Marine shares war stories with students

Sergeant Conroy returns to St. Paul's School

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Former St. Paul's Lutheran School student Joe Conroy returned to his grade school Wednesday to speak to students about the eight months he spent in Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Now a Sergeant (E-5) radio technician in the U.S. Marine Corps, Conroy shared his experiences of 4 1/2 years in the military.

He showed Power Point slides that tightly held the attention of students.

Wearing his Marine dress uniform with shiny brass buttons and patten leather shoes, Conroy noted that 12 years ago, he wrote stories to soldiers in the first war in the Gulf as a fourth-grader at St. Paul's.

"I've been in your shoes," Conroy told students. "Now that I'm on the receiving end of letters to servicemen, I can tell you how important they are to receive."

Conroy's Marine service began at boot camp at Paris Island, S.C., which he jokingly called a "friendly place." After a month of training at Camp LeJeune, N.C., he spent the next year at Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Base in the desert of Southern California.

His next tour of duty took him to Okinawa, Japan, for a year, then Australia and East Timor for three months. Then it was on to the Middle East.

Conroy's photos displayed some innovative techniques used by the Marines to deal with life in the desert.

A "washing machine" was created by jacking up an axle on a humvee truck, placing clothes in a watertight bag attached to a wheel and revving up the humvee's engine.

Bottled water was used for drinking, shaving and bathing before trailers with showers were transported to Camp Fox. When it was hot outside, Conroy drank as many as 4 or 5 gallons of water per day.

Concrete barricades and perimeter wire were among the first things added to Camp Fox. In times of war, Marines carry their rifles with them just about everywhere. The guns are like their "teddy bears," he said.

Many bunkers were dug by all troops with small hand shovels to provide some sense of shelter from surface-to-surface missiles.

After a long wait for the war to start, the first four days of the battle were the most intense. Iraqi missile attacks came about every 25 minutes. They forced Conroy and his buddies to huddle in bunkers with their gas masks and chemical suits on and their rifles between their knees, waiting for the air raid sirens to stop.

The weather was hot and included an occasional sand storm and sand twister that could blow down tents and porta-potties. It hailed one day, an unusual event.

"We were expecting locusts and frogs after that," Conroy said.

As a sergeant, Conroy supervised five to 30 lower enlisted men. Although he never fired his weapon at anybody, he was fired upon several times, but was never hit.

Work was demanding when the war began -- 12 hours on the job, four to six hours of guard duty, then sleeping until the next shift. Slack time was 16 hours on, eight off. After most of the fighting stopped last May, eight-hour days were followed by four to six hours of guard duty.

About a half-dozen of his Marine friends died in the desert.

Nonetheless, Conroy plans to re-enlist for two more years if he can get orders to Iraq. He has already done the paperwork for those orders. He plans to attend college after another tour in Iraq.

Right now, he's waiting for the Marines to be ordered to Iraq. The U.S. Army is on duty there now.

"I like traveling to places I've never been to," Conroy added. "I always wanted to be in the military. Since my vision is bad, I can't fly planes. Being in the Marines is like having 175,000 very best friends. I'll stay in the Marines until it isn't fun anymore."