Columbus, Ohio – In tiny farming communities and the edges of rust-belt cities across central Ohio, families, neighbors and friends took in, with a mixture of pride and a growing unease with the war in Iraq, the news that 20 Marine reservists serving with units based here and in a Cleveland suburb were killed this week.
People were hanging American flags all over Sabina, population 2,800, to honor Lance Cpl. William Brett Wightman, 22, who was killed Wednesday along with 13 other Marines and an Iraqi interpreter. A roadside bomb blew up their lightly armored amphibious troop carrier in the hard-fought province of Anbar.
“I could feel it,” his mother, Pam Saville, said of the moment she heard the news that the Marines from Lima Company, based in Columbus, were killed. “It was something inside me.
“Brett’s unit has been hit so hard recently,” she said, recalling two Marines killed in July and another five Ohio reservists from the same company in May.
“And at that moment,” she went on, “I felt proud of Brett, but also angry about our country being there.”
Sitting nearby, shaking with anger and clutching her younger stepbrother’s dress uniform, Stephanie Finley spoke of the bravado the young Marines shared.
“When I talked to him a month ago, he said he loved what he was doing. He said he would go back if he had to,” she said.
“I love my brother and that’s why I tried to talk him out of going in the Marines,” she said. “I didn’t want him to go to Iraq because I don’t believe in what we’re doing there.”
Despite the patriotic display of flags, her doubts seemed shared by others in the small town where nearly everyone knew Wightman.
“With that young man getting killed, it’s close to home now,” said Ronald Simmons, a retired carpenter and lifelong Sabina resident. “I don’t like it. I’m ready for the troops to come home.”
After graduating from the local high school, Wightman worked for about a year for a concrete company, Gradeco Paving, run by Tom and Cathy Woods.
“His loss feels so close,” Cathy Woods said of the tight-knit relationships in the town. “For a while now, I’ve felt we have done what we can do in Iraq. It’s time to bring the soldiers home.”
Michael Bigelow, a friend of the Wightman family who served in Iraq with a Marine reserve unit based in Cincinnati, said he sensed a change in the troops’ attitudes from believing they were helping the Iraqis to simply wanting to protect each other.
“Losing Brett makes me want to go back to Iraq,” he said. “But to go back for the other soldiers. I feel like we’re beating a dead horse over there.”
The Marines killed in the two incidents this week, the roadside bombing on Wednesday and an ambush that killed six Marine snipers working on foot, all were serving with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, 4th Marine Division, which arrived in Iraq in March to be attached to the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force.
In the standard Marine formation, the battalion has a headquarters and service element, which is based in Brook Park, a Cleveland suburb; three rifle companies, including Lima, based here; and a weapons company, with heavier fire power such as mortars and machine guns, which is based in Akron.
The snipers came from the headquarters element, but one of the Monday casualties, Lance Cpl. Daniel Deyarmin, was reportedly attached to the weapons company.
While the Pentagon still has not released all the names, Marines here said that because of the practice of mixing in or attaching Marines from other units, not all of the casualties were actually from Ohio.