The US Marine non-commissioned officer who appeared in Michael Moore’s anti-American diatribe, Fahrenheit 9/11, has been killed in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar was working as a Marine recruiter when he went before Moore’s camera, not knowing that the film would oppose what he stood for.

Raymond Plouhar said that all his 30-year-old son ever wanted to do was serve his country. …

Despite his son’s death, Plouhar said his views on the war are unchanged.

“We need to resolve the war,” he said. “If we walk out now, my son died for nothing and that will make me mad.”

I’m waiting for the NYT’s Maureen Dowd to proclaim Raymond Plouhar as an exemplar, since she wrote plainly that, “the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.”

Lance corporal Stephen Sensing in Fallujah, November 2005. USMC photo.

As I have written before, my eldest son, Stephen, is a US Marine who has been serving in Iraq since September. Today is his 20th birthday.

If you have a mind to, please leave a comment of birthday wishes and I will copy them to send to him via Motomail.

His unit deployed from their base camp in Fallujah on operations about the 20th of December or so and will remain in the field for several weeks. He got to call us on New Years Day on a satellite phone. I asked him where he was while he talked to us. “Manning the .50-caliber machine gun in the turret,” he answered.

His Christmas day was spent taking part in raids on al Qaeda strongpoints. They captured a number of prisoners, including some highly-sought al Qaeda senior leaders. Stephen said they carried some of them to the collection point in the back of his track while he covered them with a shotgun.

Twenty years . . . it seems like an eyeblink of time. Every time I start to get worried about him in combat in Iraq - and those moments do come, believe me - I find that the pride and gratitude I have for him outweighs my worry.

Semper fi, son, and thank you for your service.

It always happens - right after I announce one of my rare recesses from blogging I find a topic so compelling that I break my own vow to take time off writing.

In this case it is the combined media project between Time magazine and the Rocky Mountain News. They shared coverage of the procedures of US Marine Maj. Steve Beck, on whose shoulders falls the sad duty to notify families of Marines over a few western states that their loved one is dead.

Time’s version is almost exclusively a photo-essay with minimal narrative while RMN’s is a fairly detailed written narrative with extensive photo-illustration. Both are gripping, compelling pieces that should be read by every American.

They took me back to Dec. 2 when 10 Marines were killed and 11 wounded by bombs in Fallujah.

My son is based in Fallujah. Would I have heard by now that he is one of the ten? I don’t know. I don’t know how long notification takes. …

Now I know how long: not long. There is a frenzy of necessary confirmation activity by Headquarters, Marine Corps and the headquarters of the officer who make the notification, then the two-Marine notification team drives to the next-of-kin’s home and makes the notification. If the NOK isn’t there they wait. Out west, where Maj. Beck is assigned, the longest delay is often the time it takes for him to travel to the NOK’s home, which may be one or two states away.

The stories also took me back to the one time that duty fell to me. It was peacetime, the early 1980s - before cell phones or GPS to navigate. I was a first lieutenant assigned to Fort jackson, SC. My name reached the top of the installation-level duty roster just in time to be tabbed for NOK notification. I reported to the post’s casualty office for instructions. There I was assigned a government van and driver and given a written packet of information about the deceased soldier, the address of his NOK, a map and a government credit card.

My instructions were simple: “Memorize this paragraph. You are required to state it verbatim, without notes, to the next of kin. That’s all you have to do.” Unlike the Marines, the Army assigns different officers to notification duty and survivor-assistance duty. An assistance officer (actually a senior NCO) would be assigned to help the dead soldier’s parents with the funeral and settling his affairs; the soldier had not been married.

I got one final instruction before departing: “You must make the notification between 0600 and 2200. Use the credit card for any expenses related to this mission, including food and lodging if you need it. Don’t come back until you have made the notification.”

The dead soldier had been a member of the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC. He had died in an auto accident (fact was, he was DWI, but relating that fact was not my problem). The civilian casualty staffer at post HQ told me that tthe soldier’s father already knew his son was dead (via unofficial grapevine channel from his unit), but that it didn’t matter: the Army always sent an officer, in Class A uniform, to deliver the official word. Unlike Maj. Beck, I was alone; my driver was a driver, that’s all. I was also distinctly forbidden to call the NOK by phone, even to ask directions.

We set out for rural northwest South Carolina. The NOK’s address was an RFD box from a very small farming town. Because it was wintertime darkness had long fallen when we arrived. Absolutely everything was closed for the day; there wasn’t even a place to get a cup of coffee.

The van needed fuel and we did manage to find the town’s one gas station. It was, thank heavens, still open. I asked the attendant where Mr. “Smith” lived and showed him the address without telling him why I wanted it. The man shook his head and said he’d never heard of “Smith,” but that the RFD route started along a certain state route heading out of town, so maybe if we began at the first mailbox and kept going, we’d find it.

I remember clearly the RFD box number: 479. What a plan.

Refueled, I bought some snack crackers and a coke for my driver and myself and we drove off to find the state route. Much to our surprise, once we left the town the first mailbox was number 100. (Apparently, all the RFD numbers were three digits.) But the next was, yes, “101.” We kept going.

Believe it or not we followed the mailboxes all the way to number 479. There were many stops, wrong turns and restarts as we tried to stay on the state road; intersections were often not marked which road was which. Many mailboxes also were not marked at all and we simply proceeded on faith. Sometimes we drove a long way without seeing any box, then there would be one.

After almost four hours of navigating in the darkness, a mailbox marked 479 in simple handwritten, white paint ghosted into the headlights. It was 2145 hours. The house was set off the road about 40 yards. Bright lights shone through every window from interior lights. We turned in and parked near the front stoop. When I opened the door my ears were assailed by soul music coming from the house, very loud. I reached into the back seat and got out my Class A blouse (coat for you civilians) and saucer cap.

“Good luck, sir,” my driver called as I turned to go to the house.

“Thanks.” I walked up the wooden, rickety steps to the front door. I paused and ran my hands along my blouse to make sure it was straight and checked my cap. Then I knocked on the door loudly so it would be heard over the music. Momentarily a middle-aged (or so he seemed, hard farm labor can age you quickly) man opened the door. He was bleary-eyed and I immediately saw why: there were several open bottles of liquor on side tables behind him.

“Sir,” I said to him, “I am Lieutenant Sensing from Fort Jackson. I am told this is the home of Mr. ‘George Smith.’ If so, I would appreciate very much speaking with him.”

The man motioned for me to come in and said, “That’s me.” I stepped inside two steps, removing my saucer cap as I did. A young man in the room yelled at a boy to turn off the music, who quickly complied. I recall that there were a couple of women in the room, too.

“Mr. Smith,” I said very formally, “on behalf the secretary of the Army, I extend to you and your family my sympathy in the death of your son, Sergeant ‘Jim Smith.’” I don’t remember after so many years the paragraph I had memorized then. I know I said that another officer would contact them about making arrangements and settling their son’s affairs, and that he would be able to answer all their questions.

Uttering those words was 100 percent of my duties. I finished and Mr. “Smith” mumbled, “Thank you.” He offered his right hand. I shook it and said, “I really am very sorry for your loss, sir.” We dropped hands and briefly looked at one another face to face: he of a weatherbeaten black face, an uneducated farm laborer who had toiled in tobacco or bean fields all his life, who had worked dawn to dark to see his eldest son graduate from high school and become a soldier with a bright future. Then his son got killed one day on a rural road in North Carolina. And the next day I, a lily-white young officer, walked into his home from the night’s darkness. With no personal connection to his son, I stood in his sharecropper’s home purely by random chance of a duty roster to tell him that the secretary of the entire US Army mourned his young son’s death.

Mr. “Smith” turned away and so did I. There was nothing else for either of us to say to one another. I stepped out the door and walked back to the van, placed my blouse and cap in the back and slid into the front seat. The driver asked, “Home, sir?”

“Yes,” I answered, “if you’re okay to make the drive. We’ll stop for supper on the interstate.”

“Roger that, sir.” He turned the van toward the road where mailboxes were, or were not, marked with plain white numbers that haunted the roadside at 2200 hours, local time.

Before we reached the pavement, the former home of the dead soldier was reverberating again with loud soul music, booming through the darkness.

Been gone most of the day with Tennessee Marine Families packing boxes for mailing to Marines in Iraq and Afhganistan. We packed almost 250 boxes, each addressed to a different Marine. My son got one, of course. I completely forgot to take my camera.

Posting will be very light until Monday. I will not have much time at home until then.

This is the best Marine-birthday present I could have received.

Today is the 230th birthday of the US Marine Corps. I browsed to the USMC’s main site to look for the commandant’s message and paged through the photo gallery pages. It was an “ohmygosh!” moment to see this picture and caption on the third page or so:

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq – LCpl. Stephen Sensing, left, from Nashville, Tenn., and Sgt. Matthew Starr, Richmond, Minn., from 1st Platoon, 2nd Amphibious Assault Vehicle Company, 2nd Marine Division kick back prior to departing on an evening patrol Nov. 5. Photo by: Chief Warrant Officer 2 Craig J. Shell

Click here for a high-resolution version.

Man, this really made our day!

You can see other photos of Marines on the job beginning here.

Update: Michelle Malkin was kind enough to link to this post. She has put up a lot of other related links.

I just got the first satellite phone call from my Marine son, Stephen, in Iraq in almost two weeks. His unit spent that time running vehicle-mounted security patrols along two major highways “in the south,” which was as specific as he could be over the phone.

His unit is an amphibian assault unit, equipped with the amphibious assault vehicle, or AAV. I posted about the vehicle itself here.

They did engage the enemy and did come under fire. No Marines were killed, but several were wounded. One Marine NCO, caught in the blast of a jihadi car bomb, was evacuated to the States for treatment. I think the other wounded were a combination of treated and released or admitted to a field hospital in country.

Stephen said they patrolled for 12 hours every day, and spent another four hours per day on maintenance and mission prep and recovery. One AAV took the full brunt of a IED but the Marines inside suffered only light injuries. Stephen said that AAV’s add-on armor is proving very good. (”We have armor on top of armor.”)

I am joyous that Stephen is back at his base camp safe, but saddened that some of his friends were wounded. My wife and I know the evacuated NCO, having met him on a couple of occasions at Camp Lejeune.

Semper fi.

I just received a two-fer: an email (the first) from my Marine son, presently in Fallujah, and a phone call, both about the same time. Stephen said this will be his last phone call for a fairly long while, so I am guessing that his unit is moving out soon.

Stephen is a lance corporal of A Company, 2d Assault Amphibian battalion. Here is his email:

Reveille is early, around 0300. The mission is a Cordon and Knock, on a small village in the vicinity of Fallujah. A Cordon and Knock is a mission where a town is systematically searched for contraband. It is so called because Marines surround the house (cordon) while the search team knocks on the door and asks to search the house. The area had not been visited by Coalition forces for some time.

Our mission is to sweep the village for weapons and IED material. We are to arrive before first light and observe until sunrise, then sweep all the houses and leave by 1400. At 0330 we are on our vehicles getting communications checks and completing other pre-operational checks. My part in this op is to shadow our interpreter, to learn Arabic. (My platoon leader wants to have a few of his Marines know some of the language.).

Around 0400, six amphibious-assault vehicles (the Marines’ armored-personnel carriers, called amtracks or simply tracks) roll out the gate of our base camp. We arrive early as planned and notice no unusual activity. 0545 the sun is up and we roll in. You have to be deaf and blind to miss six 26-ton vehicles rolling into your village. The Iraqis do not fail to notice! The back hatch of my track opens and the fire team on the track jumps out, plus me and the ‘terp (interpreter).

The villagers are friendly and are happy to see us. The first house we arrive at the woman is baking bread. The man offers us some - quite a bit actually. The bread was quite good! The search team gets down to business. The occupants practically trip over themselves to help. I will not get into specifics on what and how the house was searched but I will say this: Iraqis have lots of foam mattresses and rugs, which they stack on dressers all the way to the ceiling. Yeah, I thought that was weird, too.

That is how we searched the village. No one had any illegal weapons (remember each adult male can have one AK-47 or other rifle) or any sort of contraband. We left earlier than expected. One other thing, our lieutenant hands out toys and pencils and candy to the kids. They followed him around asking for more. It really brightened up their day.

That is a typical mission for us. In the almost four weeks we have been here we have not encountered any jihadis or armed resistance. Our camp has only received some inaccurate mortar fire, but not very much at a time. Our artillery seems to have taken care of that problem, anyway. I love counter-battery fire!

His unit is ready for whatever the jihadis try to do to disrupt rhe coming referendum.