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Posted by: kwflatbed

This is a long article that will be in Newsweek Mag Nov.6 issue. I am posting the first page with links to the other pages.


Iraq Through The Eyes Of A Deceased Soldier

Through the eyes of a frontline fighter: The Marine captain asked for a tougher assignment. The one he got seemed all but impossible.




Courtesy of the Secher family
Weary Warrior: ‘This war is futile,’ wrote Secher after three months in Iraq. But he still believed in it.
View related photos



By Dan Ephron and Christian Caryl
Newsweek

Nov. 6, 2006 issue - Robert Secher had a passion for history. Until his death in Iraq on Oct. 8, the 33-year-old Marine could recount all the major battles of the Civil War. He studied the Holocaust, in which members of his father's family lost their lives. In recent e-mails home, he said he was reading about Vietnam and the Mexican civil war. But his favorite books were on ancient Rome: he was captivated by the centurions, who commanded from the front and led by example. "He talked about being a soldier since he was 6 years old," his mother, Elke Morris, told NEWSWEEK last week. "He wanted to be tested in battle." Secher signed up for the Marines when he was 17. He served on the Afghan border after the attacks of September 11 and later pressed for a transfer to the front lines in Iraq. He ended up in the insurgents' largest stronghold, Anbar province.

His job there was one of the toughest in Iraq: making raw Iraqi recruits ready and able to take over the fight against the militants. Secher found the task exasperating and often discouraging; in e-mails and letters home, he expressed doubt that the Iraqi military would ever be ready for a handover, and criticized the way the Bush administration had directed the war. "Without the U.S., this army will fail and get eaten alive by the insurgents," he told his father in an e-mail this past April. Chatting with a friend during a brief leave five months later, he spoke of suspicions that some of his trainees were loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr and would have no compunction about betraying their American instructors if the radical Shiite cleric told them to.
At other times Captain Secher's messages expressed fondness for his Iraqi trainees and respect for their courage. He was no pacifist. His parents describe him as an unswerving Republican, and his own dispatches consistently defend the invasion of Iraq even as he anguishes over its dwindling prospects of success. "Don't mistake us for Cindy Sheehan," Pierre Secher told NEWSWEEK at his Memphis home (a reference to the California woman who became an iconic opponent of the war after her son's death in Iraq). "To me, pacifism could have led to Hitler's victory. We might have all been speaking German and Japanese right now." But as President George W. Bush speaks positively of setting benchmarks for Iraqi troops to "stand up" and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declares that their training is going well, Captain Secher's messages from the front give a more complicated picture. His e-mails have been edited for space, and some typos have been fixed for clarity, but the words and feelings are entirely his own.

Related
Sign a condolence book for Rob Secher's family.



From: Robert Secher
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 5:31 AM
To: [Pierre Secher]
Subject: Hello
First of all, make sure you save (print and save) all the emails I send you [...] I am going to keep extensive journal notes on this deployment so I can write TWO books, one when I get back and of course the one I am working on now—Every email you save can help me [...]
Our team is made up of Marines from a variety of occupational specialties: supply, logistics, infantry, intelligence, communications, artillery (me and a sergeant), and of course we have a Navy corpsman (our medic). We will be located at an Iraqi base, living, eating [...]and fighting with the Iraqis. They are apparently the 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Division or 11217 Iraqis. We'll be in Hit along the Euphrates River in the Al Anbar province and part of the Sunni Triangle [...]
As you know, when Roman centurions inspected their men during morning formations, the soldier would smack his fist on his breast plate above his heart and say "Integritas," which is of course "material wholeness," referring to the soldier's upkeep of his armor and demonstrating his dedication to combat readiness. You can rest assured that my mind and my gear will always be focused and ready.
lntegritas, Robert


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