BROOK PARK, Ohio – The rash of violence in Iraq this week has taken an especially brutal toll on a Marine battalion based in this working-class town: Nineteen members from the unit were killed over two days.
Grief and anger shook the town as families and residents anxiously awaited answers after learning that 14 Marine reservists were killed Wednesday by a roadside bomb – one of the heaviest blows suffered by a single unit in the war. Two days earlier, five others from the battalion were killed while on sniper duty.
The sorrow in Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb of 21,000 people, was painfully clear Wednesday among the line of customers sipping their morning coffee at the counter of a doughnut shop down the street from the battalion’s headquarters. Nearly everyone at the counter said they knew someone who was connected to the battalion.
“You never know who it could be. It could be your best friend. It could be your husband. It could be anyone from here,” Eleanor Matelski, 69, said as she angrily tore up a paper cup that had held her coffee.
“Tell Bush to get our soldiers out of there now before any more of our soldiers die. This is getting to be ridiculous,” she said.
A few steps away, near the gates of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, residents piled red roses, American flags, handwritten notes of condolences and white crosses for the victims.
The large roadside bomb ripped through a lightly armored Marine amphibious personnel carrier in western Iraq on Wednesday, killing 14 troops and a civilian translator in the single deadliest bombing attack on U.S. forces since the war began.
Wednesday’s blast overturned the amphibious assault vehicle the troops were riding in, and since the escape hatches are on the top, it would have been difficult for the Marines to get out of the burning vehicle, a senior Defense official said. One Marine was reported rescued after the attack.
Names of the Marines killed Wednesday were not immediately released, but nine of them came from a smaller Columbus-based company of the battalion, said Master Sgt. Stephen Walter, a spokesman for the company. The battalion was activated in January and went to Iraq in March.
Military officials told the families of Lance Cpl. Edward Schroeder, 23, of Cleveland; Lance Cpl. Timothy Michael Bell, 22, of West Chester in suburban Cincinnati; and Lance Cpl. Brett Wightman, 22, of Sabina that they were among the Marines who died Wednesday.
“My son was the last of the John Waynes, but tougher,” said Timothy Michael Bell Sr., who last talked to his son two weeks ago.
Schroeder’s mother, Rosemary Palmer, said she and her husband were talking about plans to attend funerals of the reservists killed Monday when the Marines came to tell her family about her son’s death.
Palmer said her son joined the military in 2002 despite her opposition; she wouldn’t even let him play with toy guns while he was growing up.
The risk that the same geographical area will suffer multiple casualties has been heightened in Iraq because reserve troops train and fight together, unlike in Vietnam, which was fought largely by active-duty troops who were replaced by individual soldiers from around the nation.
Residents of the towns along the Euphrates river in Iraq typically tell Marines that the only insurgents in their area are foreign fighters. Contacted in Haditha on Wednesday, however, some residents celebrated the bombing, which apparently inflicted no civilian casualties, even as they braced for retaliation.
“Me, I’m very happy with this operation, and it’s the same for the people here,” said Nour Ahmed, 35, an employee of a government-run industry. “But at the same time, we’re afraid of the Marine reaction in the coming hours.”
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