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Marine Corps Cpl. Bajro Buzaljko, 21, an ammunition technician with Regimental Combat Team 1's Task Force 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, performs a function test on a weapon to ensure its operability in Iraq. After fleeing war-torn Bosnia as a child, Buzaljko joined the Marines to defend the country that accepted him and his family with open arms. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Achilles Tsantarliotis[/caption]
Buzaljko said he cherishes memories of Bosnia prior to the civil war. He described the country as having a scenic environment with lush fields and streams. The erupting violence was completely contradictory of everything he remembered up to that point, he said.
"Before the war, it was a beautiful place," he said. "We would always play and have so much fun. It is full of history and had gorgeous scenery. Then one day, tanks and [troops] came through our town."
Not until mortars began falling in the town did Buzaljko realize the danger his home, and everything he knew, was in.
"My mother tried her best to keep me unaware of the violence surrounding us," Buzaljko said. "One day we were getting ready to escape the city, and we were covering the lights on our car to avoid detection. All of a sudden everyone started running; it was chaos. I heard this loud whistling, and all of a sudden, boom! My school was gone."Not until mortars began falling in the town did Buzaljko realize the danger his home, and everything he knew, was in.
Buzaljko's father and uncle spent a year doing hard labor with scarce food until United Nations officials helped to free them. When his mother woke him up to tell him his father was home, Buzaljko did not recognize him.
"I saw him standing in front of me, and I didn't know who he was," Buzaljko said. "He had several shirts on, and I could still see his bones through his clothing."
Bosnian soldiers running the concentration camp allowed only prisoners nearing death to go home.
After Buzaljko's family reunited, U.N. officials told them they could go wherever they wished. They wanted to go to America.
"We moved to New York, and my family started rebuilding our lives," Buzaljko said. "In Bosnia, my family was established. We had good jobs, financial security, everything we needed. It was taken away."
Buzaljko grew up appreciating life in Utica, N.Y., quickly accepting it as his new home and thoroughly enjoying the land of opportunity.
"It was great," he said. "Even as we were leaving Bosnia, they told my mother she could stay, but the children could not, since she came from a mixed marriage of Catholicism and Muslim. In America, that never even came up."
Buzaljko's interest in the military started in high school, where he was actively involved in the Junior ROTC program. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Buzaljko said, he knew he would take his interest further, and joined the Marine Corps after graduation.
"When we were attacked, it just made me feel like my home was being attacked again," he said. "I wasn't going to let that happen to me. That was the final factor in my decision to join. I wanted to go help fellow Americans."
During Buzaljko's first deployment -- to Afghanistan with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines -- he discovered another aspect of his service.
"When I got there, I realized not only was I doing my part for a country that took me in and helped my family, but I was helping other people in need, just like [the U.N.] helped me when my family was in trouble."
Buzaljko's care and concern have carried over to his deployment here.
It says a lot about someone to go back to a similar environment they left under such unfavorable circumstances, said Marine Corps Cpl. Matthew Clay, 23, a logistics operations center watch chief with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines. "Anyone who's lived through a war and volunteered to go back has a lot of courage. I have a lot of respect for him."
Despite the hardships Buzaljko's family endured to leave their war-torn home, they remain supportive of their son and his service to their new country.
"I am very proud; you can't even imagine," his mother, Vesna Buzaljko, said. "He joined to say €˜thank you' to the [United States] for welcoming us with open arms. It was a tough time when we left, but America took us in and saved our family. Now he has a purpose to help others like we were helped when we needed it, and we are so proud."
(Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Achilles Tsantarliotis serves with Regimental Combat Team 1.)
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Siblings Army Pfc. Marlene Banuelos and Army Staff Sgt. Normando Gallardo, natives of El Paso, Texas, swear the oath of enlistment administered by Army Col. Pat White during a Dec. 7, 2008, re-enlistment ceremony at Camp Striker, Iraq. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Scott Wolfe[/caption]
The siblings, natives of El Paso, Texas, both are serving in Iraq, although at different bases. Gallardo is assigned to the 40th Electronic Signal Brigade based in Balad, and Banuelos serves with the 1st Armored Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team in Camp Striker.six-year commitment to the Army together during a Dec. 7 re-enlistment ceremony at Camp Striker, Iraq.
It was fitting for the siblings to re-enlist together, as the two have influenced each other's careers. Banuelos said she initially intended on joining the Navy. When that path didn't work out, she changed her mind and decided to join her brother in the Army. Gallardo drove his sister to see the Army recruiter.
"It was her own decision," he said. "She couldn't go Navy, so I told her I could take her down to the Army recruiter."
Gallardo, a cable system installer, has re-enlisted for the sixth and what he said would be the final time. With 15 years in the Army, he has his sister beat by a few years both in service and age.
"I'm 22; he's 35. There are 13 years between us," said Banuelos, who serves as a gunner with the security detail team for the brigade's command sergeant major.
Gallardo said his younger sister had the final word on when the two would commit to their new service obligation.
"I had to call her up to ask when she wanted to do this," he quipped.
(Army Staff Sgt. Scott Wolfe serves in the 1st Armored Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team public affairs office.)
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Air Force Tech. Sgt. Israel Del Toro works out at the Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, fitness center. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Cecilio M. Ricardo[/caption]
The fight intensified when he woke up in the intensive care unit at Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
"They told me I was going to be in the hospital for another year, that I may or may not walk again, [and] that I was going to be stuck on a respirator for the rest of my life," Del Toro said. "I sat there for a few seconds and came back with, €˜You can kiss my ass,'" he said.The fight intensified when he woke up in the intensive care unit at Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
Del Toro was part of Tactical Air Command and Control, Detachment 1, 4th Air Support Operation Squadron, when he was deployed in December 2005 to Forward Operating Base Lagman, Afghanistan, in support of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. He was part of a scout team sent to investigate intelligence that the Taliban, including a high-value target, was using a supply route in the mountains near the southeastern city of Qalat.
A couple of days into the mission, an interpreter picked up chatter indicating that the Taliban were observing the unit's every move.
"The Taliban were talking about €¦ that they could see us when we leave out of the compound, that they see us when we come back in," Del Toro said. "They saw us if we left with the motorcycles, if we were leaving with the trucks."
Del Toro's lieutenant decided to take half a scout team and try to catch the Taliban at their own game. Five members of the 10-man team would head up the mountain after dark and try to catch the Taliban members as they returned the following morning. The rest, including Del Toro and the lieutenant, would provide overwatch from another vantage point.
When a couple of days passed with no action, the lieutenant decided his team would head into the town at the foot of the mountain. There wasn't much in the town, but a suspicious man going up the mountain drew their attention and the five-man team began to follow.
Del Toro told his lieutenant that he could take the shot, but the officer wanted to capture the suspect.
"I told him, €˜Sir, these guys are like goats here in Afghanistan. They can be in flip-flops. They can be barefoot. [But] they run up these mountains like gods.'"
The lieutenant still wanted to capture the man, however, but as Del Toro had predicted, the man escaped, leaving the team to traverse the one road that led up and down the mountain.
Del Toro's group was on its way to pick the rest of their team on top of the mountain when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb just after passing a creek.
"They always say your life flashes in front of you. I never believed it, but it's kind of true," he said. "I just thought of my family, my son; what we were supposed to do. We were living in Italy at the time. We were going to Greece. I was going to teach my boy how to play ball."
When Del Toro got out of the vehicle, he was on fire from head to toe.
"I knew that creek was behind me," he said. "But the flames overtook me, and I collapsed. I did think I was going to die there."
His comrades weren't about to let that happen, though. The lieutenant helped him up, and they both jumped in the creek.
Both the primary and secondary radios had been destroyed in the blast, making it impossible to call in air support for the team on top of the mountain that was caught in crossfire.
An Army private with a radio became Del Toro's mouthpiece.
"He's repeating everything I'm telling him," said Del Toro, who, as a joint terminal attack controller, normally would have made the call. "He eventually gets a hold of Lagman, and they say, €˜Hey, tell Gunslinger [Del Toro's call sign] he has A-10s and British airs coming in."
That was the last action Del Toro took that day. After the trauma of the blast, the third-degree burns covering 80 percent of his body, and the frigid dip in the creek, his body began to shut down. His brothers in arms knew how to keep him going, though.
"They knew that I had lost my dad when I was young, and how I said I would never let that happen to my son," he said. "They used that to keep me [awake]."
Del Toro remembers being loaded onto the helicopter that arrived after about 20 minutes. He remembers getting to the field hospital, where the doctor cut off his watch and told him he'd be OK. And that's all he remembers about that day.
That was December 2005. He woke up in March 2006. Losing four months of his life was surreal, he said.
"Sometimes I'll try and concentrate and see if I can remember anything," he said. "But I'm not even sure if they're memories, or hallucinations or dreams."
Del Toro did not get much time to dwell on his lost time. He had bigger demons to slay in recovering.
First, there was the news that he may not walk again and that he'd be on a respirator the rest of his life. In an act of defiance, Del Toro left the ICU at the end of April. A month later, he walked out of the hospital, breathing on his own.
Despite all he'd gone through, Del Toro said, he never once wished that he'd died. Still, his biggest personal fear later made that thought race through his mind in what he described as a "real dark hour."
"When you're as badly burned as I was, they ease you into seeing your face," he said. "There was one day where my wife and my therapist - he was my guardian angel €“ were helping me to the bathroom.
"I don't know if it was my wife or my therapist €¦ [who] slipped and fell and pulled the towel off the mirror, [but] I saw my face in there and I broke down," he said. "I just wished I died at that point."
It had nothing to do with being vain, and everything to do with his son and how he would react to his father's appearance, he said.
"I was like, €˜My God, if I think I'm a monster, what's my 3-year-old son going to think?'" he said.
Just as his therapist had assured him, however, Israel Del Toro Jr., after a brief hesitation, gave his dad a big hug when he heard his voice.
Del Toro, who hopes to remain on active duty, has had several speaking engagements since becoming an outpatient.
"I'm still an NCO in the Air Force. I've still got a job to do," he said. "Just because I got hurt, if I use that as an excuse not to go my job, I think that's a copout."
Del Toro has accepted that when he's finished with his recovery - he estimates he's got another 10 to 15 surgeries remaining - he won't be able to return to the field as an operator. Instead, he said, he would like to become an instructor.
It's the attitude one would expect from someone who, until questioned about their whereabouts, didn't know where his medals were. His Purple Heart and Army Commendation Medal, which he received in a June 24, 2006, ceremony, along with the Bronze Star he received for actions in Iraq, were in a box in a closet.
"For me, my medals aren't a big thing," the 12-year Air Force veteran said. "I went there to do my job. I saved some guys. I came back. I didn't expect to be rewarded for it."
Del Toro, a Chicago native, and his wife, Carmen, live near Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.
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Army Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Nein, who is on his third deployment to Iraq, serves with the Kentucky National Guard's 223rd Military Police Company, at Camp Taji, Iraq. Nein was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions as a squad leader with the 617th Military Police Company during an ambush on March 20, 2005. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill[/caption]
Army Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Nein didn't have to come back here. He served in Iraq twice before and was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions as a squad leader under fire. If anyone could have gotten a pass, it was Nein. But he wouldn't take it.
"I probably didn't have to be here this time, but I don't think that I would have missed it," Nein said. "I feel honored to be a part of this."Army Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Nein didn't have to come back here. He served in Iraq twice before and was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his actions as a squad leader under fire. If anyone could have gotten a pass, it was Nein. But he wouldn't take it.
Nein, 39, still leads in Iraq, this time as a platoon sergeant with the Kentucky National Guard's 223rd Military Police Company, providing escorts for the 18th Military Police Brigade's Iraqi Police Transitional Team. It is his third deployment in Iraq, and his fourth overseas tour this decade. The first was in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2001.
Nein first deployed here with the initial liberation force in 2003. But it was his second tour, in 2005, that would impact him the most. He was a squad leader with the Kentucky National Guard's 617th Military Police Company on March 20, 2005, when a convoy they were riding in was ambushed near the town of Salman Pak, south of Baghdad.
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Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army's vice chief of staff, presents a flag flown over Ground Zero in New York City to Army Sgt. Joel Dulashanti after a brief ceremony at the site for a group of wounded veterans. The ceremony was part of a United Service Organizations-Microsoft "Salute to Our Troops" weekend, Nov. 8, 2008. DoD photo by Samantha L. Quigley[/caption]
Dulashanti, a Cincinnati native, could have had a very different outlook on his situation.
Then a corporal, Dulashanti was deployed to Afghanistan as a sniper with the 82nd Airborne Division in May 2007. His platoon was near the Pakistan border when he and his partner were ambushed.Dulashanti, a Cincinnati native, could have had a very different outlook on his situation.
"We were dismounted, chasing down two guys, and they just happened to ambush us before we could ambush them," he said. "I was shot three times; through my left knee, through my right knee €“ which resulted in an above-knee amputation -- and once in my abdomen."
The latter injury caused the loss of abdominal muscle as well as the loss of part of his stomach and intestines.
Between the attack and Dulashanti's arrival at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, there were stops at Orgun-E and Bagram in Afghanistan. The whole process took a day. After a four-day stay at Landstuhl, he arrived at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center on May 8, 2007, where his family met him.
He was still an inpatient when President George W. Bush presented him with his Purple Heart medal on July 3, 2007; something he remembers as "pretty cool."
"It does mean a little bit to me," Dulashanti said. "I gave something to get that, but a lot of other people have them [too]. It's actually one of the few things that is actually given to you that you've €¦ earned, but didn't put any work into it," he added flashing a million-dollar smile.
The former distance runner and weightlifter spent part of his recovery learning how to walk on his new prosthetic leg, but it wasn't long before he wanted to take up another of his favorite activities again.
"I used to rollerblade a lot, [and] I continue to rollerblade a lot," he said. "It was weird, because there aren't any above-knee amputees that rollerblade, so I was the first.
"It was kind of difficult coming up with a prosthetic to use," he continued, "but I worked with my prosthetics and [one was developed through] trial and error." Dulashanti estimated the whole process took about a month.
Running is still difficult, he said, but he's determined to get back to it soon. He'd also like to get back to active duty, as well.
"I just started my medical board," he said. "Hopefully, cross my fingers, it won't be another six months. So, we'll see where that takes me. I'll get my feet wet again, and we'll go from there, but I would like to get back into the field and operate again as a sniper."
For now, though, it's a waiting game, and to fill the time he's taking classes in general education.
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Army 1st Sgt. Albert Rodriguez, first sergeant for the 4th Infantry Division's Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 4th Battalion, 4th Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, said he is proud of what he and his soldiers personify around the world.[/caption]
"For a lot of people in the world, American soldiers are the only goodness a lot of people will ever know; the only bible a lot of people will never read; and the only example of America and freedom a lot of people will ever see," said the Oxnard, Calif., native who is on his second deployment to Iraq.
"I am proud to serve, because as a member of the U.S. Army, I am part of a long line of soldiers who have fought and died for our freedom," he said. "In particular, I have had two uncles who gave their lives during World War II and the Vietnam conflict."For a lot of people in the world, American soldiers are the only goodness a lot of people will ever know; the only bible a lot of people will never read; and the only example of America and freedom a lot of people will ever see," said the Oxnard, Calif., native who is on his second deployment to Iraq.
"When I reflect on what their experiences must have been like," he continued, "I immediately appreciate all that is good in my life. I believe all soldiers should be proud of who they are and what they are doing, regardless of their job. They have all sacrificed so much for our country and our freedom."
Many of the soldiers in the first sergeant's company are directly involved in the planning, operation and execution of the Apache helicopter battalion's mission around the greater Baghdad region. His job is to coach, mentor and take care of soldiers as they conduct their daily tasks in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His company, deployed here just north of the Iraqi capital, uses the attack helicopters to directly affect the fight by protecting soldiers on the ground with aerial support.
Although the job could seem overwhelming, many of Rodriguez's young soldiers are performing like seasoned veterans, he said. Army Cpl. Jack Condon, 24, an aviation operations specialist from Catoosa, Okla., who works in the battalion's tactical operations center, said he relies on the advice he receives from senior noncommissioned officers to shape how he moves forward.
"Every 15 minutes, I get a [situation report] so I can inform the commander on the mission," he said. "I am at the center of the information flow. I ask for guidance from senior NCOs about what to do with a soldier or a situation, because every soldier and situation is different. That's how my NCOs are here, and I want to be the same."
As Condon and other soldiers in the company try to emulate their first sergeant, Rodriguez instills in them that taking care of soldiers is an NCO's top priority. How soldiers live while deployed reflects directly on their morale, the mission and esprit de corps, he said.
"Clearly, one of the most positive changes I have seen since my last deployment is the quality of life for our soldiers, who definitely deserve it," Rodriguez said, comparing today's conditions to those that were in place when he served during the initial invasion in March 2003. "The standard of living has been raised so high that we can never go back to the way it used to be. €¦ Trying to describe to a young soldier what it is like to live on a cot for six months is like trying to describe the days without the Internet: unimaginable."
(Army Sgt. 1st Class Brent Hunt serves in the 4th Infantry Division's Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs Office.)