KILLING FIELDS To Iraq and Back
	OCTOBER 2003

by Chris Scott

Ramon Spears stepped on a bomb and didn’t get hurt. He felt that someone was watching over him that day. Ramon was in Iraq at the height of the fighting and had stopped in a place where coalition planes had dropped a number of cluster bombs. Some of these were still lying around and would detonate only when somebody stepped on one. On the way to the bathroom one day he stepped on something that felt solid beneath his foot. He lifted his foot and uncovered a cluster bomb lying in the dirt with the outline of his footprint still around it.

After this happened military specialists located all of the unexploded ordinance lying around and marked the location of each bomb with a small flag. Dozens and dozens of these little flags were finally placed right in the area where he and his fellow Marines had been walking around. He says that they were spared a lot of casualties by what seems to him miraculous intervention by God in response to the prayers of the people back home.

Ramon Spears is a Corporal in the USMC, serving a single four-year hitch, which ends in November. He says he was attracted to the armed services because of a desire to be part of something bigger than himself. Someone said there are four stages of human development: Self-centered, family-centered, community-centered, and finally serving one’s fellow man. Ramon knew that he had developed to the point of feeling that he needed to serve something greater than himself. The logic of his desire to serve others lead him right to war.

A step of faith. Ramon did not get hurt when he stepped on this cluster bomb. You can see his footprint around the trigger of the bomb.

“People are trying to kill me”
Ramon spent five months in the Middle East and about 30 days in Iraq, which included the worst fighting of the war. In fact, Ramon says, his regiment was the first to cross the line of departure from Kuwait into Iraq. The enemy began shooting at his column as soon as they crossed the border. He reports that his initial experience of combat had a surreal quality. The lights, the sounds, the colors, and his reactions to the harsh experiences all seemed strangely disassociated from reality. He said that nobody can really prepare for the experience of warfare; people out there really wanted to kill him!

Corporal Spears spent the first part of his initial encounter in the uncomfortable position of riding around in an armored personnel carrier. From his vantage point he could see artillery rounds flying through the air and could feel the flashes of light and the pulses from the explosions on his skin. He could hear the dirt that was being thrown up by the explosions hitting the truck.

The fighting really intensified, Ramon said, when his platoon arrived at the gas and oil separation plant (GOSP) that was their first objective. The Platoon Commander ordered his gunner and him to take out a tank that was shooting at their position. As Ramon prepared to fire at the tank he could see red and green tracers flying through the sky. The whole nighttime scene was lit by flares from the burning GOSP, which was shooting flames high into the sky. He and an assistant gunner were the only Marines afoot in that spot behind enemy lines.

Ramon and his partner were preparing to fight the tank with a Javelin weapon — a 60 lb. shoulder-carried missile. He aimed his imaging infrared Command Launch Unit (CLU) at the target. However, as soon as he acquired the target, he says that the Javelin immediately began to initiate firing; the first rocket motor started to fire much too soon and a big puff of white smoke shot out of the weapon. He looked over his shoulder at the a/gunner who was as white as a sheet. “Corporal,” the a/gunner asked. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“No it’s not,” Ramon replied. “Get another missile.” He replaced the malfunctioning missile with a substitute that he was carrying. The readout on his CLU, however, told him there was a misfire with that second one, as well. Ramon was standing on the ground and facing that tank like David facing Goliath; except his slingshot was defective! He says they quickly got back into the track and he told the Platoon Commander that he hadn’t been able to take his shot so the commander sent the rest of the squad to complete the task. Those guys finally took out the tank, which was 3,500 meters away, with the first successful Javelin shot of the war.

The best of people and the worst of people
In combat situations Corporal Spears discovered that some of his fellow-marines whom he had expected to do good stumbled under battle conditions. On the other hand, some of the guys who had given him trouble in the past far exceeded his expectations when the chips were down.

For example, Corporal Spears had low expectations of one Marine who served under him because in training the Marine always seemed to shirk his duties, requiring constant supervision, and always getting himself into some kind of jam.

However, when faced with actual combat situations, the guy never hesitated. He performed beyond anything anyone could ask or expect by showing unhesitating courage under fire and instant resolve at any moment a hard decision had to be made. Mortal conflict has a way of both forging and uncovering a person’s real character. Corporal Spears came to the conclusion that the kind of person you are when people are trying to kill you is the kind of person you really are.

Out of the frying pan...
Ramon and his fellow Marines entered Baghdad and immediately ran into an ambush. The rest of the battalion were riding in armored tracks, but this time Ramon and his platoon were riding into the conflict in open Humvees. Ramon was riding with his squad and a Platoon Sergeant in the back of one of the Humvees. The sun was going down and he and his lance corporals were feverishly putting together demolition charges for an attack on Sadaam’s palace. After the daylight faded, Ramon and the other Marines were forced to assemble the charges by feel. It was a miracle he said, working under those conditions, that they didn’t blow themselves up in the dark.

The night around them was suddenly brilliantly lit by the flames of rockets that began screaming past their vehicles. Those rockets formed the opening salvo of what was later estimated to be 1,000 rocket-propelled grenades that were fired during the ensuing extended battle.

The column lurched to a sudden halt and Ramon learned that the front of the column was taking fire. He heard the report, “Tomahawk One has been hit,” meaning that the section leader at the front of the advance had been fired upon. The Battalion Commander said, “Keep going! Keep going!”

Suddenly all hell broke loose. The enemy began opening up on his position with a firestorm that included light and heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms.

Ramon was in the middle of a firestorm and getting into some nasty weather. Tracer rounds were screaming past him like swarms of fire flies. Ramon and his fellow Marines immediately began to return fire.

... and into the fire
The enemy began concentrating fire on Ramon’s Humvee, since it had no armor. At times like this all a person can do is improvise. The Humvee driver, Corporal Scott, hit the gas and moved the vehicle into the sheltered side of the armored track ahead of them. Ramon could hear the rounds intended for them slamming into the track.

The track moved up uncovering their position and the rounds started coming in on them again, so the driver once more moved up into a lee of the track. He repeated the same cycle three times.

The battle raged around him all night. He and the rest of his squad continued sitting in the exposed Humvee and returning fire at whatever targets presented themselves. The morning sun found his platoon still doing battle. By this time they had managed to fight their way onto the Palace grounds.

The battle finally drew to a conclusion and the enemy abandoned the palace so instead of blowing it up they converted it to Battalion Headquarters. Ramon says he felt kind of numb for the next seven days. When he finally began to move out of that place he started to think about what had happened and emotions he hadn’t had time for began rushing into his mind. One of those intense feelings was total amazement that so few Marines engaged in that extended battle had been injured.

Deliverance
Miraculously the thousands and thousands of rocket grenades, missiles, and rockets that had been fired at those vehicles during the long hours of that battle had succeeded in killing only one Marine in Ramon’s battalion. Gunnery Sgt. Bohr from Alpha Company 1/5 was the only Marine who sacrificed his life during that terrible time. Only 50, or so, American Marines were even wounded.

Ramon’s experiences in Iraq demonstrate some remarkable qualities about the attitude of our American servicemen at their very finest. Ramon says that he joined the Marine Corps in order to be of service to his fellow man. In that capacity he willingly put himself in harm’s way and took risks that would have been unacceptable to anyone who, like most of us, is "looking out for Number One."

Of course, part of the risk-taking was promoted simply by the qualities and traditions of the service that he joined. "Death Before Dishonor" is more than a bumper-sticker to some of these men and women. They feel the honor of being Marines. They regard themselves as the foremost shock troops in the world.

But beyond a simple sense esprit de corps, Ramon’s intentions and goals during the conflict were based upon a sense of duty towards God and man. In Iraq he felt that he was involved in something bigger than himself. He was doing a tough job because someone needed to do it and he wasn’t going to turn away.

All of us have our own views about the War in Iraq. But beneath the loud and often shrill declarations of our opinions, all of us can respect and admire a person who carried out his duty, as he understood it to be, not counting the cost. Let us honor the integrity and dignity of such a person.

“I know this much to be true”
Ramon Spears discovered that from the time people start shooting at you until the time you are ready to go home, you remain in a strange altered state of consciousness. There isn’t time for fear or introspection; you just do what you need to do because people are relying on you. You are making decisions and taking actions that are literally matters of life and death.

Only when the conflict is over you can become cognizant of the close calls and remember the times you should have been killed. You begin to dwell on those times when things could have gone wrong, and even should have gone wrong, but didn’t.

Ramon finally realized that it doesn’t matter how great a Marine you are or how great the technology is, in the end Someone Else decides the outcome. He says that he is satisfied with that realization.