Roy Exum: Is It Ever Worth It?

  • Wednesday, May 27, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

There is a better-than-average chance General John Kelly could soon be named as the new Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. He’s one of four men who have been mentioned in prudent fashion to follow General Joseph Dunford (remember that name for a few minutes) as head of the Corps. General Dunford, who held the job less than a year, has just been chosen by President Obama as the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Kelly fell under the nation’s gentle gaze on Monday of this week when hundreds gathered to honor our fallen heroes at a very moving Memorial Day service at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

General Kelly was the ideal speaker, as you’ll soon learn, and Pier 82 was packed.

The general is known for his direct and forceful manner, shedding pomp and bluster in a way the troops that serve under him adore. Outside of the legendary Chesty Puller, John Kelly is the only other Marine to ever get a battlefield promotion where, in Iraq, he was made a brigadier general on foreign soil.

One month later, in April of 2003, he was driving “Task Force Tripoli” on its initial march into Baghdad, Samarra and Tikrit when an imbedded reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked General Kelly, considering the size of Saddam’s forces and his vast array of tanks, artillery and chemical warfare, if the fierce officer would ever consider a defeat. General Kelly somewhat famously replied, “Hell, these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima. Baghdad ain’t (crap!)”

Now that you have the picture, General Kelly is also widely known for reaching out to families of fallen warriors. For years he has sought out the families of Marines killed under his command and quite often he wondered aloud, “My sense is that it is inconceivable for anyone to understand that has not had his or her heart pierced with such sadness.”

General Kelly had two sons who followed him into the Marine Corps. The youngest, Robert, enlisted several days after he graduated from Florida State and before he was finally commissioned as an officer, he had completed two tours in Iraq.

By late 2010, Robert and his 32-man were in the Sangin district of Afghanistan on an isolated patrol and the fighting was intense every day. Two of his men were hurt badly and the second lieutenant got in touch with his dad, who immediately began to make daily trips to Walter Reed to care for his son’s men. Because General Kelly had access to classified material, he knew his son was “living on luck” and he sent emails to the extended family, “Pray, Pray, Pray He’s such a good boy … and a Marine.”

At 6:10 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 9, General Kelly was drinking his coffee when there was a knock on the door. When John opened it with due curiosity, there stood his very best friend in the Marine Corps, General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. “When I recognized he was wearing his full-dress uniform, it was disorienting, almost debilitating.

“At the same time my mind seemed to recall in detail every memory and image of Robert I ever had. From the delivery room to the voice mail he’d left a few days before he died … it was a graphic as if I was watching a video … it really did seem like hours but it was actually no more than a minute or two.”

General Kelly walked down his front steps to speak to Dunsford’s wife and escort the other close fiends that had accompanied the Dunfords to his house. “And then I did the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I walked upstairs, woke Karen with the news, and watched her heart break.”

Now let me share what Jim Michaels, a reporter for USA Today, wrote what General Kelly said from the podium of the USS Intrepid in New York the day before yesterday: “Since the instant I received the news in the foyer of my home from a casualty officer executing his sacred duty, until the day my Robert was buried two weeks later, I asked myself the same question a million times over," said Kelly, now head of the U.S. Southern Command for the Marine Corps. “Was it worth it?”

“(Our Marines) are, as they have always been, good and decent youngsters, mostly from the neighborhoods of our cities, and small towns across America. Almost all are from 'salt of the earth,' working-class homes and more often than not are the sons and daughters of cops and firemen, factory and service workers, farmers and the like," he said.

But then General Kelly, a career Marine, had to face his own son’s death in combat. “I desperately tried to convince myself that it was all for something," he said. "I worked so hard at believing his life was worth the sacrifice on the altar of America's freedom."

But on the morning Robert’s remains were to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery, Kelly finally got his answer. “It didn't matter what I thought," Kelly told his hushed audience.” It doesn't matter what the living think."

What mattered, the general explained, was what his son had thought, that he was doing what he wanted to do: Leading Marines in combat.

“He had decided it was ... important to be where he was that morning in the Sangin River Valley, Afghanistan, to be doing what he was doing that morning with his Marines and his Navy docs that he loved so much and led so well," Kelly said.

"Was it worth his life?" Kelly asked. "It's not for me to say."

Semper Fidelis.

Royexum@aol.com


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