One of the Good Guys

I don’t think I’ve ever done this before. Come right out and asked people to contribute to a cause. Oh sure, I’ve helped to raise a fair amount of money for various causes over the years. Circumstances being what they are, I could sure get behind a number of causes these days too. The cancer I fight. A different one that my brother fights. Arthritis. Alzheimer’s. Diabetes. And so many more that have impacted family and friends.

But none of them are quite like this one. This one really hits home for some reason. And please, don’t tell anyone, since no one knows this, but I say a little prayer about this every morning. A prayer for him. His family. His fellow Marines that served with him in his platoon.

The him is Cpl. Joshua Watkins. The cause I’d ask you to consider supporting, if you have any extra in your piggy bank, is the Watkins Memorial Scholarship. If I was a celebrity of some sort, and I was playing on Jeopardy or Family Feud, or one of those shows where the celebs play for a charity, this is the one I’d be playing for.

I first met Josh in the Spring of 2005. He, a Lance Cpl. at the time, Lance Cpl. Mitchell and Lance Cpl. Morris were roommates in one of the barracks at Camp LeJeune, NC. They were getting ready to deploy on their first combat tour of Iraq. The Lance Cpl. Morris, who went on to be Sgt. Morris before leaving the Corps for college, is my oldest son.

We had gone down to LeJeune to help move him out of his barracks and to wish him well and God speed on that first deployment. That particular barracks was a mad house. Relatives and friends of a lot of the Marines who were going to deploy were there to help pack up their belongings and to wish them well. It was mostly a controlled chaos bordering on bedlam. We walked into the middle of that, found our son’s room, shook our heads as we saw things strewn everywhere inside the room, and got to meet Josh.

He was quiet. Soft spoken. A little reserved. A nice guy. One of the good guys. He didn’t have any family or friends present to help him. They had come up from Florida earlier to say their goodbyes. We got to be his family that day. As you might imagine, there is a bonding that takes place between all of the families and Marines during a time like that. Not only did we pack boxes and bags for our son, but we helped to pack Josh’s as well. He tried to make do on his own but that didn’t work. Here these guys are about to go off and put their lives in harms way, it seems that the least we could do was help to get things packed up. The urge to do something, anything, for them, is almost overwhelming. And on top of all of that, there were a number of Marine Moms in action who just weren’t going to be denied.

We got everyone all packed up. We got belongings loaded into cars and wagons and vans. We had a box from Josh, addressed to Donna Watkins in Florida, that he didn’t have time to get shipped. We told him we’d take care of it. Everyone hugged and kissed and back slapped. Tears flowed. Unless you’ve sent one off into combat, you just can’t begin to imagine the emotion.

The guys all made it through that first tour. They came home a little over 7 months later. They’d been shot at. Some had been blown up or nearly so. They went out on 3 to 10 day missions around Fallujah. Tough, grueling work with little or no sleep. To defend a country that they had seen ravaged by 9/11. They all made it back in one piece. No casualties.

They got to rest up a bit and recover for 4 months and then they headed back for another combat tour. We headed down to LeJeune and helped to pack and box up. We were old pros now. There were hugs and kisses and back slaps again. And tears too. It wasn’t any easier sending them off this time. But we knew what to expect. Knew about the sleepless nights that would follow until they were safely home again.

They were back in Fallujah again. Less than 3 days into this tour, one of the platoons that had deployed with them, lost 4 Marines to a pressure plated IED. Not a good way to start the tour. Instead of missions that took them away for days at a time, this tour saw them doing daily highway missions supporting SeaBees moving back and forth. Much more dangerous than that first tour as it turned out. They got very little sleep and had few days off. The number of IEDs and ambushes they encountered was off the charts.

But they all made it through. Until the very last mission. Mitchell and Watkins were out for a final time when they were ambushed. Mitchell escaped harm. Josh wasn’t so lucky. He died in Mitchell’s arms. Gave his life. For his country. His family. His friends. For me. For you. No matter your politics, he sacrificed himself for a freedom he believed we should all be entitled to.

They had a videographer and reporter embedded with them during that first tour. Here’s what he wrote about Josh after his death. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.

Here’s the link to the scholarship fund again. Watkins Memorial Scholarship. Here’s the link to the Donation Page. I hope you can find it in your heart to help. And if you have a Twitter account and don’t mind passing on the link, I know there are some deserving students who would thank you kindly.

Semper Fi Cpl. Joshua Watkins. God speed.

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