Corporal barely gets taste of fight, returns to Escalon

[thedrifter]

Corporal barely gets taste of fight, returns to Escalon


By MICHAEL DOYLE
BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU


Published: April 4, 2003, 0747 AM PST

WASHINGTON -- Bret Westerink's war ended violently just days after it began.
He is healing now, this 21-year-old Marine and Escalon High School graduate, injured when he was seriously knocked around by what is now believed to have been an Iraqi rocket- propelled grenade.

But while Lance Cpl. Westerink expects his left leg to be in a cast for six to eight weeks, and though he still cannot recall anything about the night he was hurt, he said he has unfinished business in the Persian Gulf.

"I owe them one," Westerink said Thursday in the nation's capital, a stopover on his way home from the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. "I wish I could get fixed fast enough so I could go back and join my unit."

For the next month, though, it is rest and relaxation time.

Thursday, after being discharged from the National Naval Medical Center, he was set to return to California, accompanied by his mother, Shari, and brother Scot.

He left behind, in the hospital, the two other Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, injured in the same incident.

Thursday morning, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Mich-ael Hagee paid a visit, presenting a Purple Heart to Westerink for his combat injuries, and staying to talk for a while.

"It was actually pretty cool," Westerink said. "I've never had a chance to chat with someone like that."

Once discharged from the hospital, Westerink and his family had just enough time to grab a 45-minute tour of Washington before going to the airport.

Scot Westerink, a Modesto Junior College student, pushed his brother's wheelchair. Shari Westerink, a Manteca teacher, surged ahead on reconnaissance.

Bret, wearing a black U.S. Embassy T-shirt given him by the U.S. ambassador to Germany, cradled a video camera but mostly just took it all in.

He has a slight scar on his right cheek, near a small broken bone. His hands appear scratched, the fingernails blackened. His left leg is broken. He is not in pain.

"He looks great," his mother said.

It was, in fact, a glorious spring day, Washington's best, with grass beyond green and magnolia trees lush with pink blossoms.

What a difference from Iraq, which Westerink said "looked like a wasteland, a vast desert wasteland. All it was, was dirt and rocks and shrubs."

Enemy always someplace else

Westerink entered the Marine Corps immediately out of Escalon High.

It was a good fit, his mom now says, for the intelligent kid who had not been particularly motivated in school.

He trained as a computer specialist, helping to maintain global positioning systems and other war-fighting information equipment. In January, after a three-week ocean journey, he landed in Kuwait and started waiting for war.

"It wasn't fun at all," Westerink said. "We slept in the dirt and ate not-good food."

When the war started, his unit pushed north in a convoy.

Westerink was one of four Marines in a Humvee; he rode in the rear, right seat. When they stopped, Westerink would ensure that the computer systems were humming, and then he would pull security duty.

The Iraqi army was always someplace else, over the horizon or in hiding.

During duty of 18 hours or more at a stretch, the only evidence that Westerink saw of the enemy was the occasional gutted military vehicle. "I saw a couple of them blown up. I never saw any of them live."

Then came the news that his unit was heading up to the contested town of Nasiriyah.

"We knew we were moving into contact, so everybody was pumped up and ready to go," Westerink said.

Here, the curtain descends.

The next thing that Westerink remembers, he was in the hospital in Germany, told that his Humvee had been in a noncombat accident about 10 p.m. March 22.

Then, the considered opinion came to be that an Iraqi rocket grenade had struck the Humvee on the left side. It killed the driver, Sgt. Nicolas Hodson, 22.

Westerink had known Hodson for about two years. He was a single father of two sons and he was, Westerink said, a pretty nice guy.

Westerink now has some catching up to do, civilian-side. The last movie he saw was "Men in Black II," and he is clueless about what movies and music are now hot. He is craving the latest computer games.

He has some stories to tell, but also some secrets to hold. There are some things for which words fail, like the feeling of war. There are some things for which discretion is the better part of valor, like the significance of the Japanese tattoo near his left forearm.

"He hasn't even told me what it means," his mother said.

Bee Washington Bureau reporter Michael Doyle can be reached at (202) 383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com.


Sempers,

Roger