The front-page picture said it all. Marc Thomas in uniform. His three-year-old son Daan clinging to him for dear life, not wanting to let him go.
A battlefield waited. But this pain was now.
“That was the hardest day of my life, when he wouldn’t let go,” said Thomas, who went to Iraq in 2004 attached to the 369th Transportation Company of the U.S. Army Reserve out of Wichita. “It took his mother and grandmother to peel him off me.”
Thomas came home safe — a little quieter, a little more careful but safe. But that may not be the end of the story. In late October, Thomas left the Reserve and re-enlisted in the full-time Army.
It means good benefits for his family. And somehow, there seems to be a destiny involved.
“I guess you can say ‘Once a soldier, always a soldier,’” Thomas said.
He’s been there before, serving active duty from 1984 to 1991. But since July 2001, Thomas has been a member of the Reserve, a citizen soldier on call when needed.
In January 2004, the Army decided the time had come.
“I got the call from (Sgt. Richard) Houk while I was around Kansas City,” said Thomas, who at the time was a truck driver for Norfolk Iron and Metal. “I had just finished delivering some steel when I heard ‘You need to come up, you’re leaving in two days.”
That gave him about 24 hours to sign a power of attorney so his wife Shantel could get all the essentials settled.
“They say the hardest job in the Army is being an Army wife,” Thomas said.
“It wasn’t fun,” Shantel Thomas agreed. “I don’t know how to put it into words. You’ve got to be the mom, the dad, the everything.”
In Iraq, Thomas was a squad leader and had to decide who in the platoon would head out with the convoys that traveled Iraq each day. The trucks were prime targets for attackers, especially the civilian fuel trucks.
“They are a hot target,” Thomas emphasized. “It got to the point where we had to stick one of our soldiers as a passenger in each of their vehicles because they had no weapons.”
Each time the troops and the trucks hit the road, it would be a coin toss whether someone would try to bomb the convoy.
“My platoon went out on over 100 missions,” Thomas said. “On over 50 of them, we were hit with IEDs (improvised explosive devices). And I can’t tell you how many times we came under sniper fire.”
Adding to the complications, the trucks were unarmored during Thomas’ first nine months in Iraq except for any sheet metal the troops welded on themselves. That’s when the unit took its only two casualties, both wounded and shipped home.
When protection finally came, it changed the equation quickly.
“We got hit with IEDs after our vehicles were up-armored and had no casualties,” Thomas said. “Big difference.”
Thomas came home with no wounds, no stress disorders. But it did take some time to readjust to civilian life. Shantel had to remind him more than once not to drive down the center of the road. Thomas also repeatedly caught himself veering away from cars parked on the side of the road, which in Iraq was where enemy forces planted many of their bombs.
Even so, Thomas stayed with Norfolk — until Hurricane Katrina hit. Then a company made him an offer to do armed security for the FEMA efforts in the Gulf. The pay was better and Thomas took the job.
“When I first got there, it was like being in a war zone,” he said. “It wasn’t just Louisiana gangbangers we were guarding against. Gangs actually came down from neighboring states with boats — to loot!”
Now it’s time to go back into active service. He’s got some retraining to do for a new specialty and then he gets to see what the Army wants to do with him. Whatever it is, he’s ready.
“Once a soldier, always a soldier.”