Iraq violence devastates Ohio’s Lima Company, 16 times over
The Palm Beach Post
Sunday, August 7, 2005
By ANDREW MARRA
COLUMBUS, Ohio – By the time two grim-faced Marines made it to Carole Hoffman’s front door Wednesday evening, word of the deaths already was ricocheting across the Ohio heartland with all the shrillness of falling mortars.
There was no stopping it once it started. Ten of Lima Company’s Marine reservists were dead in a single explosion on an Iraqi road. The men trained to bring the news to mothers’ doorsteps had much to do.
Hoffman already had heard of the bombing’s devastating impact on the state, but she had no word of her son, Sgt. Justin Hoffman, 27. Not until her younger son called her on the road, informing her they had visitors.
Things have kept getting worse for the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment’s Lima Company, based outside Columbus. The unit has sent 160 Ohio reservists to Iraq since March. Sixteen, including Justin Hoffman, now lie dead.
Officials say no military reserve unit anywhere has been hit harder by the Iraq war than Lima Company. The extent of the casualties’ toll among the Ohio silos and cornfields last week highlighted a bitter downside of the U.S. military’s increasing reliance on reservists, part-time soldiers from locally based units.
Because reservists, unlike regular enlistees, serve mainly alongside men and women from their own area, the fallout when disaster strikes is far more likely to inflict several deaths at once on a single community.
That has proven true nowhere more so than here, in a state long renowned for its heavy sacrifices to America’s armed forces. In Ohio, where more than 60,000 residents have given their lives for the country during two centuries, about 13 percent of adults are military veterans, and state history is sprinkled with names such as Ulysses S. Grant, the Fighting 37th and the Boys of Beallsville.
Lima Company lost its men Wednesday when a bomb exploded along a road near Haditha in western Iraq, overturning a lightly armored amphibious vehicle. In all, the bomb killed 14 reservists, including the 10 from Lima Company.
They were cops and teachers and college students. They worked with computers and coached youth sports and talked of marrying their sweethearts. They battled in the desert with dreams of coming home to new businesses, motorcycles, future brides.
They lived across the state, in small towns and suburbs outside Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. But for years, they gathered at least once a month at the Lima Company armory outside Columbus, where they trained and grew close and hardened themselves for battle.
“We take it very personally here. These Marines were our Marines,” said Lima Company’s chief warrant officer, Orrin Bowman. “Many of them were college students. Many of them had young families. They all had the hopes and ambitions that all young Americans have. These are the guys who helped you out when you had problems.”
News of second hit fuels frenzy
When the bomb hit, the state already was reeling from the deaths of four other Ohio Marine reservists killed on sniper patrol in Iraq Monday. Late last month, two others were killed in a gunfight.
As the word spread and the national media descended last week, soldiers and families here and across Ohio found themselves scrambling for information and, oftentimes, forced into a new reckoning of the war.
The news exploded Wednesday like the roadside bomb itself, messily and without warning. The first reports from Iraq said only that soldiers from the Ohio-based 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment were among the nameless dead.
Parents across the state were stricken. Reserve unit offices were flooded with calls. The mayor of Columbus, whose 20-year-old son is serving in Iraq with Lima Company, scoured the television and Internet for clues. Word got out later that it was Lima Company that took the casualties, but still there were no names.
Mothers and fathers were advised to stay close to home. Carole Hoffman called her house to make sure no Marines were there waiting. At the time, none were.
But soon, the men in dress green uniforms quietly found their way to the family of each fallen soldier.
The government confirmed no names officially Wednesday. But by the time the 11 o’clock news came on in Columbus, some already had leaked out. Names appeared on television screens, and a shellshocked father cried before the cameras. Then stations returned to the events of an otherwise normal weekday: a popcorn popper catching fire in a movie theater, the governor live at the state fair, a high school football stadium threatened by an owl’s nest.
By then, Orrin Bowman had fulfilled his obligations for the day. Along with another Marine, the 52-year-old chief warrant officer - a mailman in his other life - had tracked down two local families, sat them down in their living rooms and delivered the official message.
His experience with death notifications has been extensive of late - he estimates he has personally delivered the bad news to 10 families in the Columbus area in a year’s time - and he’s seen parents absorb the shock both loudly and quietly.
But Wednesday, both families were hit hard with grief. Bowman said each seemed particularly on edge because the region had been inundated with fear and speculation all day - a result of the extraordinary publicity generated by so many deaths from one unit.
“It was very stressful for them,” he said. “Unfortunately, they were very worried for several hours.”
Concentration of casualties rare
The concentration of casualties from one attack in a single state or region is a phenomenon the United States rarely has seen since World War II, experts say.
After World War II and the Korean War, the military moved away from activating large numbers of reservists. Hardly any were mobilized in the Vietnam War, and while the first Gulf War created a need to activate many reserve troops and National Guardsmen, relatively few casualties were inflicted.
But with the size of America’s standing armed forces gradually being reduced, military commanders have decided to activate extensive Reserve units - to the point that roughly 40 percent of the U.S. military force in Iraq is now made up of reservists.
“With the regular forces being driven down, there’s been an awful lot of use of the Reserves to augment the forces,” said Chuck Melson, the Marine Corps’ chief historian.
The reservists are activated together as units to maintain their solidarity. In many instances, they have trained together for years before being sent overseas.
“The downside of unit cohesion is when you have casualties, they all tend to be from the same place,” Melson said.
Ohio’s casualties last week were scattered about the state, always away from the large urban centers. To find their families’ homes, you have to drive along highways that shrink to two lanes, past fields of corn and soybeans and radio towers, to places with names such as Chillicothe and North Bend.
At Lima Company’s headquarters, a makeshift memorial emerged Thursday morning next to a brick faade sign in front of the property - 20 pink, long-stemmed roses and a red teddy bear. Between them, four tiny American flags waved from thin sticks.
Later, someone hung a wreath and a sign. Alluding to the past deaths of other Ohio reservists, it read:
We Will Never Forget
8 May 05
11 May 05
28 July 05
3 Aug 05
David Cross, a 49-year-old former Marine, leaned down and placed flowers at the wall, a blend of purples and whites. He drove out from Columbus with his wife and his dog in a tan Ford Windstar van, simply to bring the flowers and a flag. He talked of donating money but did not know what else to do.
“Marines are a big family,” he said, standing at the memorial. “I just felt like I had to do something.”
Mayor empathizes with parents
Miles away, at a city hall conference room in downtown Columbus, Mayor Michael Coleman choked back tears.
Reporters and cameras crowded around him as he talked publicly for the first time about his son, J.D., a member of Lima Company. The wooden conference table shimmered as the Scioto River flowed outside the window.
“I’m really here to talk as a father,” he said. Then, in his pinstriped suit, he paused a full 10 seconds, struggling for words.
J.D. was not on the list of the dead. But the mayor, running for governor as a Democrat, was no stranger to the anxiety of waiting. He talked about the nerves that were jolted at home every time a phone rang, a doorbell sounded, a car pulled up.
Coleman said he opposed the war from the beginning. But Thursday, that was beside the point.
“They are serving because their country called,” he said.
For the parents of the dead, opinions of the war were shaken - or reaffirmed - last week.
Before week’s end, plans were being made final for family support. There would be group meetings, prayer sessions, a huge memorial service at a Cleveland convention center. Each family was assigned a personal liaison to help with grief issues and practical issues - benefits, the return of the bodies. Programs were set up to raise donations.
Prayer list triggers recognition
Past the outskirts of Columbus, in a tiny town off State Road 161 called Pataskala, Carole Hoffman didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. She did both.
Recalling 27-year-old Justin for a visitor, she chuckled at his quirks: the playful voice-mail messages left on her cellphone, the endless AOL Instant Messenger chats, his curious ability to eat mealworms at pet shops.
“Justin was more or less a reality show,” she said.
She stood on her front porch at the end of a winding road. There’s a chimney on her roof and acres of cornfields beyond the street. The basketball hoop in her driveway is faded and in disrepair.
At his home in Delaware, a few miles from Pataskala, Justin transferred computer data from one system to another for a pharmaceutical company. Overseas, he was a sniper, a sergeant, a commander of men.
After six years, his time in the Marine Reserves was up last year, but when he learned his unit was to be activated, he signed up again.
“He wanted to be there for his men,” Carole said. “He wanted to lead his men.”
His unit did endless battle in Iraq, and he told his mother often of what he saw. He killed many people, and he was involved in several prominent battles. The names fell off Carole’s tongue: Operation Matador, Operation Spear, Operation Lightning.
In Ohio, he had a girlfriend he talked to more than anyone else. Lately, he had enlisted his stepfather to scout for a diamond ring. He told everyone he loved them.
When the Marines showed up at Carole’s house Wednesday evening, only Tyler, her 20-year-old son, was home.
He was out back reading a book. He didn’t hear the knock, so they came around and hailed him. “Excuse me, sir . . . ”
Carole and her husband were on their way to a prayer session for parents and wives of the Lima Company members when Carole got the call from Tyler. He handed the phone to one of the Marines, who began speaking.
Carole told him to stop.
“You’re not going to tell me this on the phone,” she said. She and her husband turned the car around.
When the Marines delivered the news, Carole asked for the names of the other dead.
They declined to tell her.
It wasn’t until later that she heard the names and gasped with recognition. Many of the men were the ones Justin was commanding, the ones he asked them to pray for every day.
Carole, a devoted Christian, said she knows she’ll see Justin again. Beside her, Tyler looked down and nodded.
Asked about the war, she said she could only support her son.
“Justin believed in what he was doing,” she said. “Justin gave his life for the Iraqi people. He knew that was the price he might have to pay, and I stand behind him 100 percent.”
The sun was setting across the cornfields. She was sad and tired, and it was time to go. She walked back into her home, followed by her husband.
Tyler followed them to the front door, then he turned. With the door closing behind him, he lowered his voice and gave one last testament to his brother.
Tall and clean-cut, stammering to keep his composition, he said he wanted people to remember Justin didn’t have to go to Iraq. He chose to sign up again. He wanted to serve, Tyler said, but more importantly, he wanted to be with the soldiers he trained beside.
“It was just the most moral thing for him to do,” he said. “He died with his men.”