PHOTOS BY MICHAEL ACKER Top: Students at Our Lady of Victories School, Sayreville, say the pledge of allegiance, as Marines from the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion, Red Bank, hold up their flags and rifles at an event held at Monsignor Dalton Hall Nov. 8. Above: Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas Floersch holds his son, Thomas Xiao Floersch, 5, at the Veterans Day event. SAYREVILLE – A local veteran of the war in Iraq was given a hero’s welcome at Our Lady of Victories (OLV) School last week.
The Catholic school hosted a program at Monsignor Dalton Hall on Main Street last Thursday in tribute to servicemen and women and in honor of Veterans Day. Students, faculty, parents and veterans filled the hall, singing patriotic songs, joining in prayer and listening to speakers talk about the war in Iraq, now in its fourth year.
OLV teacher and Vietnam veteran Joseph Myers told students about the importance of being more involved with their local veterans, and introduced guest speakers Thomas Floersch, a U.S. Navy petty officer first class, and Deborah Marion, the mother of U.S. Army 1st Lt. Edward Marion.
Floersch is an Iraq War veteran who returned to his Parlin home last summer after a tour of duty in Baghdad. He said he can now concentrate on raising his 5- year-old son, Thomas Xiao Floersch, who he and his wife Kristine adopted while he was at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January.
Floersch addressed the students in his Navy uniform, saying that his commanding officer told him that he was being deployed two days after Christmas 2005. He was first sent to Arizona for training, followed by Guantanamo Bay, and finally, Baghdad, totaling 18 months away from home.
During the three months he spent in Iraq, Floersch said he met good people, as well as “bad people who don’t like our freedom.” These troops, he said, sacrifice valuable time away from their families and friends in order to preserve this freedom.
“Veterans know that the rewards of freedom are worth that sacrifice,” Floersch said.
Floersch, 35, graduated from Our Lady of Victories School, St. Joseph High School, Metuchen, and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where he studied political science and history. He told Greater Media Newspapers that he joined the Navy at the recommendation of family members and a friend who retired from the Navy. He said the Navy offered him the opportunity to be a reservist while working full time.
Deborah Marion, the mother of Army 1st Lt. Edward Marion, reads a letter that her son wrote in Mosul, Iraq, to students. Standing to the right of Marion is Joseph Myers, a Vietnam veteran and teacher at Our Lady of Victories. “I joined the Navy at [the age of] 28,” Floersch said. “I looked into programs and the Navy had the best program in the intelligence field.”
In Iraq, Floersch said, he worked 12- hour shifts at the intelligence center, which he described as an office environment where he did general intelligence work.
“I worked nights, so for me on a normal work day I’d get up, get all of my gear together, and go to my job,” he said.
He worked in a unit called the Joint Interrogation Center. The Navy is venturing into a new area of specialization, Floersch said, since this war calls for more joint work with units in the Air Force, Army and Marines. Supporting fighting units in the field would traditionally be a task handled by the Army, but Floersch added that the Navy now does more than support naval operations.
U.S. Army soldiers sit in the office of late Capt. Timothy I. McGovern (far left) on Oct. 30, the day before McGovern would be killed in action by an improvised explosive device in Mosul, Iraq. Sitting across from Mc- Govern are 1st Lt. Edward Marion, of Parlin, and two other lieutenants of the E Company Sappers 2/7 Cavalry of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. “The military really needed anybody with those skills, so they took anybody they could get,” Floersch said. “It truly is a joint world.”
Floersch said he had a surreal experience when the complex at the Camp Victory base was attacked during a Toby Keith music concert. Two rockets were fired at the base, bringing the troops there “back to reality,” he added.
“Even when you’re trying to have a good time and enjoying yourself, you can never forget about what is going on out there,” Floersch said.
“Nothing really affects you,” he said. “Things like that happen and you continue to do your job. We ran to the bunker, then we watched the concert and went back to work.”
Deborah Marion addressed the crowd after Floersch, telling the students that her son, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Edward Marion, left in November 2006 for Mosul, Iraq. He is scheduled to come home within a month, she said.
Also a Parlin resident, Edward Marion graduated St. Mary’s School in South Amboy, St. Joseph High School, Metuchen, and The College of New Jersey, Ewing. He was also a member of the ROTC in Princeton.
In Iraq, he brought along his collection of “Simpsons” DVDs, which he and his fellow soldiers watch occasionally, Deborah Marion said.
She described an e-mail he recently sent home that told the story of Capt. Timothy I. McGovern, 28, and Spc. Brandon W. Smitherman, 21, both of Texas, and both killed in action in a Bradley fighting vehicle around 9 a.m. Oct. 31.
“It was day No. 366 for us,” Edward Marion wrote in the e-mail. “These heroes were killed while assaulting the enemy that was attacking their patrol. Without regard for their own well-being, they tenaciously brought the fight to the enemy. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,’ ~ John 15:13.’”
The patrol, which is tasked with clearing routes of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), came under attack at an intersection that is susceptible to ambush attacks.
The platoon faced rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and machine-gun fire as they fought off the attack.
Edward Marion saw Smitherman drive the Bradley, which resembles a tank, toward an alleyway from which an RPG had been thrown. An IED detonated underneath the Bradley, flipping the 40-ton vehicle into the air, killing Smitherman and McGovern. Two other men inside the Bradley, a gunner and an interpreter, survived the attack,
A ceremony was held in tribute to the fallen soldiers the next day, when their caskets were draped with an American flag and loaded onto a military airplane that flew their remains home, Edward Marion said in his e-mail.
Marion took over in McGovern’s place as commanding officer, and is now the leader of a small, 100-member company that faces daily attacks.
“As of 31 October, we have cleared nearly 15,000 miles of roadway while we have been here,” Marion wrote. “We have cleared 675 IEDs over this year; 144 of them detonated on us. We have taken nearly 200 RPG attacks and over 200 small arms fire attacks. More than half of us in this company have been wounded in action. These men were our first killed.”
Marion closed his letter with the slogan: “For those who have fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know.”
Toward the end of the program at Our Lady of Victories, about two dozen students recognized veterans in their families. Fifthgrader Kim Szilagyi, 10, said she was surprised at how many of her schoolmates had veterans in their families. She added that the event taught her things that she did not know about servicemen and women.
“I never knew how many things they miss, and I didn’t know that they were gone that long either,” Kim said.
Thirteen-year-old student Doug Wanser said the event reinforced the importance of Veterans Day, something that his father, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam War, taught him about.
“I think it honors him and all of the other veterans who served in any war,” Doug said.
Floersch expressed gratitude to the school for welcoming him, which he said was an honor.
“I thought it was fantastic,” Floersch said. “Everything was really nice.”
“Too many times people forget,” he added. “There are a lot of people serving, so it’s nice to be remembered.”