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Re: US Marine Cherishes Memory of Liberating Kuwaiti POW

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: June 21, 2003

"Marine had his doubts

By PHIL WATSON - Globe Managing Editor

As he prepared to enter Iraq with the 1st Marine Division earlier this year, Marine Staff Sgt. Dave Rick admits he had some doubts about whether or not he and his comrades in arms were doing the right thing.

Rick, a 27-year-old Marine reservist who graduated from Luther L. Wright High School in Ironwood in 1993, had not gotten much news from the homefront since arriving in Kuwait in January -- and what he had heard wasn't good.

"What little bit of news we got from the States was all about protesters and we had some doubts," Rick told the Daily Globe. "We all kept wondering, 'Are we doing the right thing?' But when you have a couple of hundred thousand people come up and thank you for being there, then you know you are doing the right thing."

After serving more than four years on active duty, from 1993-97, Rick was assigned to a Marine reserve unit based in Cincinnati and worked as a manager for an 84 Lumber Co. yard in Toledo, Ohio.

All that changed last winter, when he was called back to active duty.

Rick returned to the U.S. on June 7, and his unit returned to Cincinnati on Sunday. After attending a welcome ceremony along the banks of the Ohio River, he drove to the Gogebic Range to visit family. His biological mother, Pat Wanden, lives in Hurley, as do his grandparents, Francis and Lois Chatterson, and many other relatives. His parents, Mike and Sue Rick, live in Fort Wayne, Ind.

According to Rick, the 1st Marine Division moved hard and fast through a countryside full of people ready to welcome them.

"We went everywhere in that country," Rick recalled. "Once we crossed the border from Kuwait, we would constantly move. We would stop for four or five hours to refuel and let everyone get a couple of hours of sleep, and then we would move again. We were going through towns pretty quick."

The young Marine sergeant said resistance to their advance was sporadic and not well-organized.

"We would hit a little resistance in one spot and then be able to travel 30 or 40 miles before we'd hit another small group," Rick said. "We took out their communications pretty quickly and the early resistance we encountered didn't seem to be too well coordinated."

He said Iraqi folks across the countryside on the road to Baghdad were welcoming.

"Everywhere, people were constantly coming out to the roads to thank us, saying 'Thank you, Mr. Bush,'" Rick said. "Everyone was so happy to see us. There was this one local guy who was cooking us chickens and inviting everyone to his home. The locals were offering us whatever they could, and we would give them food and water and help them fix tractors and plows; whatever we could do to help."

He said the reception changed slightly upon reaching the Iraqi capital.

"Once we got to Baghdad, things seemed a little more torn down," Rick said. "It was like people were still a little nervous and a little scared about the government."

On the morning of April 9, when Iraqis, with some American assistance, tore down the statue of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Rick and his unit were miles away, occupying the Special Republican Guard headquarters in the southeastern part of Baghdad.

When looting began, the city plunged into chaos.

"Most of the fires in Baghdad were started by the looters," Rick said. "Everything was government controlled. People would go into those government buildings and take the food and supplies and anything they could carry.

"Whenever they saw the military come around, they would stop what they were doing. But we couldn't be everywhere."

Rick said his unit would go to hospitals that had been looted, gathering what medical supplies they could and taking them to operating hospitals.

"There were a lot of locals being hurt during the looting," Rick said. "We would bring as much medicine and supplies as we could, plus what the Red Cross was sending."

He recalled one day when one of his unit's doctors delivered a child. But his most cherished memory of his time in Iraq will be of liberating a Kuwaiti national who had spent more than a decade as a prisoner of war after the first Gulf War in 1991.

"We brought him back to Kuwait and reunited him with his family," Rick said. "That was one of the best things we could do. We helped a lot of families and a lot of children, but to get this guy who had been held prisoner, tortured and beaten for 11 years, and reunite him with his family, that was special.

"When we found him, he had tuberculosis and might have weighed 90 pounds -- he was just skin and bones. Our corpsmen took care of him, and we started feeding him good food, fattening him up."

Rick said he wouldn't hesitate to return to Iraq if called upon to do so.

"Oh, I'd go," he said. "The people over there need us. The most rewarding part was when the people would come up to you in the street and thank you. Once you're in the country, you realize that it could be a really beautiful place once the money is being spent on the people, instead of being soaked up by the government."

Rick said he and his comrades began to learn they had more support on the homefront than originally thought as the military campaign wound down.

"Finally, toward the end, the media started telling us more about our supporters and we were welcomed enthusiastically when we got home," Rick said. "We still saw lots of yellow ribbons and 'We support our troops' signs. It's kind of a good thing to know we weren't alone out there. I'd like to thank the people who believed in what President Bush was doing and what we were doing."

And he bears no ill will toward those who disagreed with what he was doing in the service of his country.

"Every time people here protest, it's because someone in the military sacrificed to give them the right to do it," Rick said. "It's like the Iraqi people -- they didn't have that right to protest. Every time Americans protest, it just reaffirms the fact that we have that right. Those people are exercising rights people in a lot of other countries don't have."
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