09.01.08
MAJOR GENERAL JOHN KELLY AND A FALLEN WARRIOR...
Marines in Iraq
On the way back from Iraq right after Baghdad fell and I'd returned from Tikrit the Division was supposed to return home immediately. As the assistant division commander I returned to Pendleton (via Bethesda) in Late May. Little did I know I would return to Iraq immediately and be there until November. In any event, I got a hotel room in Bethesda and all I had with me were my utilities that I'd worn nonstop since I'd deployed to Kuwait the January before we invaded (March 20th). I bought a can of Lysol spray, hung my utilities in the hotel room closet and used the entire can letting it soak in during the night. Even then it was best if I stood down wind of the ladies. I went to the hospital to see the 1st Marine Division boys the next day and met Mr. Nixon, his wife and daughter. They'd just buried Pat in Arlington.
His son was wounded and in spite of that he was helping more seriously wounded Marines into an Amtrac along the so called Nasiriyah "gauntlet." The gauntlet was an arrow straight 2.5 mile road that ran from the Euphrates River just outside the city and the same piece of road that the Army 157th (Jessica Lynch's outfit) was hit. I remember when I dashed along that piece of unsecured road in my HMMWV driven by my driver Cpl Dave Hardin, from Dallas, TX, in the early morning (0500?) of 25 or 26 23 March I saw the still burning and totally destroyed hulk of the Amtrac in which Pat Nixon died a few hours before. I didn't know what happened to it at the time as the fight in Nasiriyah was not the 1st Division's, but I did cross myself and said a prayer for those who must have died in that vehicle. Only when I ran into the Nixon's in the Naval Hospital did I know the rest of the story. Mr. Nixon gave me a picture of his son taken when he was home on pre-deployment leave. He was a mortar man and by all reports knew how to work a tube. The Nixon's had magnetic backings put on the picture and gave them to friends as keepsakes. I was touched to get one. There was a little anomaly shadow or something above Pat's head that looked like a little dark bird or bat. The Nixon's joked that Pat was a little bit of a devil at times, and it came out in the picture. Jesus Christ it was sad Seamus. When my own two boys were in Iraq I used to wonder all the time if I could be as brave as the Nixons if one of mine went down. The next day, it was a Sunday, I went to Mass in uniform (still ripe) at the Ft Myer Chapel then walked down to see Pat's grave in Arlington before I flew home to see my family in Pendleton. No stone yet, just a simple marker over the still turned up earth. I think there were less than ten graves from Iraq at the time - now there are row upon row.
When I returned to Iraq in June the division now "owned" Nasiriyah and the first thing I did was to ensure the hulk was removed. Our dozen or so heroes were long gone and buried in America's good earth, but I didn't want the Trac just sitting there.
Anyway, wonderful people who lost almost all they had in their son Pat. His picture is still on my refrigerator at home along with my own kids.
Semper Fi, Kelly
