fierce Dallas Cowboys fan, and above all, a US Marine. He joined when he was 27, after a tumultuous childhood in Texas in which his parents died early and he lived some of his high school years with the families of friends from his football team.
Later in life, friends recalled, the Marine Corps became his family; his job, his higher purpose.
''He was the kind of guy that you just knew he was going to make it a career and he was going to stay as long as he could,'' said Jeff Smith, a retired Marine who worked with Jordan for about a year at Camp Lejeune, N.C. ''He died doing what he wanted to do. He was in it for the long haul.''
The consummate professional soldier, Jordan had been stationed so many places that his Texas drawl had turned into a soft, almost indistinguishable accent. He had done everything from sweeping mines in the Persian Gulf during the first Gulf war to running athletic facilities at Camp Lejeune to molding new recruits as a drill sergeant at Parris Island, S.C.
''Start acting like a Marine,'' Jordan would tell new soldiers who came in with sloppy uniforms or bad attitudes, Smith recalled.
When he shipped off to the first Gulf war, he told a friend's worried new wife, ''`It's just a little trip. We'll be back,''' recalled Maryjo Gortz, whose husband, Chris, was deployed with him.
Jordan took on leadership roles, constantly querying his colleagues about how best to deal with crises.
Nine years ago, Jordan met and married his wife, Amanda. A typical military family, Jordan's wife and son, Tyler, moved with him from base to base.
Last year, they decided to settle in Connecticut, so that Amanda could be near her mother while he was deployed on what was expected to be a routine trip to the Mediterranean.
After Jordan's funeral this week, Smith recalled the philosophy of a professional soldier who didn't bog himself down with politics and wanted to be a Marine for life: ''I do want I'm trained to do, I go where I'm told to go, and I do it to the best of my ability.''
Wanting to belong, willing to sacrifice
Nothing about Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez's life sounds typical. But his story tracks with several of the other US military lives lost in Iraq. At least five were born in a Latin American country, and at least four were not US citizens when they died, highlighting the estimated 31,000 noncitizens serving in the US military and the role of Hispanics, who make up about 9 percent of the armed forces.
''America is still a land of immigrants, and we still have a lot of people living here who are not citizens,'' Segal said. ''Historically, one way of expediting citizenship in the US was to serve in the military.''
An orphan, Gutierrez lived on the streets in Guatemala until authorities sent him to live at a children's home. When he grew older, he moved out and worked in a bakery and a sweatshop, where he made T-shirts. But he soon made the dangerous journey across the US border, according to Bruce Harris of Casa Alianza, the home where Gutierrez lived in Guatemala.
Gutierrez was given a foster family in Lomita, Calif., and eventually told friends he was joining the Marines to defend his adopted country and become a citizen, a dream that came true after his death.
''He was realizing his dream,'' said Lucy Morataya, press attache at the Guatemalan consulate in Los Angeles. ''The democracy, the liberty that you can find here, and all the other things that you can find, work, money, another kind of life. ...
''He was very grateful,'' she said. ''His home is back in Guatemala, but here is the country that you are living in, the country that you are loving.''
Globe correspondent Bill Dedman contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2003, Globe Newspaper Company
