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HAZLE TWP. — After their encircled battalion took fire all night in Iraq, Harry McLean told the young Marines with him not to go to the buses if they didn’t have to.
“That’s what nightmares are made of,” McLean said while recalling his military service during a breakfast that Hazleton Area High School students held for veterans on Nov. 9.
A medical corpsman, McLean had seen casualties coming from the buses. They weren’t just soldiers, but also civilians, including one child. The buses carried weapons and troops as well as Iraqi citizens, creating what McLean called a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation for Marines defending themselves during battle in the spring of 2003. Earlier that night, the Marines had seen headlights of tanks and armored personnel carriers coming from the same direction as the buses.
“We did what we could to get the casualties out,” said McLean, a first class petty officer who had been in the Navy 19 years, as long as some of the Marines in his battalion had been alive.
Months later when 2nd Light Armor Reconnaissance Battalion returned to the states, one of the Marines confided that he had come to understood McLea...