Pendleton’s Grief and Pride

Amid a valley of coastal green hills stands the austere cinderblock headquarters of one of this Marine base’s most storied regiments, “The Magnificent Bastards.”

Normally on a Thursday evening, the sprawling barracks of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, or “2/4”, would echo with the noise of Marines returning from the mess hall and lingering outside to chat or smoke or listen to music from the stereos by their bunks.

On this Thursday, the loudest noises were the evening calls of birds and the distant sound of a helicopter over scrub-covered hills.

As news spread of the 17 Camp Pendleton Marines killed since Sunday, the hardest hit were friends and relatives of 2nd Battalion Marines, to which a dozen of those men belonged. Since February, the battalion, which calls itself “Second to None,” has been tasked with quelling one of the most restive towns in Iraq, a mission that has led to some of the heaviest combat since the war began.

The dead included a bearish former drill sergeant and rugby aficionado whom comrades called “The Beast,” two young infantrymen who had vowed to help keep each other alive in Iraq, and a company lieutenant who joined the Marines after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

At a news conference next to Camp Pendleton’s main gate Thursday, a commanding general stood bare-headed and offered condolences to relatives.

“It’s a tragedy every time we lose a loved one,” said Maj. Gen. Keith Stalder, deputy commander of the 45,000-member 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. But, he said, “I can tell you that where we operate, we’re doing the job, we’re performing our mission, we’re killing the bad guys and we’re making life better for the average Iraqi people in the western part of Iraq.”

Most recently, the 1,000-member battalion began a six-month deployment in the violent Sunni Triangle, and was given the task of bringing order to one of Iraq’s most dangerous towns, Ramadi. For the last several weeks, the men had made their home in a dusty, walled compound dubbed Camp Hurricane, along the Euphrates River.

It was the latest chapter in the battalion’s history, which dates to World War I. Its alumni have served in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, China, the South Pacific during World War II and Vietnam.

Another part of the tradition is that some men don’t come home.

On Thursday, Marine officials released the names of three 2nd Battalion Marines who died in fighting Tuesday: Pfc. Benjamin R. Carman, 20, of Jefferson, Iowa; Lance Cpl. Marcus M. Cherry, 18, of Imperial, Calif.; and 2nd Lt. John T. Wroblewski, 25, of Oak Ridge, N.J.

Before Thursday, Marine officials announced the deaths of nine other members of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force: Pfc. Christopher Cobb, 19, of Bradenton, Fla.; Lance Cpl. Kyle D. Crowley, 18, of San Ramon, Calif.; Pfc. Deryk I. Hallal, 24, of Indianapolis; Pfc. Ryan M. Jerabek, 18, of Oneida, Wis.; Pfc. Moises A. Langhorst, 19, of Moose Lake, Minn.; Lance Cpl. Travis J. Layfield, 19, of Fremont, Calif.; Pfc. Geoffery S. Morris, 19, of Gurnee, Ill.; Lance Cpl. Anthony P. Roberts, 18, of Bear, Del.; and Staff Sgt. Allan K. Walker, 28, of Lancaster.

Wroblewski, the second lieutenant, commanded a unit of 40 soldiers, most so young that their first experience living away from home was in a Marine barracks. He looked after them like a parent, relatives said.

“They meant a great deal to him,” said the lieutenant’s father, John W. Wroblewski. “He really truly loved them with his whole heart and soul.”

The Rutgers University graduate joined the Marines shortly after watching the Twin Towers crumble in 2001. He told his father that he planned to make a career of the Marines and recently moved onto the Camp Pendleton base with his wife of nine months -- a woman his father described as the perfect military spouse.

“When God made her, he stamped her ‘Marine wife,’ ” the father said. “She was just tremendous in her support of him.”

John Wroblewski said he may never fully recover from the blow he took when he was told of his son’s death, but said he can’t help feeling an intense pride.

“It’s just unyielding and it’s just overwhelming how proud I am of my son,” the father said. “He definitely is a hero. He’s a hero by every stretch of the definition of the word.”

Another of the casualties announced Thursday also was accustomed to looking after young Marines.

Allan Walker, a sergeant, died just three days before he turned 29, and had been assigned to the battalion for just a few months after completing a stint as a drill instructor, said friend Leonard Piontkowski.

At 6 feet 2 and nearly 250 pounds, Walker had earned the nickname “The Beast” from his recruits because of his size and thundering, raspy voice, friends and family members said. Although born in the United States like his parents, Walker was extremely proud of his Irish heritage and talked about wanting to be deployed to England or Ireland so he could play rugby there.

“He would always be in the middle of the ruck and maul. He wasn’t exactly the fastest guy, but he was physical,” Piontkowski, who is half Irish, said with a laugh. “He had the Guinness heart tattooed on his right calf. We were planning on going to Ireland this summer. He wanted to see the homeland.”

Walker’s rough and ready exterior would leave few to guess that he was a voracious reader and a serious writer of poetry.

“When he was in high school, he was a bit of a rebel, and he wasn’t the best student around,” said his father, Ken Walker, 54, of Palmdale. “He had a high literary ability and strong verbal skills, but he wasn’t always completing assignments and he cut school.”

Two of the dead, Lance Cpl. Marcus Cherry and Pfc. Christopher Cobb, roomed together in the 2nd Battalion’s sprawling barracks and struck up a close friendship.

“They were like brothers,” said Shannon Severe, Cherry’s 20-year-old fiancee. “Him and Cobb always talked about how they were going to protect each other. They both told each other they would never let anything happen to each other.”

The neat and orderly Cherry would tease Cobb, the messy one, that he must be his mother. “Cobb just sat there, took it and laughed,” Severe recalled.

Again and again, family members said the dead Marines had often regarded fellow company members as their family, and would often go together for pizzas or shopping trips to the mall.

In letters and phone calls, Lance Cpl. Travis Layfield “said he couldn’t be with a better platoon,” said his sister, Tiffany Bolton, 31. “They seemed very close, always comforting one another. Travis was very comforting, and he said if one Marine was feeling negative, another Marine was lifting him up.”

Like many other members of the 2nd Battalion, who were stationed in Okinawa, Japan, during the initial invasion of Iraq, Layfield longed for a taste of combat and the chance to test his mettle as a Marine.

When he learned that he was finally going to Iraq, “he was ecstatic,” Bolton said. “He was ready to go fight for his country.”

Bolton said her brother had failed to write in the last few weeks, a sure indication that “things were heating up.” It was during that time that she often thought of their childhood together.

“He was my baby,” Bolton said. “He went everywhere with me. I took him shopping, to the movies, to school. He loved to dance. He would go to my room, and I would put glasses on him and take goofy pictures, and we would dance in my room.”

Some of those Magnificent Bastards who died in Ramadi had dreamed of being Marines since they were boys, and believed that they were carrying on a family tradition by joining the service.

Pfc. Benjamin Carman grew up on a Jefferson, Iowa, farm listening to his grandfather’s tales of being a prisoner during World War II, and he enlisted in the Marines even before he graduated from high school.

“My son grew up around that tradition, and he’s always known from the time he was a child that he would be in the service,” said his father, Nelson Carman.

“His grandpa would be so proud of him,” added his mother, Marie Carman. “Our whole family is so proud of him. We don’t want him to have died in vain, we don’t want them to pull out. They need to push on.”

After he completed his stint in the Marines, the Carmans said, their son hoped to become a park ranger because he loved the outdoors.

As a gunner, Marie Carman knew, her son was a constant target. So when she saw the two Marines at her door, she knew what had happened.

“I went to the door and there were two Marines dressed in blue,” she said. “I said, ‘No, not Ben.’ They just nodded their heads.... One tried to entertain the kids while I just fell apart on the other one. They say Marines take care of their own and they’ll be here for us, but that doesn’t help when he’s gone.”

Times staff writers Hector Becerra and Caitlin Liu contributed to this report.