Camp Lejeune

WASHINGTON - After an impasse with a South Carolina senator was broken, the Senate passed a historic bill Wednesday by unanimous consent that would help thousands of sick Marine veterans and their families who were exposed to contaminated water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C. Sens. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who's the head of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, and Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, brokered the deal on the Senate floor moments before she was expected to force his hand by publicly calling for a unanimous-consent vote on the measure.

Linda Romasco limits her intake of news from Iraq to late at night or early in the morning, to avoid scaring her children. Jennifer O'Brien says she watches "almost until it hurts," even though it leaves her unable to sleep at night. Both women were in the crowd yesterday when President Bush came to North Carolina to share the burdens of war with some of the people who feel them most directly. Few communities have as much personal stake in Operation Iraqi Freedom as the neighborhoods clustered around Camp Lejeune, which has sent about 20,000 Marines to the battlefront.

A Marine from Pittsburgh died Thursday of wounds received in combat in Helmand province, Afghanistan, the Defense Department said Friday. He was identified as Sgt. Ryan H. Lane, 25, assigned to the Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Second Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, at Camp Lejeune, N.C. - Inquirer staff

Saddamite RE BOB Leonardo's Dec. 27 letter: Mr. Leonardo has a very distorted and delusionary view of the world, but he can count his blessings every day that he lives in a free country where he can refer to the president as a "disgusting creature" and a "cretin. " Saddam wouldn't have been so tolerant. Brigid DeTreux Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Away from the homecoming parades and the flag-waving ceremonies, one group of soldiers has been forgotten by fellow citizens, members of the American Friends Service Committee said yesterday. They are the trained fighters who refused to fight during the Persian Gulf war. Many of the estimated 2,500 service people who sought conscientious objector status immediately before or during the war are now facing charges of desertion, Harold Jordan, coordinator of the AFSC's youth and militarism program, said during a news conference at Friends Center.

A 29-year-old Marine who once lived in Collingswood was killed Friday in a nonhostile incident in Iraq, the Department of Defense announced yesterday. Lance Cpl. Curtis A. Christensen Jr. was serving in Anbar province with the Second Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, Second Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, which is based in Camp Lejeune, N.C. Marine officials said the incident was under investigation and declined to provide details. Family members could not be reached for comment.

HAWTHORNE, Nev. - A mortar shell explosion killed eight Marines and injured a half-dozen more during mountain warfare training in Nevada's high desert, prompting the Pentagon to immediately halt the use of some of the weapons worldwide until an investigation can determine their safety, officials said Tuesday. The explosion occurred Monday night at the Hawthorne Army Depot, a facility used by troops heading overseas, during an exercise involving the Second Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Lejeune, N.C. Several Marines from the unit were injured in the blast, authorities said.

The promise of adventure, excitement and technical skills lured him. But, most of all, said Sam Lwin, he fell in love with the image. "I want to be the good, the few, the proud," said Lwin, 21, a Burmese immigrant who came to America as a child. At boot camp, however, Lwin was harassed as a "gook" and a "Chinaman. " He said he "started to recoil back" at incitements to hatred, and grew to detest the feel of cold metal in his hands. "Inside me, it started to become cold," he said.

Anthony Goodwin was still playing Pop Warner football and Little League when he had already decided what he wanted to be: a U.S. Marine. He joined the ROTC as a high school freshman in the 1980s near San Antonio, Texas; his family moved to South Jersey just a few years later. No matter, said Paul Cheney, Goodwin's father, at his home in Westampton. His son, killed Monday in Iraq, always felt his true home would be anywhere the Marines took him. "He always intended to be a Marine," Cheney said yesterday.

Just 10 more days and Marine Lance Cpl. Harry Swain 4th would have been out of Iraq. The 21-year-old rifleman from Cumberland County was that close to finishing his second tour there when an explosive ended his life Monday, military officials said yesterday. Swain was on patrol in northern Babil province when an improvised bomb blew up the vehicle he was traveling in, said Capt. David O'Brien, the Marine inspector-instructor in Wilmington and the family's casualty assistance calls officer.

HAWTHORNE, Nev. - A mortar shell explosion killed eight Marines and injured a half-dozen more during mountain warfare training in Nevada's high desert, prompting the Pentagon to immediately halt the use of some of the weapons worldwide until an investigation can determine their safety, officials said Tuesday. The explosion occurred Monday night at the Hawthorne Army Depot, a facility used by troops heading overseas, during an exercise involving the Second Marine Expeditionary Force from Camp Lejeune, N.C. Several Marines from the unit were injured in the blast, authorities said.

CAIRO - Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's Islamist president, sought Wednesday to defuse Washington's anger over his past remarks urging hatred of Jews and calling Zionists "pigs" and "bloodsuckers," telling visiting U.S. senators that his comments were a denunciation of Israeli policies. Both sides appear to want to get beyond the flap: Morsi needs America's help in repairing a rapidly sliding economy, and Washington can't afford to shun a figure who has emerged as a model of an Islamist leader who maintains his country's ties with Israel.

WASHINGTON - After an impasse with a South Carolina senator was broken, the Senate passed a historic bill Wednesday by unanimous consent that would help thousands of sick Marine veterans and their families who were exposed to contaminated water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C. Sens. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat who's the head of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, and Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, brokered the deal on the Senate floor moments before she was expected to force his hand by publicly calling for a unanimous-consent vote on the measure.

WASHINGTON - They came to the Capitol on crutches, with canes and walkers, and in wheelchairs. But most of these black men in their 80s and 90s, with a few over age 100, walked in Wednesday, despite the ravages of age, to be recognized with the nation's highest civilian honor for their courage and determination. About 400 of the first black Marines - 20 or so from the Philadelphia area - received a giant salute from Congress and the entire country as they were presented with the Congressional Gold Medal at Emancipation Hall for their service during World War II. They were greeted with a fanfare they could not have imagined when they were training at Montford Point, a segregated and substandard boot camp about five miles from all-white Camp Lejeune, N.C., from 1942 to 1949.

WASHINGTON - They came to the Capitol on crutches, with canes and walkers, and in wheelchairs. But most of these black men in their 80s and 90s, with a few over age 100, walked in Wednesday, despite the ravages of age, to be recognized with the nation's highest civilian honor for their courage and determination. About 400 of the first black Marines - 20 or so from the Philadelphia area - received a giant salute from Congress and the entire country as they were presented with the Congressional Gold Medal at Emancipation Hall for their service during World War II. They were greeted with a fanfare they could not have imagined when they were training at Montford Point, a segregated and substandard boot camp about five miles from all-white Camp Lejeune, N.C., from 1942 to 1949.

WESLEY TYRONE Tilghman Sr. had two loves in his life: his family and his church. Unless you count the Marines. All Marines love the Corps. In fact, Wesley was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina when he fell for Diane Alfreda Hawkins and married her on the base in 1974. So the Marine Corps held fond memories for him. Wesley Tilghman, former employee of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard who later worked out of Laborers Union Local 332, a church deacon who was always available for whatever his churches needed doing, died March 27 of complications of diabetes.

At boot camp, they endured snakes, mosquitoes, substandard housing, and intense physical training. In the South Pacific, they faced the Japanese. Yet, through World War II and beyond, these 19,000 black men also confronted segregation and racism to serve as U.S. Marines. They are the Montford Point Marines, named for the segregated facility where they were trained in North Carolina from 1942 until 1949. This spring, these first black Marines - about 400 who are still alive - will be honored at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington with the Congressional Gold Medal, the country's highest civilian honor for distinguished achievement.

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. - When her Marine boyfriend died in a helicopter crash off the Horn of Africa in 2006, Lesley Reed was lost. Then a 21-year-old college dropout working at a Target store in Jacksonville, N.C., she had met her handsome sergeant, Jimmy Fordyce, of Newtown Square, Pa., through her brother, also a Marine. The two had been together six months when Fordyce left for his third overseas tour. He planned, when he got back, to quit the service. They'd move to Philadelphia.

When Joe Dimond was a Marine staff sergeant in Iraq in 2006, one of his men, Ryan S. McCurdy, was killed by sniper fire while saving the life of another Marine with whom he was standing guard in Fallujah. Now, Dimond works for a Marlton company that is selling to the Army and Marines a product called McCurdy's Armor - a Lego-like system of fortified wall panels named for the dead Marine. It allows troops to set up a guard post in 10 minutes, he said. "Our biggest competitor up to now has been sandbags and plywood," Dimond, who was in the Marines for 10 years, said Friday in an interview from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where he was training Marines to use the kits.

John P. Bodnar, 88, of Collegeville, a retired Marine sergeant major whose ordeals during World War II earned him a Silver Star and the French Legion of Honor, died of heart failure Monday, Feb. 14, at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Coatesville. After graduating from Coatesville High School, Mr. Bodnar spent the summer as a swimming and athletics instructor at a camp before enlisting in the Marines in September 1940. In the early days of the war, he was a parachute instructor at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.