Family struggles with realization of son, husband in war
As Myrtle Cole of Uniontown thinks of her son 22-year-old Lance Cpl. Frank Cole, Jr., a Marine serving with U.S. armed forces in Baghdad, her mind drifts to a memory of Frank as a child asleep on his father’s Marine picture book. Myrtle said this memory is an example of how she knew Frank always wanted to become Marine. And now Myrtle cannot stop worrying about him just as she her husband, serving as a sniper in Vietnam, was the center of her worries in the 1960s.
“It’s hard to say ‘war’,” said Myrtle. “We see convoys on the road to Baghdad on TV and wonder if it’s Frank. It’s hard to watch TV.
Frank’s wife Autumn said she writes to her husband every night to talk about their children four-year-old Savannah and newborn baby Destinee Marie, who was born during Frank’s January leave from the military.
Autumn and Frank Cole celebrated their first wedding anniversary in March with Frank nearing Baghdad and Autumn at home in Uniontown.
“I miss him,” said Autumn. “But, I know there’s nothing I can really do. All of it is difficult. But the hardest part is knowing he’s over there, and that he may not be coming back.”
The Cole family awaits daily, sometimes weekly, e-mail messages on Bravo Company 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, the division their son is a lance corporal in.
Reassuring families of the troops safety and providing updates of the regiment’s progress, the e-mail updates are stories written by embedded United Press International journalist Richard Tomkins.
An April 1 update read, “the Marines of Bravo Company 1st Battalion are close to Baghdad – a distance probably less than an American family would drive on a weekend outing.”
The update vividly depicts a 45-minute battle between the Marines and Iraqi forces, including crackles from armored U.S. military vehicles and the distance from which U.S. platoons were closely missed by Iraqi mortar shells.
“At one point, an RPG came within 150 feet of the mortar unit, including this United Press International reporter, but no one was injured,” Tomkins reports. “At another point, a 120mm Iraqi mortar shell landed within 20 feet of a platoon, but again everyone miraculously escaped injury.”
Through reading the updates, both Autumn and Myrtle follow the battalion’s progress. Autumn dreads, but can’t help but think about the possibility of her husband never returning home to family.
“I’m always wondering if that next phone call is going to be someone with bad news,” autumn said.
Myrtle said, “Someone or something has to stop the torture of a tyrant, but, to me, even one life is too much to lose.
As they move through Baghdad, Cole and his battalion require goods sent by agencies of aid and families in the states to sustain good health.
“We are collecting little things to send like razor blades, foot spray, chapsticks,” said Myrtle. “We receive good encouragement. Churches, schools, everybody wants to do something. People from church are always sending cards.”
“But all the troops keep asking for are wipes, wet baby wipes,” said Myrtle.
What are they used for?
“To shower,” she answers. “That’s how they shower.”
At Uniontown Hospital, where Myrtle works in the billing department, tidbits, stories and sympathies like these are exchanged between people with military family members.
“We cry together and talk together,” said Myrtle. “You feel for every person over there. You know it is another person. It is a bad situation.
“I tell Frank to always put God first,” said Myrtle. “God is his army. He is an army of God and we have faith that he’ll come back safe.”