Front lines - Afghanistan
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Raised in the Mission Valley, Lieutenant Colonel Ted Adams serves in the United States Marine Corps. Adams is the son of Dee and C.W. Adams of Polson and is serving his second tour of Afghanistan in the 9th Engineer Support Battalion of 3rd Marine Logistics.
A 1983 graduate of Polson High School, Adams attended the University of Montana for a year before joining the Marine reserve in 1985. He earned a BA in education and accepted a commission as an officer in 1992.
“I have been an active-duty officer ever since,” Adams said.
Adams and his wife Tammy, who’s from Missoula, have a son Trevor, 22, and a daughter Raeann, 17. Trevor will graduate from the U of M this fall, and Raeann will graduate from high school.
Adams and his family have been stationed in Okinawa, Japan for almost five years.
“We have not been able to get home much to see family … If we’re lucky we’ve made it back once a year. Being on Japan has made that even more difficult,” Adams said.
“I will likely retire next fall,” Adams said, “unless the Marine Corps makes me an offer I can’t refuse.”
“I am ready to return to Western Montana and put that education degree to work teaching history/government and maybe coaching,” Adams explained. “I have a lot of worldly experience to share. The Marine Corps has enabled me to see the world and experience amazing things. I don’t have a single regret other than being away from family and the great state of Montana.”
Every so often Adams sends an email update to his parents. He agreed to share some of his messages over the next couple of weeks.
“There are thousands of great Americans out here doing amazing things. I hope that comes across in my writing,” Adams added.
Adams and his battalion of “just over 600 Marines and Sailors spread out in Helmand Province” provide support for the 1 Marine Expeditionary Force.
Three days in a row. That’s how long we’re hoping we can go before something else weird happens. I’d really like to see us go a couple of weeks … This is a place where gravel is worth $700 a cubic yard, where a paved road is only a dream and Improvised Explosive Devices occur as frequently as normal traffic accidents in the U.S.
Simple mistakes are driving me crazy. Don’t sweat the small stuff, right? We’ve had six accidents in less than one month — one smashed thumb in an armored door, two legs pinched in armored doors, one toe smashed by a forklift, one hand shot by a nail gun, and an arm burned by hot sparks from welding. We’ve medically evacuated one Marine for torn ligaments in his knee. The injury occurred before deploying, but he was hoping to gut it out to complete a combat tour (that’s how bad he wanted to be here.)
… We topped off the week with an IED wounding one of explosive ordinance disposal Marines. His left side was peppered with fragments. He has a fractured skull and will need a skin graft to his left triceps. The Marine behind him caught the brunt of the IED; he lost both legs and eventually his life. They couldn’t revive him on the helicopter. He was a dog handler who had just lost his dog to an IED about a week before that. So how was your week?
Intermixed in all of that there are success stories, too. … We’re very spread out. We have Marines who pump fuel from industrial sized bladders, and Marines who make sure that everyone’s generators are running. We also purify water and do laundry, literally. We have deployable field units for washing clothes, which is a big deal to guys who spend all day in the dust and dirt. …
Our first road improvement project wrapped up recently. … Our guys graded, graveled and compacted about five miles of road. There were plenty of enemy engagements and IEDs all around the area where they were but never where they were, while they were working.
I still say there are great Marines and Sailors out here. You can hear them arguing about who gets to go out on a convoy mission next. … Each night leaders have to make Marines go back to their rooms and sleep, or they’d stay late working on the trucks.
We had another IED strike by one of our convoys. The vehicle was pushing mine rollers, designed to trigger the pressure devices buried in the road. If it works, the mine roller takes the brunt of the explosion; and the vehicle and personnel behind it are safe. … The gunner in the turret on top of the vehicle is probably the most exposed to the blast and shrapnel.
Ever wonder what’s in a name? Our turret gunner by the name of Fortune doesn’t wonder. The sun was going down so at the exact moment the IED blew up he was turning his head away and down to change over from sunglasses to clear protective lenses. Parts of the mine roller smashed against his gunner shield destroying the left side of the shield and seriously damaging his weapon. He has two or three scratches on his face — no serious injuries.
Most of us here are very tired of the media. There doesn’t seem to be any objective reporting. Seventy-six killed in a month of fighting a war is a headline hinting at a failed war strategy. In California it would be a headline, too; if you were talking about the murder rate it would be seen as a huge success in a state where than 178 people die each month from murder. How many of those people died for a worthy cause? How many died having never made a difference in some else’s life? I am guessing that most everyone here, just by his or her presence, has made a difference. … Military doctors and nurses work to save the lives of our warriors as well as civilians who are injured either as unwitting participants of battle or by the multitude of brutal injuries which are possible in a less-than-third-world environment.
It’s not to say there aren’t examples of tragic loss of life ... it’s also tragic to survive the hazards of war and do something stupid which ends your own life. I attended a memorial for a Marine who picked up another Marine’s weapon and in a test of ‘trust’ put the weapon to his chest and said, “ I trust that the Marine who owns this weapon properly cleaned it and made a safe weapon when we came inside the perimeter.” He pulled the trigger and shot himself. There’s trust, and there is stupidity. We teach that you should ‘treat every weapon as if it were loaded.’ What is most tragic about his loss of life is explaining to his family how he died.
Amidst all the important things we do here, there are occasional tasks that remind us that we have to remain sensitive in combat. The company which produces the scopes for our weapons included a tiny stamp on the bottom: JN8:12 … It is a reference to John 8:12 of the Bible that reads: “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’”
It seems people were offended that we might be shooting radical Muslims with bullets guided by that inscription so we had to use Dremel electric grinding tools to remove it. The funny thing is, hardly any Marine knew of it before. The otherwise all-black metal of our scope now has a little shiny spot on the bottom to remind us what was there. The Lord works in mysterious way.
… As millions of Americans celebrated the (Fourth of July) fireworks, we had a 30-vehicle convoy driving across the desert executing a resupply run to Marjah. … I don’t think many of us are counting days as much as we want to see how much we can get done while we’re here. Either way, day in or day out, the Marines maintain great focus and enthusiastically dive into their work. The challenge will be maintaining that focus throughout. I always tell people you have to be your own best cheerleader here. You have to look for little success stories. … Doubt can creep in like a weed — between the negative media and the somber reality of a memorial lays the fertile ground of despair. So I find hope and optimism in the fact that we are an all-volunteer force.
