Posted on 08/23/2011 5:05:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Santa Clara native was apparently prone to sleeping on guard duty; fellow Marines took to disciplining him.
U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Harry Lew took his own life in his foxhole in Afghanistan after he was kicked and punched by fellow Marines, military officials tell NBC Bay Area news.
An investigation into the 21-year-old's April death says Lew "leaned over his M249 squad automatic weapon as it pointed to the sky, placed the muzzle in his mouth and pulled the trigger."
Lew wrote on his arm: "may hate me now, but in the long run this was the right choice I'm sorry my mom deserves the truth."
The suicide came moments after fellow Marines attacked Lew for repeatedly falling asleep on guard duty. An investigation shows Lew, from Santa Clara, was caught asleep at least four separate times in areas where "enemy attack was considered imminent." Military records show Lew, who was on his first tour in Afghanistan, was first counseled then disciplined by a sergeant for sleeping while on post.
At some point, Lew was forced to walk his rounds while carrying a single sandbag, symbolic of the weight of his responsibility to his fellow marines.
On April 3, Lew could not be raised by radio while standing post. A check of his foxhole found him asleep once again.
The unnamed sergeant then announced over the radio that "peers should correct peers," according to military documents. That led to what appears to be a sad series of events.
Fellow lance corporals [whose names have been redacted in the report] ordered Lew to dig a new foxhole as a punishment, then informed Lew he could go to sleep once the task was finished. Those corporals, however, did not inform the sergeant they had given Lew permission to sleep.
At 1:00 a.m., that sergeant, whose name has also been redacted from the report, "angrily confronted [Lew] about why he had again fallen asleep." Other Marines then demanded Lew to perform various physical tasks as punishment and would "stomp down" on Lew's back and legs if he failed to do an exercise properly.
"Towards the end of the physical training", the report says a "sandbag broke open at which point lance corporal [redacted] picked it up and poured the contents on Lew's chest and face as he lay with his back to the ground."
Convinced Lew was responding to his punishment with sarcasm and disrespect, fellow lance corporals then "kicked dirt on Lew, kicked him in the back of the helmet, punched him in the back of his helmet with a force that cut [his attacker's] knuckle."
At some point, a fellow Marine stepped in to stop the attack, saying he didn't "want it on his conscience if Lew killed himself" -- which is exactly what Lew did.
A sergeant is blamed in the report for giving responsibility for Lew's discipline to fellow marines.
"Further, he failed to intervene while those peers undertook inappropriate corrective actions." That sergeant faces court martial when the unit returns from Afghanistan, as does an unnamed lance corporal.
The military says unequivocally that Lew took his own life, though it the report does indicated more than one round was shot from Lew's SAW.
"This command mourns the death of Lance Corporal Lew" reads the final report. "His family and friends have my deepest sympathies" says his commanding officer.
Lew is a 2008 graduate of Santa Clara High School and was assigned to the 2nd battalion, 3rd marine regiment, 3rd Marine division.
His obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle says Lew wrote "Brand new Marine, feels good" on his Myspace page shortly after he joined the military.
DD, you didn’t read the thread all that well or you’d know that’s the scenario the summary court martial crowd had in mind.
Like most of your posts...
a combination of bookish fantasy and nonsense.
driftdiver, don’t you know? Guard duty is a team sport played because there aren’t any nearby bars for drinking. It isn’t as though some pull the duty while others sleep. And in muawiyah-world, there are just tons of guys doing the guard duty, because they will all get a good sleep after their shift is over. Lots of redundancy! And exhaustion is something that only happens due to medical condition!
Unfortunately, the US military rarely gets to pull combat duty in muawiyah-world...
You need to keep your wits about you ~ if you don't you could fall asleep on guard, or worse, shoot somebody's sheep, or maybe a vole!
Sounds to me you have no idea what guard duty is about.
MD, if we sent guys home for falling asleep on guard duty, EVERYONE would fall asleep on guard duty!
If you reward bad behavior, you get more bad behavior.
really who has suggested summary court martial eg execution.
You don’t have a clue about combat duty, or how and why guard duty is pulled. You’re like a dog watching TV, and insisting on writing a review of the show...
He talks like a REMF if there ever was one.
Not that there is anything wrong with REMFs...but it is what it is...probably read a few “Concepts of Strategy” books though.
Clueless.
I’ve seen plenty of posts which only had one guy in them. I guess the other ones were taking a nap.
Something was wrong with him, that's for sure. If the report is true. To me, this is a suspicious story. I'm wondering if he wasn't unpopular for other reasons.
“I’m wondering if he wasn’t unpopular for other reasons. “
Very possible, the kind of guy who would let himself fall asleep while on duty probably has other issues which would make him unpopular among those trusting him with their lives.
They may do that. I got to see them on guard duty ~ and they drank an awful lot of booze. They'd be tossing bottles all night onto the mine field.
It's possible I served more guard duty on the West German/GDR and West German/Czech border than the combined lot of you served anywhere combined.
Quite frankly you people are a pitiful lot tonight. Your lack of training in the finer and more subtle nuances of armed guard (and lookout for the less formal situations) is incredibly obvious.
And no, we don't do summary executions. That statement that begins with the penalties and concludes "as a Court Martial may direct" means TRIAL FIRST, PUNISHMENT LATER.
“But the sniveling twerp showed them !!”
Classy!
21 isn't a child, granny and it's spelled Corps.
awww mailman, don’t let it get to you
People didn’t fall asleep on duty when I was in. But then I only had 3 years where it really mattered.
When someone screwed up they faced the consequences, they didn’t whine about a medical condition or go cryin for their momma. If they did there wasn’t any sympathy.
the "too lazy" part of your statement assumes facts not in evidence.
When I was a hospital chaplain working pediatrics, we had a very sweet 7 year old girl whose brain was being crowded into dysfunction by a large and inoperable "benign" tumor. She was dying and nothing was working.
the first sign of the tumor was an absence seizure or something of the kind. Her parent's response? They gave her a spanking.
You can imagine what they were going through. And, forgive me, but you deserve to go through something similar. Until you are the world's foremost expert on the neuro-psychology of sleep, I'd recommend considering that you just might not have enough facts to judge someone as being lazy, as those parents didn't have enough facts when they jumped to the conclusion that their own child, who needed their love and understanding, was rude rather than ill.
Sad. RIP.
So you use a child to compare to this marine? Are you MAD!!!??
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