A late evening chat with a Marine in Ramadi

Dexter Filkens, NY Times:

It is a lonely night on the rooftop of the government center in this rubble-strewn town, and Lance Cpl. Joseph Hamlin is talking about his life.

"I'm 19; I'll be 20 in September," he says, his face shrouded in the darkness. "I'm from western Georgia, on the Alabama line. LaGrange. They say it's the biggest little city in Georgia. It means 'the farm' in French. Lafayette was there."

Corporal Hamlin is at Post 1, overlooking downtown Ramadi from the northwest corner of the government center. His post is a concrete-block hut covered in sand bags. It has just enough room for two people.

"This is my first time ever," he says. "I joined in May '05. Right after I graduated high school. Graduated high school on Friday, showed up for boot camp on Monday. Didn't take any time off."

He laughs. The streets below are mostly invisible in the darkness. Even at 11 p.m., the temperature here hovers at well over 100 degrees. Every few minutes or so, Corporal Hamlin picks up his night-vision scope and peers down the alley that juts out directly north from his post.

A volley of shots ring out, but they are too far away to cause worry.

"Over yonder there," he says, pointing with a slow roll of his hand.

"Jeff Foxworthy, he bought some land in LaGrange," Corporal Hamlin says. "You know him, they call him a country comedian. 'You must be a redneck,' stuff like that. He bought some land down there to hunt on. It's good hunting."

He peers into the scope of his rifle.

"I'm a decent shot. Pretty good," he says. "Not like the snipers."

...

Corporal Hamlin has laid out four weapons: an M-240 belt-fed machine gun, an M-16 rifle, an M-79 grenade launcher and a rifle called a Sam-R that he especially likes.

"It's like my .308 Remington — it's got a free-floating barrel, too," he says. "That's my favorite."

"I joined the Marines. I'm hoping to go to college. When I'm in, I'll do what I can for my country. Do something to help this country."

Cradling the Sam-R, he looks into the blackness. "Here it's more difficult," he says. "It's not like all you have to do is be quiet and still and just shoot whatever comes by. Like a duck blind. These guys will play. A turkey don't play. A turkey don't shoot back. He just turns around and runs. They shoot back."

...

Midnight nears. Corporal Hamlin turns back to his favorite subject. "Oh yeah, they got pigs down there. They like to play. You shoot one of them with a .357 right in the head and they keep running. My dad got gored by one of them once. That's some cool hunting.

"I want to kill some bear. I want to go with a bow. A long bow. Not even a compound bow," he says. "You know the difference? A compound bow has the pulleys. Long bow is just the bow. I want to go with a long bow. Kill a big-ass bear."

"My dad lived in China," Corporal Hamlin says. "He ran the Duracell plant there. I lived there. I learned martial arts. Aikido, which is Japanese. Tae kwon do, which is Korean. I'm a second-degree black belt."

"If I had a choice between this, martial arts and hunting, I'd take hunting easy. No alcohol, womens or anything like that, like some guys."

...

A nice story and it shows that Fikens can write something interesting if he gets out of his Baghdad hotel. He should do it more often. I have seen several stories about Ramadi that were written about what the Marines see of the enemy from this building. I don't like seeing them in such a defensive position. It appears that our strategy in Ramadi is to just hang around and keep the enemy from taking over, but not doing enough to take the enemy out. I think that ultimately this type of passive aggressive strategy is more costly in lives to both sides. Apparently the plan with Ramadi is have the Iraqis get strong enough to take out the enemy. That would be a greal morale boost for the whole country, but I hope it does not take too long.