Posted on 03/26/2003 3:48:33 PM PST by Las Vegas Dave
Lorain- Sgt. Jose Torres' family - both in Ohio and in North Carolina - had been searching the grainy television images for days, hoping to see the Lorain native if only for a moment, proof undeniable that he was OK.
News came Monday - five days into the war - that he wasn't.
Torres was injured Sunday in southern Iraq while traveling in a convoy of armored personnel carriers. Several members of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Division were killed in an ambush. Torres survived. But he has shrapnel in his leg and buttocks, his family said.
They expect him to return home within three weeks after recuperating at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
"I was scared when I got the call, but I was relieved to hear that he was all right," said Torres' wife, Gennifer Williams Torres. She wore a red, white and blue gown when the couple married July 5.
Immediately after hearing the news Monday, Gennifer Williams Torres - who lives on base at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C. - called home to Lorain and shared it with her in-laws, Karen and Freddy Torres, in Lorain.
Karen Torres turned on CNN at once, she told The Morning Journal in Lorain. And there was her son, Jose, being carried off a helicopter on a stretcher, she said. "I know he is in good hands," Karen Torres said yesterday.
Jose Torres, 26, enlisted in the Marines even before graduating in 1995 from Lorain's Southview High School. There weren't many jobs in Lorain, his mother said, and he saw the military as his best opportunity.
Yet waiting and worrying the past week has been tough, Karen Torres said, especially with the tedious television war coverage. Yesterday, she had tuned the TV to a soap opera instead of the news.
"They give you sketchy details and then your heart stops," Karen Torres said. "We know more, but we don't know more."
TRUE AMERICANS!
God bless them.
I saw this Sgt.'s wedding party at a park here in town when I was on patrol one day. I remembered seeing that wedding dress.
Hope he recovers quickly. Semper Fi.
In God We Trust…..Semper Fi
Yup, he will get some teasing over this. Forest Gump syndrome. I had a friend that got hit in the ahem "rear end" and he had to stand up at the bar for about a month.
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