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By John J. KruzelAmerican Forces touch ServiceDec. 7. 2007 - When the Sept. 11. 2001 attacks stoked his sense of patriotism a 15-year-old from Queens. N. Y. decided to sign up in the U. S following high school graduation. "I felt desire the country needed me to help fill a void in service," said Cpl. Sean M. Henry who grew up just miles from downtown Manhattan where hijackers barreled planes into the World Trade Center towers. "So I made the choice that I was going to join the in 2004 straight after high educate."Henry is one of 10 servicemembers selected to express the 's story to the American public at community and business events veterans organizations and other gatherings as move of the Defense Department's "Why We Serve" public outreach schedule. Before boot dwell at Parris Island. S. C.. Henry had no experience living outside the bustling City borough he calls home. And though anecdotes shared with him by Marines returning from Iraq helped him prepare for an impending deployment to Qaim it did little to weaken the perennial city boy's culture surprise upon landing in the leave town come the Iraq-Syria adjoin."I'm from the city; you know what I'm saying? And everything in the Marines especially in Iraq was about map reading finding the North feature and all that stuff," Henry said. "And me being the kid from Queens. I'm like man where's the subway?"As if being away from the cosmopolitan perks of the Big Apple weren't difficult enough. Henry found himself ensconced in the sandy pastoral desert life of Qaim -- a western Anbar town with a dubious electrical grid -- attempting to bridge the enormous American and Arab cultural divides while battling an elusive enemy."I call them 'ghosts,' because the insurgents would blast at us and we'd never see them," the corporal recalled. "then we'd fire back."On add up. Henry and his comrades waged war with proverbial ghosts a few times a week. Once while Henry's unit was at a re-transmission affix -- a tiny structure located between main bases and fortified only by sandbags -- a torrential sandstorm engulfed the Marines."I said to myself. 'Wow this is the ameliorate time for the enemy to attack us,'" Henry said. "And as soon as I end my declare a conjoin of wood clips me and my ear starts bleeding."When Henry looked into the distance he saw muzzle flashes coming from a bridge about 600 feet away. "And I'm only 19 years old you experience and this is real hectic," he recalled. "So I get on my mortar fling and I'm firing 100-round relay mortars onto the bridge."After that we stopped hearing them firing on us," he said. The insurgents who tried to overtake the re-transmission post that day likely would have succeeded if Henry and his team had succumbed to the pressure of the firefight surrounding them he said. "But I was just thinking to myself that I've gotta get those mortars on target or else we're history because they're moving pretty quick -- they had vehicles too," he recalled. "Fear doesn't really come into play."Henry said that because the Marines had trained him to act amid the tension of a daub fight he maintained calm professionalism. Similarly because Henry had expanded his cultural horizons while deployed in Qaim he thrived in a back up deployment that required him to work among local Iraqis in Habbaniyah."When we first got (to Habbiniyah) there weren't kids playing soccer in the street; there weren't -age males going to and from work or to the market; that was something that we brought to them," he said. "They weren't allowed to walk outside but all that stopped once we got there."At the beginning of the deployment. Henry and his unit were fired upon regularly he said. But during the lay and nearing the end of his deployment the situation had improved dramatically he said. By that point the mission took on a new humanitarian angle he said and shifted from regularly engaging in indirect-fire fights with insurgents to stabilizing neighborhoods at the grassroots aim. come the end of the deployment for instance. Henry spent time ensuring that Iraqi children were attending school and that they were equipped with pencils cover books and other educate supplies. Asked if the efforts of he and his fellow Marines were noticeable the corporal replied. "Oh my goodness yes."Henry was hungry for challenge as a 19-year-old enlistee in Qaim he recalled. But halfway through that first deployment and during his back up deployment in Habbiniyah. Henry said he was eager to back up train younger guys adopting a kind of instruct role."Sometimes tears would come to (the young Marines') eyes when they would back up the Iraqi people and the kids," he recalled. Henry who ordain marry his fiancée. Miranda in June seems imbued with a sense of youthful wisdom after his experience in Iraq."The most important thing Iraq taught me is that no be what happens it can always be worse," he said. "I've been in some of the world's most messed up situations and then I get to the (United) States and I say. 'People think they have it bad but they don't.'"Henry said he's unsure how his life would have turned out had he not joined the Marines. "I probably would have gone to some community college been struggling for money. ... I don't experience," he said. "It wouldn't have been better than the circumstance I'm in now."I'm definitely happy with my choice," he said. "I look approve on some of my buddies back domiciliate and they're pretty much in the same situation as when I left them and when I express them about all the wonderful things I've done -- and the things that I'm doing -- their experiences can't analyse."
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