Found this on RN today. I am just clipping a few quotes from the article below. The link provided will take you to the LA Times. You are required to register for an account, but it is very quick and painless. Way to go Marines!

Marines volunteer to return to Iraq

RAMADI, IRAQ — Marine Cpl. Saul Mellado could be back in California, finishing the final months of his enlistment in a safe billet at Camp Pendleton.

Instead, the 23-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico is patrolling these war-torn streets only recently wrested from insurgent control — and bracing for an expected counteroffensive.

Mellado, a machine-gunner, knows these streets: the adults who eye the Marines with suspicion and the children who beg for candy and water. He was first dispatched to Ramadi in late 2004, a deployment during which 15 Marines in his unit — the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment — died and more than 200 were wounded.

Under Marine Corps rules about “short-timers,” Mellado could have skipped this return to Ramadi six weeks ago. But like 200 other members of the battalion — a quarter of its number — he asked to have his enlistment extended. Unlike a reenlistment, the move earns the Marines no bonus money, no promotion and no promise of a job shift or posting to a favored duty station.

SNIP

“I’m here so our sons don’t have to come here and fight someday,” he said.

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“I just told them: ‘We’ve been together this long. We need you — the young Marines need you,’ ” Jordan said.

In an infantry battalion, a sergeant major serves as the embodiment of institutional values to younger “grunts.” At 44, Jordan has been in the Marine Corps for 27 years.

“Finally I just told them, ‘Everybody who is with us, move to the right side of the room,’ ” Jordan said. Only a handful stayed put. About 175 moved immediately to the right side.

“I was blown away,” Jordan said. “In all my years in the Marine Corps, I never saw anything like it.”

Tags: Iraq, Morale, Terrorism, Troop Surge, deployment, military, veterans, war on terror //