On December 2nd, 2004 we received the following letter from one of our USNA-Net members. She wanted to share it with her fellow USNA-Net parents. It was written by her son, 2ndLt E.H. Larsen, USMC, stationed in Fallujah, Iraq, and was originally written in response to the letters of support sent to him and his Marine Company in October, 2004 by her sixth grade Middle School Class in Wisconsin.
29 November 2004
CMOC, Fallujah, Iraq
Dear Students:
Thank you for taking the time to write my Marines. Your letters definitely brought a smile to many of our faces. I was very pleased to read about some of your opinions about politics and the current war. You are all very mature and well read. It made me feel a lot better about what I do, knowing that it is appreciated by all you. I also apologize for the belatedness of my reply; we were very busy with preparing and executing our missions during the Fallujah Offensive this month. I am writing this letter electronically and will forward it to your teacher to ensure a speedy delivery to make up for it.
I will now attempt to answer many of your questions that you all have asked in your letters. I am a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. As a Lieutenant and an officer, my role is kind of like your teacher. I am responsible for a group of Marines, for everything from their behavior, to their duties, to their laundry, and to their education. (Yes, we continue to teach and develop Marines even during war. I guess there is no way to ever completely be done with school) I am currently the officer in charge of a communications detachment in downtown Fallujah, Iraq. My team came in during the last days of fighting in the city to set up communications for the military teams and organizations looking to rebuild the city after the battle. The building my Marines and I are providing communications for is known as the Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC) and is where the Iraqis will go to get food and help to rebuild their lives in the city. It is still pretty dangerous here, so you all should be nice to my mother, because she worries a lot about me. We take a lot of sniper fire and mortar rounds but thankfully the insurgents are bad shots. My job is important because we want to help the innocent Iraqi people rebuild their lives and not have to worry about the violence that plagues the region. My hope is that this year the Iraqi children in Fallujah will be able to go back to school.
We are located right in the center of town surrounded by houses and very beautiful mosques. The city was a beautiful place before the war. There are a lot of bombed out buildings, stores and homes. The CMOC is located in a former youth center complete with a boxing ring, theater, two gyms, and a martial arts area. My Marines and I live in back of the theater, behind the stage, where there are are two stories of long narrow rooms.
We are providing telephones and data services to the CMOC. By data services I mean the Internet. The phones that we provide can call almost any other phone in the world, and I have called my parents at home in Wisconsin from downtown Fallujah. The military has two kinds of internet, a non-secure internet we call NIPRNET that has access to all of the web pages that you can surf like Yahoo, CNN, ESPN, etc. The second type is a secure internet we call SIPRNET and we use that to transmit data and information that is used for fighting and should not be available for access to the outside world. The SIPRNET has web pages too but civilians cannot access them because they are protected. I am writing and sending this letter to you via the NIPRNET.
If I haven’t bored you with all of the technical talk, I will answer some more of your questions. I know a lot of the guys and gals would be upset if I didn’t talk about weapons… I carry an M16 rifle and a M9 pistol and I haven’t had to shoot them at anybody yet. We were shot at while we were putting up antennas and we had to worry about getting communication up, and not shooting back. My Marines all have M16s as well and we have a M79 40mm grenade launcher we call “the bump gun” and a M249 SAW (light machine gun) to keep us safe. One quick side note here though, and it is one that many people do not know: Marines are not soldiers, they are Marines. We never call ourselves soldiers because soldiers are in the Army. Even the media cannot figure it out because it is confusing. It is just a minor thing but something we feel strongly about.
I am 24 years old as far as the age goes. I went to Horlick High School and more pertinent to you all, Jerstad Agerholm Middle School, not Starbuck. I guess I wasn’t lucky. After I graduated high school, I went to Annapolis and attended the US Naval Academy for 4 years. I graduated college with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a commission as a Marine Corps officer in 2003. While at school, I earned 3 Varsity letters in Lightweight Crew. You all know it as rowing and it is an awesome sport, but one you all probably do not know much about. My junior year of college my boat finished second in the nation to Yale by 12 inches in the National Championship race. It was an awesome time.
Back to the present, when you all wrote, you were concerned about my Marines and I being able to vote. For the most part, we all had absentee ballots sent out so we were able to vote for the president. I am not going to discuss whom I voted for but I was pleased with all of your knowledge about the political situation and your opinions about it. I hope that you all continue to stay informed with current events and the situation out here. My Marines are very motivated and dedicated and willing to do what it takes to help the Iraqi people and protect people like you. If your teacher coordinates with my mother she can bring in some photos of me and my Marines for you all to have a look. This is probably one of the most boring letters you all have ever read so I apologize; I guess I am not Ernest Hemingway. Have a happy holiday season; enjoy some good food and your families even if they annoy you sometimes because there will be times when you cannot be there in the future. Again, we all appreciated your letters. Semper Fidelis.
Very respectfully,
E. H. Larsen
2ndLt USMC
CMOC Comm Det OIC
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