Posted on 11/01/2001 1:11:15 AM PST by 2Trievers
Marines Study Poetry as They Prepare for Battle
By Claudia Parsons
ABOARD USS PELELIU (Reuters) - U.S. marines poised for battle are taking time off between keeping fit and cleaning their guns to study anger management and World War One poetry.
``(The war poetry) gives them an outlet to maybe express what they're going through right now,'' said Captain Chris Picado, who teaches an English class to 18 marines on board the USS Peleliu warship in the Arabian Sea.
``If anything it'll make them better writers to their wives,'' said Picado, keen to be a high school teacher after she leaves the marines where she works in intelligence.
British poetry from World War One has been a popular choice, with Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est among the favorites.
``The way some of the poets describe some of the wars, it's very graphic,'' said Lance Corporal Garret Clapp from Michigan who prepares weapons for Harrier jets based on the ship.
``You look at the movies and the way they make things very horrific and lifelike with blood and guts -- to be able to take those same images and describe them so that I, the reader, can get the same effect, it's really amazing,'' said Geoff Newson, 23, from Portland, Oregon, a sergeant in the military police on the Peleliu.
``Just by what he said you actually can feel it, or you can get a mental picture of the death or the awful sights and sounds and smells that they were going through during that time.''
LIGHTNING MISSIONS
The Peleliu and two other ships in a marine expeditionary unit carry around 2,200 marines trained for lightning missions in hostile territory, from seizing airfields to emergency evacuations and raids.
The U.S. military will only say the unit is supporting Washington's ``Operation Enduring Freedom'' anti-terror campaign, now focused on Afghanistan (news - web sites). It has confirmed involvement in just one incident ``in country'' -- the recovery of a downed helicopter in Pakistan.
But few doubt the marines will play a role. The marines on the Peleliu say they are ready for anything.
That means the Peleliu is a stressful place, according to one of the ship's chaplains, Donald Troast, who teaches an anger management course to 17 marines on board.
``We don't judge anger as negative or positive,'' Troast said. ``It's an emotion that we all have. The folks who come to the class realize they are not acting it out as healthily as they could.''
Others have their own ways of dealing with the pressure of long periods on ship with little or no privacy and long working days.
Staff Sergeant Kion Clark from Philadelphia likes to go up on the flight deck at dawn each day to greet the sunrise for a few moments of solitude.
Colonel Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the marines on board, likes to run around the flight deck for an hour to gather his thoughts, while William Jezierski, navy commodore of the marine unit, reads Tom Clancy novels when he has a spare moment.
``I don't know anybody who actually writes poetry,'' said William Griesmeyer, 33, from Kettering, Ohio, another student of the English class.
Newson, who plans to join the police back home in Oregon when he leaves the marines, agrees that poetry is ``lost in our generation.''
``I don't really write it down. Nowadays we can e-mail, that's how to document how you feel, keep in touch with the outside world,'' he said.
``E-mail is pretty much my poetry -- writing my thoughts, my feelings so other people can understand what I'm going through.''
BAHHHHHHRRRAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAA.
A few film clips of the WTC attacks ought to keep their anger "managed" properly...
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Amid the crosses, row on row ...
People's personality change, you get short tempered, and it is against the people who you need to depend on the most. Just imagine being locked up in a huge room with 3500 people, people you cannot get away from ALL DAY. At work, you get to go home. Not on ship.
If you have a job to do, the time passes, but Grunts DO NOT have a job while on board, they are bored stiff. You can only run so many times in a circle on that flight deck or do P.T. in the hanger deck. The rest of the time is spent...WAITING FOR THE WORD.
What word? The word to go, the word to sleep, the word to wait, the word to eat, the word to make a head call...just waiting. Waiting can drive you nuts, especially when you know fighting is going on, and you aren't in it.
I bet it's really stressful for a marine-ette poetry teacher floating around in the middle of the ocean with 2,200 Marines. How long before she gets knocked up and sent home?
WTF were our nation's leaders thinking when they put women on warships?
-ccm
The place was airless and cramped, not many ways to let of steam, the incidents of fights between the lads increased, if some one pissed you of there was no escape.
It was the more intellectual challenges that helped holdback the boredom and the stress of doing nothing in between patrols, and helped reduce fights, Chess tournaments, studying a foreign language and yes even a few time poetry, it was on such a tour that I heard of Wilfred Owen.
Tony
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.