Marine corporal tells tales of deployment

February 1, 2012 7:54PM  - Joliet Herald News.  by:  Jean Edwards, Over there

Updated: February 2, 2012 2:23AM

U.S. Marine Cpl. John Kehoe, a Joliet native assigned to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment in Helmard province, Afghanistan, has served in the company’s mobile section since arriving in Afghanistan in late summer. He is part of the crew of Truck Four.

The Marines serve as mortar men by trade, having no experience working in a truck crew prior to the battalion’s pre-deployment training evolution. Kehoe served in the truck crew as the vehicle commander.

Armored trucks provide unique capabilities in a combat environment, and mobile sections are often among the most utilized assets for a line company during an Afghanistan deployment.

Missions tasked out to mobile sections can be highly variable, and flexibility is a must for its Marines, especially during formal operations. The high-stress, sometimes tedious life of a mobile Marine in Afghanistan takes some getting used to as personal comfort gives way to mission accomplishment.

“It’s definitely something that takes getting used to — sleeping in a seat, not being able to stretch out, being stuck in your gear for nine, 10 days at a time; eating nothing but (Meals, Ready to Eat), things like that,” said Kehoe, 23. “My Marines and I have grown comfortable to it. I enjoy sleeping in a truck over lying on the ground any day.”

Truck Four’s Marines, as with the rest of the mobile section, have been especially busy during recent weeks as Fox Company is participating in Operation Double Check, during which the company is responsible for disrupting enemy forces on the southeastern side of the Musa Qal’eh wadi, or riverbed, in northern Helmand province.

The mobile section was tasked to provide security for combat engineers as they constructed elevated posts to be used by Afghan Uniformed Police personnel in southern Musa Qal’eh district. The Marines also conducted logistical missions for the company during the opening days of the operation and served as a quick reaction force if needed, among other things.

“Every day varied,” said Kehoe, a 2006 graduate of Minooka Community High School in Minooka. “Some days we were just holding a blocking position, holding in place until we were ready to push forward. On another day we did a foot patrol to resupply the snipers and foot patrols throughout the villages just to keep a presence. A few days we had to ride back to PB 7171 to get logistical resupplies and other things the company needed to sustain for the mission and keep the ball moving forward.”

Kehoe takes pride in his crew’s and section’s performances in the beginning stages of Operation Double Check and expects continued success for the future.

“So far it has been a success for our section,” Kehoe said. “Cpl. Dakin M. Jausel and Lance Cpl. Ryan J. Merritt have done an outstanding job — they’ve been great. The way we prepped (for the operation) with drills, rehearsals, all the things we did prior to stepping off on the mission really paid off.”

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Bolingbrook woman a proud Marine

February 8, 2012 9:42PM

Updated: February 9, 2012 12:22PM –  Chicago Sun Times

Bolingbrook’s own World War II veteran Elizabeth “Betty” Bartolich is proud to have served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

She served on active duty from June 1944 to April 1946 as the lieutenant’s aide in the separation company at Henderson Hall in Arlington, Va., where she processed military orders for Marines returning from war and reassigning them to their next duty assignments.

Bartolich received an honorable discharge, last serving as a corporal (Line-T), and she earned the honorable service button.

“While I was a child, I was very shy and my best friend Ann suggested that we join the armed forces to help me get over my shyness. Well, I was able to join the Marines, but my friend could not because of health issues. So I went it alone and this did help me get over my shyness,” Bartolich said.

“During my military career, I became engaged to Bob, a Marine, whose life (was cut) short when he was killed in Iowa Jima,” she said.

Several years after Bartolich’s military career had ended, she was introduced to a handsome Marine by her sister Eleanor’s husband and later married John George Bartolich, who died in 1993. They had a son, George Lewis and a grandson named Christopher.

Today, at 90, Bartolich is very active playing Bingo on Thursdays, where all monies raised from raffles go toward trips to Springfield, where she and others have participated for the last three years in the Senior Olympics. Bartolich likes to bowl and play basketball too. She has received trophies for many bowling in tournaments.

Bartolich loves helping people. She plans on starting a new bingo club in the complex where she lives in Bolingbrook. There will be no charge to attend the bingo club and free prizes and refreshments will be included.

She still drives her own car and has personalized tags “BAM 1,” for Beautiful American Marine.

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Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer’s life has changed

Posted: Feb 13, 2012 3:29 PM CSTUpdated: Feb 13, 2012 3:59 PM CST

LOUISVILLE, KY. (WDRB) – He is celebrated for what happened on the worst day of his life.  Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer spoke to WDRB News about how his life has changed since getting a call from President Obama.

He is just 23 years old, but already the world knows his story.  What Sgt. Dakota Meyer doesn’t want is to spend the rest of his life reliving the day in Afghanistan where he lost four friends.  He’d rather use the spotlight for something more.

The Marine recruiter who came to Dakota Meyer’s Greensburg, Kentucky high school told him he’d never cut it in the service.  Meyer explains, “He said, ‘What are you going to do when you get out of high school?’  I said, ‘I’m going to go play football somewhere,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I’d do too, because there’s really no way you could ever be a Marine.’”

Ten minutes later, he went back to that same recruiter and signed the paperwork then and there.  He hasn’t seen that recruiter since, but you can only imagine what that recruiter is thinking now.

It was a September day in 2009 when Meyer braved enemy fire to rescue his comrades under attack in Afghanistan.   Four men died, but he’s credited with saving the lives of 36 American and Afghan soldiers.

He says, “Everyone recognizes me in the United States of America for failing the most important people in my life and letting them lose their lives.”

It’s for that reason he didn’t want the Medal of Honor.  “You can either fight it, and which I didn’t have much of a choice, or you can realize – stop being selfish and realize it’s bigger than me and go out and try to make a difference for other people.”

“Trying to make a difference” is the mission guiding him now.  He spends most of his days on the road, speaking at events.  He’ll be this year’s Thundernator at Thunder over Louisville, pressing the button that will start the fireworks.  He’s also writing a book titled “Into the Fire.”

“It goes into the battle,” Meyer says, ”then afterwards coming back and dealing with everything.”

Home is Columbia, Kentucky where he lives with his brother.  His newfound passion is education and he says he’s an advocate for bringing charter schools to Kentucky.  But he says he has no future in politics, just “doing the right thing.”

“At 21 years old,” Meyer says, ”I had the worst thing ever happen to me, ya know?  Nothing in my life will ever hurt me more than that day will, so now what do I got to worry about for the rest of my life?”

Sgt. Meyer is currently an inactive Marine Reservist but says he would go back to Afghanistan in a heartbeat if he could.

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Rahm Emanuel finds ally in new fire chief Jose Santiago

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com February 16, 2012 11:04AM

Updated: February 17, 2012 2:21AM
**ADMIN’S NOTE – I SERVED IN THE MARINE CORPS RESERVE WITH JOSE SANTIAGO! BACK THEN, I KNEW HIM AS “GUNNER SANTIAGO”**

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday appointed 33-year veteran Chicago firefighter Jose Santiago as Chicago’s new fire commissioner — and found an ally in his plan to wring millions of dollars in savings out of the city’s second-largest department.

Retiring Fire Commissioner Robert Hoff said he was “deathly against” closing fire houses or reducing the minimum staffing requirement on fire apparatus — the issue that triggered the bitter 1980 firefighters strike.

When Inspector General Joe Ferguson dared to suggest that Chicago taxpayers could save $57 million a year by reducing that “minimum manning” requirement from five to four, Hoff predicted a rise in fire deaths — at the risk of alienating the mayor.

After being appointed Thursday to succeed the retiring Hoff, Santiago drew no such line in the sand about closing firehouses.

“That’s something we’re looking at. We have all the maps out and everything and response times. We’re sitting down and looking at every option,” said Santiago, 56.

What about reducing the “minimum manning” requirement from five to four?

“There’s many, many different studies on what is safe and [what is] not. That’s what we’ve been working on — taking all that information, and we’ll make a determination based on safety. Any changes are always based on safety,” Santiago said.

If that was not enough to convince firefighters they had lost their champion going into contentious contract talks, Emanuel sealed the deal.

“There will be changes. You cannot keep doing the same thing. … Every part of the city is making reforms, and we will make reforms” in the Fire Department, the mayor said.

After hearing what the mayor and Santiago had to say at Engine 42, 55 W. Illinois, Tom Ryan, president of the Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2, had to know he was on his own to fight staffing and firehouse cuts.

“Technology may have changed, but fires are burning hotter and faster than ever. Technology can change all it wants. You still need that power to put out fires,” Ryan said.

Is Ryan disappointed Santiago did not pick up where Hoff left off?

“He’s not even sworn in yet. Give the guy a chance to get himself confirmed. Then we’ll move forward,” Ryan said.

Santiago is a former U.S. Marine decorated for his service in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm.

He ran the 911 center for the final year of former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration — and presided during the Blizzard of 2011 fiasco that shut down Lake Shore Drive — before returning to the Fire Department under Emanuel as deputy commissioner in charge of the Bureau of Operations.

Emanuel said Thursday he has known for about a month that Hoff intended to retire on the 50th anniversary of his firefighter father’s death in the line of duty and has been conducting a behind-the-scenes search.

In the name of “transparency,” one of the mayor’s favorite words, Emanuel was asked why he didn’t preside over a “more open” search process.

“Open and thorough are two separate words. You may want open — and I understand that from a media perspective. [But], I want thorough as mayor. We ran a thorough process and have the best person to do this,” the mayor said.

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*****IMMEDIATE RELEASE*****

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Cpl. Conner T. Lowry, 24, of Chicago, Ill., died March 1, 2012 while conducting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.