5th Marines unveils memorial to its fallen

[unhappycamper]

Standing 7 feet tall, a new granite memorial resembling a "Texas" barrier bears the etched names of the fallen members of 5th Marines and Regimental Combat Team 5 during their deployments to Iraq. Combat veterans and family and friends of the fallen gathered Dec. 7 at Camp Pendleton's San Mateo memorial park for the monument's unveiling.


5th Marines unveils memorial to its fallen
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Dec 11, 2007 13:30:02 EST

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — It was a 3,000-mile trek, but Deborah Smith had no doubt this was the place she had to be.

She traveled from her Orlando, Fla., home for a ceremony at Camp Pendleton, her hands tightly clutching a poster-sized photograph of “Toine” — her only son, who was killed in combat in Iraq three years ago.

Smith, who lost Lance Cpl. Antoine Demetrius Smith just days after he turned 22, joined scores of other relatives of fallen members of 5th Marines and Regimental Combat Team 5 for the Dec. 7 unveiling of a monument honoring the war dead.

“I was not going to let my son or any of the Marines’ loss to go to waste,” she said. “They did what they did because … it was something they wanted to do. I’m not going to let their memory just disappear. I’m going to let people remember them for what they did for them.”

The names of the fallen — 221 during 5th Marines’ combat deployments for Operation Iraqi Freedom — are etched into a 7-foot-tall black-speckled gray granite monument in a small memorial park at Pendleton’s Camp San Mateo.


Rest of artile at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/12/marine_memorial_071211/

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

1. This seems premature

Usually we wait until a war is over before memorializing the fallen.

I fear that they will need more granite before this is done.

Respect.