Portraits of a War

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Registered: 07-01-2004
Portraits of a War
Thu, 07-22-2004 - 12:16pm
Portraits of a War--Link to many, many more personal portraits at the end.

Tough sergeant leads by example

NAME: T.R. Sparenberg

RANK: Marine sergeant

AGE: 26

HOMETOWN: Virginia, Ill.

JOB: Squad leader of 14 Marines, Charlie Company Engineers, 6th Engineer Support Battalion



CAMP CHESTY, Iraq -- Sgt. T.R. Sparenberg climbs into the truck with the presence of John Wayne and the rugged look of the Marlboro Man.

"Listen up," he says in a deep, serious voice. "If we see any civilians, you do not fire until I fire. I'll be the one who ends up in the psychiatrist's chair. If they are armed, go ahead and mess them up."

He pauses.

"Good to go?" he asks.

"Err!" the 14 Marines grunt back.

Good to go.

They ride in a 7-ton truck through the Iraqi desert, 14 Marines sitting shoulder to shoulder on a wood box filled with explosives.

This is only one small squad of Marines, but it is about to deal with all of the major issues facing the entire U.S. military: Will ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons? Who will live or die? And how long will this war last in these awful conditions?

Sparenberg's squad is cruising across the desert with ease and bravado, heading north through enemy territory.

Led by this barrel-chested warrior, a Marine's Marine.

A rock of a man.

Sparenberg, 26, of Virginia, Ill., stands and studies the horizon, looking for Iraqis. He's so proud of his squad, to be riding into war with them. And he's promised each of their families that he'll bring them back.

Physically and emotionally.

"Being a 26-year-old Marine who has been in the Marine Corps for five years, I use the term 'psychiatrist's chair' when I talk about shooting a civilian," he says. "I'd rather have that on my shoulders than having an 18- or 19-year-old saying, 'Geez, what have I done?'

"I'm gonna make that decision myself. If it's wrong, I'll pay the consequences."

Sparenberg walks down a row of white, two-man pup tents dug into the sand, waking up his squad: "Reveille!" he screams. "Reveille! Wake up, you baby killers!"

Everybody starts to laugh -- nobody loves children more than Sparenberg, but he uses gallows humor to deal with the stress. Maybe it doesn't sound funny back home, where the war is reduced to sound bites and TV images that look like something out of a movie, but it does here, especially on a day like this, after you wake up and take a crap in a hole.

A day when you wake up and your fingers are cracked and bleeding because it's so dry.

And your hair is crusty from last night's sandstorm.

And you are about to spend another day in the same pair of underwear.

And your toenails are starting to rot.

And you feel like an animal, digging through the trash, scrounging for an empty water bottle to fill.

And you're tired from being up all night on fire watch.

And you would kill for a cold beer.

And you sweat so much you don't bother with deodorant.

And you don't even know what day it is. Or what month.

And you don't know whether you are going to be alive tonight. And you are OK with that.

And the only thing that makes you happy is getting some mail.

And if you have another bag of Skittles, you are going to freak out because they come in almost every MRE (Meals Ready to Eat).

And you're hungry because it's so damn hard to eat jambalaya for breakfast.

And you might have to kill somebody today.

And the most popular reading material is Maxim, Playboy or the really nasty stuff. And you are carrying enough bullets to kill a small neighborhood.

And you don't even jump anymore when you hear an explosion.

And you have no idea when you are going home.

And you might have to kill somebody today.

Or maybe, you might give a little child some water, to try to start the healing process. But can one Marine really do anything to start something like that?

And your heart races when you hear a car horn, one of the signals of a gas attack, because you can't stand the thought of putting on your rubber boots and rubber gloves and gas mask again, considering it's 108 degrees. In the shade.

And everything you thought you knew, all the social norms, are gone, and the world has turned inside out.

And you might have to kill somebody today.

And you don't know whether your equipment is going to work because this is the Marines, and the Army gets all the money.

And you're so tired, so drained, so raw that you can have a complete conversation using only swear words with a few grunts thrown in for effect.

And you've grown so close to the guys in your squad, they feel like brothers. No, they are brothers. Maybe even closer.

And the humor gets a little rough.

But T.R. Sparenberg is a rock at the center.

As the guys get out of their tents and start to dig breakfast out of a box, they gather around him. Sparenberg sits on a camp stool, rising slightly above the others. He's a complicated man: cutting, but painstakingly polite, strong and bold, decisive and certain. He attacks every issue straight on, with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

He puts his canteen cup on a fire, an old ammunition box converted into a camp stove with diesel fuel, warming some coffee.

Somehow, he makes all this chaos and absurdity feel normal. He's so strong, such a good guy. He's something to cling to when you are about to lose it.

If every war has music associated with it -- Jimi Hendrix in Vietnam, for example -- the theme song for Sparenberg's squad is "Gin and Juice."

They played it on a portable CD player while they waited to invade Iraq, listening on speakers held together with tape.

They played it at a camp in the middle of the desert while they got haircuts.

They played it while driving through the desert on a security patrol.

"Rollin' down the street sippin' on gin and juice," Sparenberg sings. "Laid back! With my mind on my money and my money on my mind. I got me some Seagram's gin. Everybody's got the cups, but they ain't chipped in."

Sparenberg starts to dance like a cowboy. Like he just got off a bull. Legs bowed. Arms stiff but moving slightly above his shoulders. It's an old habit.

"Sippin' on gin and juice," he sings.

Before he joined the Marines, Sparenberg was a professional bull rider. "I started riding bulls my senior year in high school," he says. "I needed an aggressive sport.

"I really enjoyed it and kind of excelled at it. Made some money at it."

He traveled the rodeo circuit, competing mostly in the Midwest, but he quit last year. "I thought I was getting too old to stay up with 18-year-olds," he says. "I get here, and I'm hanging out with 18-year-olds and doing the same thing they are. And I think I'm cheatin' myself."

Sparenberg tried college,but he developed a nasty drinking habit.

He was headed downhill, he says. "I needed something to do."

He went and saw a recruiter.

It happened to be a Marine, and he signed up for 6 years. Just like that.

"It was the first office I walked into," Sparenberg says. "A lot of these Marines say they grew up wanting to become a Marine, and they feel their destiny was to be a Marine. Basically, I found mine as an accident. I don't regret it by any means. It was a great choice, and I stand behind it, and I love every minute of it."

Sparenberg grew up a child of divorce, so he was in no rush to get married. "My mother and father divorced when I was 11 years old," he says. "My mother remarried and divorced again. Now, she's married to another guy who treats her quite well. My mother kept asking me why I didn't get married, and it's because I didn't want to get divorced."

Sparenberg and his wife, Amy, were married one day before he was deployed in January. They had been dating for 5 1/2 years.

"It took an act of war to get me married," he says, joking.

Then, his voice drops to that dead-serious tone. "It was the right thing to do. If anything happened to me, I would want her to be taken care of. It also eased her mind. She can now call the unit and find out things that they won't tell a girlfriend.

"She can also receive other benefits. But that's not the reason I did it. It was the right thing to do. We lived together for about three years. Basically, we've been married that whole time."

He has wrapped tape around his wedding band, so it doesn't fall off. "It fit my finger fine when we left," he says, "but I've lost some weight."

They are planning to have a big wedding ceremony when he returns.

"A military wedding," he says. Sparenberg plans to finish college, become a commissioned officer in the Marines and fly helicopters.

"Of course, I believe coming from the enlisted side, I would have an upper hand in leading Marines," he says. "I've been there and done that, as opposed to somebody who has done 4 years of college and walked right into it. In my opinion, that person could be clueless."

He has watched documentaries, learning about the great leaders in history, trying to copy some of their techniques.

"If my Marines don't have faith in themselves," he says, "I have faith in them."

As his squad packs the truck before leaving for Baghdad, a familiar song plays on the CD player.

Sparenberg and the 14 Marines in his squad sing along. It should be a scary moment, heading into Baghdad, but everybody is laughing and smiling, just like their leader.

"Sippin' on gin and juice," he sings.

Portraits of a War

http://www.freep.com/news/portraitsofwar/port.htm