WAR:

How three Iraq tours changed one marine

As country began questioning war, so did a man who was fighting it

Steve Marcus

Christopher Gallagher joined the Marine Corps in May 2001 when he was a senior in high school. He says his mom, Catherine Jackson, was worried, even though it was a time of peace. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he and those he was training with sensed war was coming.

By Charlotte Hsu (contact)

Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Now home, a veteran questions the war

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Christopher Gallagher talks about serving in Iraq and writing home.
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Catherine Jackson, Gallagher’s mother, talks about receiving her son’s letters while he was away at war.
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Iraq Veterans Against the War

The new year will bring a presidential administration that has vowed to wind down the war in Iraq. Christopher Gallagher of Las Vegas fought in the invasion and did two additional combat tours. He shared his experience in letters home during the war, and in recent interviews.

This is what he would remember when he got back: the cramped foxhole, the stench of his unwashed body, MRE menu item No. 2, Jamaican pork chop.

He would remember the way the sand of the Kuwaiti desert would drift into his eyes, his ears, everything, giving him reason to clean his weapon twice a day as he waited to cross the border.

He would remember calling his mom, nervous but proud, after finding out in January 2003, at the end of holiday leave, that he would be going to Iraq.

Iraq.

What would he remember about Iraq?

Friends he lost. Survivor’s guilt. He would remember how Iraqis lined the streets to cheer his arrival in Baghdad, and how, later, the people of Fallujah just wanted him to leave. He would remember how different he was when it all began. At the start of this journey, he was in favor of the war.

This is Christopher Gallagher’s story.

Christopher Gallagher, U.S. Marine Corps corporal, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. Service in Iraq: 2003, the invasion; 2004, Haditha Dam; 2005, Fallujah.

• • •

Apr. 2, 2003 — “I am writing this letter from a fighting hole, behind my machine gun. I am fine for now. How is everyone back home?

“The first couple of days the Iraqi soldiers were surrendering by the hundreds. I have heard reports of American POWs being murdered. What have you heard? The first hundred hours of this war I was awake. It is hard finding time to sleep out here.”

This letter is from Gallagher’s first deployment. It was the first time he had ever traveled overseas. He wrote his family (“Dear Family, Mom, Dad, Matt, Joel, etc.”) in Farmingdale, N.Y., where he grew up before moving to Las Vegas in 2006.

The note was on military stationery — a single sheet of paper carrying the Marine Corps emblem: eagle, globe and anchor.

• • •

In the invasion of Iraq, Gallagher’s battalion fought from the town of Safwan on the Kuwaiti border through Basra and onto Baghdad. He didn’t shower for two months.

Fellow Marines secured oil fields and airports. Gallagher’s job was to establish radio communications and conduct security operations, “a machine gun post set up on top of a hill, or something like that, guarding a small area around yourself,” he recalls.

Gallagher’s battalion was the first Marine unit to enter Baghdad, and he remembers it well: “The people invaded the streets and were lining the streets of Baghdad, saying, ‘Saddam bad, Bush good.’ At the time we were considered liberators.”

He saw people everywhere, watching, cheering. But Gallagher couldn’t talk to them. That was off limits.

The day after his battalion took Baghdad, he sat down for breakfast at the Palestine Hotel with reporters, including an Iraqi woman about his age, a graduate of Baghdad University.

He remembers the meal — pita bread with tea and honey. But he can’t quite recall the specifics of what they discussed.

Gallagher was 20.

That was back when the Palestine housed journalists who came to cover the war, 2 1/2 years before a truck bomb shook the building.

Who knows what happened to those people Gallagher met at the hotel? That Iraqi journalist, where is she now? Maybe she is still covering the war. Maybe she fled her country. Maybe she’s dead.

• • •

Part of what Gallagher remembers about Iraq comes from photographs. Snapshots like the one taken in 2003 of Gallagher and eight members of his platoon, posing on the concrete roof of a building in Baghdad.

Behind them rise thick columns of smoke, black and tilted, drifting across the smoldering city.

Five years later, sitting in his Las Vegas living room, Gallagher points out that he is the only one in the picture wearing a helmet.

In Iraq, he was always careful, always on the lookout. He became, in his words, “less trusting of humanity.” In that way, the war stayed with him even after he returned home.

Back in Vegas, he says he is still “hypervigilant, always more cautious. Kind of like — in a way, almost like a minor paranoia. I’m less trusting of people, because the people over there, they smile at you one minute, and the next day they’ll be shooting at you.”

Even so, despite the nerves and fear, in 2003 Gallagher was optimistic about the war.

Writing home in on April 2, he told his family the weather had been comfortable. He wished his mom a happy birthday, said he was thinking that the two of them and his grandma could visit Atlantic City when he got back.

He finished his letter: “Tell everyone I will see them soon after the Marines have killed Saddam and the war is over.”

• • •

At home, Americans watched the siege of Baghdad on CNN, marveling at the fireworks display — the buildings exploding, the red and yellow tracer rounds flying across the sky like shooting stars.

Magazines and newspapers carried pictures of the carnage, bodies floating in water, refugees fleeing.

Gallagher’s mother, Catherine Jackson, worried, unable to watch the news while he was abroad.

“I became very depressed,” she remembers. “I checked the mailbox every day, religiously. I cried every day, religiously. I was just worried about him and his health. Would I get him home? Would he come home? And when he did come home, would he come home in one piece? I didn’t know what to expect.”

To her, Gallagher’s letters meant a lot. They meant that somewhere thousands of miles away, her son was still alive.

• • •

Meals, Ready-to-Eat.

Gallagher describes Thai chicken: “A bowl of snot with some water chestnuts, little pieces of chicken.”

Of MREs in general: “I remember them all, all very unfondly ... It comes in a sealed package. And imagine a piece of chicken in there. It looks like a piece of chicken, I don’t know if it is. They had a variety of food, but none of it was good for you. It had so many preservatives in it.”

He concluded that the only good thing that came in those rations was the candy — Skittles, Charms or M&Ms. Marines would trade with one another, Skittles for M&Ms and vice versa. Charms, considered bad luck, ended up in the garbage.

• • •

MREs aside, living conditions at Haditha Dam were good in 2004.

Gallagher slept in a bunk bed, lifted weights, showered twice a week, sometimes even with hot water. His family sent Snickers, cigarettes and powdered Country Time pink lemonade.

In March, he wrote to his mother, saying he’d received her package. The postscript reminded her that he smoked Parliament Lights.

The message was scrawled in black ink on the back of a postcard bearing the image of the front page of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes from April 11, 2003. The headline, “Baghdad falls to U.S. forces,” ran large down the right-hand side, set against the iconic photograph of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down.

“Do you remember this day almost a year ago when Marines from task force 3/4 took the statue down,” Gallagher wrote.

At Haditha Dam, he was a radio operator, part of a skeleton crew of Marines guarding the dam. Most of the men in his battalion had been called to fight in the siege of Fallujah. Some never made it back. He lost a couple of friends.

“One minute they’re there. One minute they’re gone.”

• • •

Some of the letters Gallagher wrote were never mailed. But he held on to them. These were his “final letters” — the ones his family would have received had he died.

“To Shannon,” one such note to his older sister begins. “Hi I am sorry for this tragic event you are going through, you helped raise me when mom and dad were not around ... All you have to do is close your eyes and pray, I will be there. I wanted to be a good uncle for James and Alyssa. I would have liked to see them grow up and live a good life.”

And to Gallagher’s younger brother: “I wish I could be there for you Matt. I love you so much and you will never know how much the time that we have spent together hanging out since I enlisted meant to me. If you have noticed all the extra gifts I have gotten for you, it was to try to make up for my absence.”

In what would have been his final letter to his mother and father, Gallagher wrote that he loved them, that he’d watch over them in heaven alongside Grandpa Rich, Grandma, Grandpa Jackson and Uncle Joe.

“Let everyone know I died with honor, keeping all Americans free from foreign dictatorships,” he wrote.

“I was not always the best kid to have, I joined the Corps to straighten my life out and find direction. Mom you were my best friend and were a great emotional support. Dad you were always there, from the time you taught me to bowl until I got on the bus for Parris Island.

“As I write this letter and look back on my life I only remember how much i enjoyed living it. They say ‘Everyone dies but not everyone lives.’ I just hope I turned out to be a respectable and upstanding person like you raised me to be.”

Gallagher showed the letter to his mother. She read it once and couldn’t read it again.

• • •

By the end of his third deployment, Gallagher says, “I was wondering what we were doing there. Because we were essentially driving around just waiting to be blown up. Nobody wanted to be there anymore, everybody just wanted to come home.”

The Iraqis, Gallagher says, didn’t want the troops there either. He remembers the disgust, the anger in their eyes.

“There was no point to any of the patrols,” he says. “We were told that al-Qaida was causing all the trouble, but yet it was mostly the people living in these towns. It was Iraqis.”

In Fallujah, Gallagher was a radio operator for an 81 mm mortar platoon. He worked at a checkpoint outside the city, a job he likened to herding cattle.

Everyone coming through had to have his retinas scanned. Everyone had to get an ID card. Everyone had to be searched.

Gallagher spent eight hours on duty, eight hours off. When he wasn’t manning the checkpoint, he patrolled in vehicles and on foot, sweating under a scorching Iraqi sun.

He searched homes, feeling no guilt, no remorse. He grew angry when he gave information on a firefight to his higher ups only to find out later that “the report that they filed was not what I said.”

He wondered why he didn’t have proper armor. During his first deployment, he remembers, he didn’t have plates in his vest to protect him from bullets and shrapnel. Through his last deployment, he said, his Humvees had what the troops called “hillbilly armor,” a piece of metal in the shape of a door hanging off the side of the vehicle.

“I was pissed off. I was in Iraq,” Gallagher remembers. “I supported the war and supported the troops. I thought they were one and the same.” But, he said, “I didn’t want to be there anymore.”

He slept on a cot in a wooden hut housing 20. Fellow soldiers on patrol found propane tanks and 30- or 40-gallon drums and used them to fashion a makeshift shower.

Once a week, he got hot food — maybe prime rib, maybe beef stew. It didn’t make him sick like the other meals or the dirty water he said the military gave him.

• • •

Gallagher is 26 now, no longer on active duty. He has been home, on U.S. soil, for three years.

He has no regrets. In May 2001, as a senior in high school in Farmingdale, N.Y., he signed up to join the Marines to see the world, to “become someone.”

His mother worried, afraid of what might happen even though it was a time of peace. On Sept. 11, Gallagher was at boot camp at Parris Island, S.C. He and his fellow recruits, training together in the humid southern summer, knew war was coming.

Looking back, Gallagher says the Marine Corps made him a better person.

He is more focused, more disciplined. One of the worst students in his high school class, he pulled a 3.5 grade-point average while studying at the College of Southern Nevada on the G.I. Bill. He left school to learn to be an electrician. He makes good money, helps support his mom.

He can take direction but also has leadership skills. Along the way, in Iraq, he made lifelong friends, some people he normally wouldn’t hang out or talk to. What brought them together?

“We were willing to die for each other.”

• • •

Gallagher was once in favor of the war. He remembers that well.

How much things have changed.

After returning to America, he read about the war, watched movies about the war, talked to friends about the war that left him with so many memories.

No weapons of mass destruction were found. Gallagher felt the country’s leaders had lied to him.

He learned as many U.S.-paid civilian contractors were stationed in Iraq as troops. He read about how war brings profit, raining fortune upon security companies, food companies ... the list goes on.

He believes the government was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, a view many people consider radical. But Gallagher believes it’s the truth. People like to believe in what’s easiest to believe, he says. He has read more about the terrorist attacks than many fellow Americans.

And the soldiers, the Marines, the airmen, the young people like Gallagher who fought abroad?

Gallagher felt the country and the Veterans Affairs Department abandoned them when they came back.

A friend of his who was shot in the leg saw disability benefits reduced. Other servicemen and servicewomen struggled to get care for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“These are people, that their friends blew up in front of them,” Gallagher says. “They still have a lot of death and destruction (on their minds), and they’re just messed up.”

He is disgusted.

“The Defense Department recently came out with a memo saying all troops must remain apolitical ... saying that you’re a soldier, you have no opinions, you don’t count. I think soldiers should have more of a voice, be able to speak out.”

So in September, Gallagher co-founded a Las Vegas chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

• • •

Some of Gallagher’s memories of Iraq are hazy, as if obscured by bleached sheets of hot desert sand. Others are clear. Some of what he remembers he won’t talk about.

For him, the war is over, now. He won’t be going back.

But Iraq will stay with him, always — in his photographs, in his letters, in this story, his story.

Charlotte Hsu can be reached at 259-8813 or at charlotte.hsu@lasvegassun.com.

Discussion: 26 comments so far…

By jfnance32

12/28/08 at 6:51 a.m.

Suggest removal

I wonder if the Sun will ever have the guts to do balance reporting.

How about a Iraq combat veteran who signed up for many tours and still thinks the Iraq effort is still worthy?

Of course the Sun main goal is not to inform but to indoctrinate and they are using this vet toward that goal.

The Sun is so hard left and a Democratic Party mouthpiece that is laughable for anybody to say it is a serious newspaper. More often than not, its "new stories" are really opinion pieces with very little supportive facts in them.

I read it because I like to know what the left and Nevada Democratic Party is thinking.

On the other hand, I should be happy that the Sun is so open and obvious in its attempts to indoctrinate the readers instead of informing them. It makes the paper so weak in its power and no wonder its readership fell to a point that it became an insert into the LVRJ.
By IVAW_Supporter

12/28/08 at 10:31 a.m.

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I am glad to see more troops that have the courage to speak out against an illegal occupation.

This young man obviously served his country honorably and continues to serve in the capacity of a peace activist.

I just wish there were more people in our military who have seen war and are disgusted by it to come forward and tell their stories and why they are against the war.

Christopher my prayers are with you and your family during this holiday season.
By kstryker

12/28/08 at 10:55 a.m.

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Well I am another Iraq war vet who is against the war too....As one of the members of IVAW Las Vegas Chapter I know Chris well he isn't going to try to BS anyone he only wants people to know the truth. To many Americans are blind to everything that is going on over there and those are the ones who think we are doing great things. Well I am here to tell you that Chris is right it's time for it to end! Chris Awesome job on the article I will see ya tomorrow!
By revbobdobbs

12/28/08 at 11:15 a.m.

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Powerful story.

Nance, why don't you tell us about your experience in the military?
By Warrior_Mom

12/28/08 at 11:47 a.m.

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As a Warrior Mom I can relate to what Christopher's family went through.

I Support the Troops fighting overseas, however I no longer support the war on terrorism.
I want our fighting men and women home safe so that our gov't can spend that money on healthcare for the vets.

there are too many homeless veterans that have served in Iraq's civil war and it must stop.

Give our vets a chance employ them!
they fought for our freedom now lets fight for their rights with the VA.

next time you see a vet tell them thanks!!!
By Johnathan_Abbinett

12/28/08 at 12:56 p.m.

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"Nance" you're typical of a common idiot that's all for sending someone else into a war, any war, whether it's Just or Unjust!

Gallagher is typical of our young soldiers that learned the difference between a Just and Unjust War the hard way - and his opinions carry real weight based on his factual experieces! There's no better advocate for peace than a combat veteran that has proven his patriotism!

We must seperate our warriors from the wars we send them to fight! We can support our troops while opposing Unjust War!

We should all support our troops and our military families - including their rights to express their views!

The immoral, unethical, illegal and Unjust War in Iraq is going into the history books as the biggest lying, cheating, thieving crime Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rice and Rove foisted on the U. S. Congress and the American people - facts are facts!

I say we support our troops by bringng them home and fully funding the Veteran's Administration - and never, ever, again sending our military into hams way without a comprehensive and publc Just War debate in the House and Senate and, then, only as a last resort after all political and diplomatic recourses have been exhausted - as the Founders foresaw!

KUDOS to the Sun for running this story!
By canvasjoe

12/28/08 at 2:26 p.m.

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Chris, thanks for sharing your convictions with the world. Strange how Americans can't fully grasp the horrible destructive power of war. We have not had an occupying foreign army in our land. How many Iraqi civilians, women and children have die, been injured or rendered homeless?

There is "Just War". But the Iraqi war was no more than a geo-political and economic aggression of powerful industry over a up-for-grabs people. The sacred honor of soldiers should never be used for political/economic aggression. The trumping of WMD and War on Terrorism are just gimmickry to persuade the masses into believing there was honorable and just causes. There were none. American is not innocent in this bloodshed.
By Estella

12/28/08 at 4:13 p.m.

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Thank you Chris and Vets!

Am very proud and honored to know Chris a little and am
thankful to learn about his experience.

That our Vets, epecially a MARINE can be manipulated is an
oxymoron, to me. These are women and men that are just
sharing with us what they experienced. I have read a few
accounts of Vets that are still for the Iraqi war. This
encourages thinking. I just want to learn more, on both
sides. Knowledge and respect is good.

Lets not do to the Iraqi Vets, (that don't agree with us),
what we did to all Viet Nam Vets.

Many blessings/bendiciones dear Chris and ALL of our Vets.
For your bravery and courage!

Thank you, Las Vegas Sun!
By Wally

12/28/08 at 9:04 p.m.

Suggest removal

Thanks for the article Chris. It was a good story. Thanks for serving your country. Sorry your country couldn't serve you better. And thanks for the courage to stand up against the war and to call into question the attacks of 9/11. 9/11 should have a real investigation. It's obvious the 9/11 Commission was a cover up and buildings came down by demolition. No matter how powerful they are, the real criminals should go to jail, and y'll should be compensated for the fraud against you. God bless you and the other vets.

And thanks for the fair story, Charlotte, and the Las Vegas Sun
By Scott

12/28/08 at 10:11 p.m.

Suggest removal

"He believes the government was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, a view many people consider radical. But Gallagher believes it's the truth."

His credibility went way down when I read this.

I agree completely with one thing, the war should have been over in 2004.
By getalife

12/28/08 at 10:13 p.m.

Suggest removal

Anybody that believes the 9/11 conspiracy theories needs to be deprogrammed and have their heads examined.

Thanks for serving, but get some help.
By BugMeTons

12/28/08 at 10:29 p.m.

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Yes. Please do not believe any of the 9/11 conspiracy theories without critical examination. Especially the government sponsored conspiracy theory.
By azsk8fan

12/29/08 at 6:55 a.m.

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After Bush leaves the White House let's send HIM to Iraq instead of to his big fancy house in Texas.
By mikegino

12/29/08 at 8:39 a.m.

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I'll be curious to see if the local chapter is still around a year from now.
By getalife

12/29/08 at 8:48 a.m.

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I am curious what books you have read. I have done a lot of research and reading and cannot for the life of me figure out how you come to some of you conclusions about 9/11.

Did we not land on the moon either.

While you are reading add "once a marine" by nick popaditch. Maybe that will help.
By Warrior_Mom

12/29/08 at 12:46 p.m.

Suggest removal

My point exactly,When our Military is protecting our country for some reason the insults get posted I will say to get a life give thanks to those who you may not agree with stop cherry picking a bit of the article just respect his Life Story! Do you know what war is?
By IVAW_Supporter

12/29/08 at 3:08 p.m.

Suggest removal

"get a life" have you read the new pearl harbor by Dr. David Ray Griffin?
What about architects and engineers for 9/11 truth.
Marines for 9/11 truth.
You are a troll and should not post something you have no significant knowledge of.
if it were up to people like you Americans would still believe that the gulf of tonkin incident actually happened. (google false flag terror)
Vietnam would still be going on if not for brave men like Chris. Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
checkout the IVAW WEBSITE!
By jfnance32

12/29/08 at 3:36 p.m.

Suggest removal

We did not land on the moon because the moon is a fake. It is a giant spaceship that has an army of Bush and Cheney clones that are ready to take over the world.

It will happen on March 17th, 2012.
By Warrior_Mom

12/29/08 at 3:58 p.m.

Suggest removal

When Christopher was deployed to Iraq, I was alone. Words could never express how as a Marine Mom I also along with my family became forgotten. Yes we were all Patriotic never questioned the govt just knew that he had a job to do.After Christopher's 2nd deployment and then his 3rd I realized there was no end to Iraqs Civil War and not only my son but other Military sons and daughters did'nt belong there. I was lucky Christopher came home and was honest enough to tell his story.For that I am so proud of him! I belong to a group called Military Families Speak Out our website is www.mfso.org We support the troops but want them home now! Thanks to Charlotte and the Sun for the article and to all military family members you are always in my thoughts and prayers as are our Military Cat jackson
By getalife

12/29/08 at 6:06 p.m.

Suggest removal

This is why I love america. Anybody can post whatever crap they want (unless the Sun removes it) and there will be people lining up to think its true because nobody put LOL behind it.

As I have stated I am grateful for your service, I just have a hard believing the swill you are trying to peddle.

We have the freedom to disagree and go on with our lives, this just looks like you are trying to "start a movement" and make a buck.

War sucks, you volunteered. I was drafted, and some people have no clue what carry a big stick means. You were a Marine, you weren't in the Air Force or something.
By jfnance32

12/29/08 at 10:35 p.m.

Comment removed by staff.
By kstryker

12/30/08 at 10:11 a.m.

Comment removed by staff.
By IVAW_Supporter

12/30/08 at 8:22 p.m.

Suggest removal

watch one of the nearly 30+ documentaries that have overwhelming evidence that the official story does not make any friggin sense. you mean to tell me they found a hijackers passport on the ground by wtc that survived the plane crashing into the building?

what about building number 7 was not hit by a plane but fell like wtc 1 and 2?

you sir are the nut for believing your gov't

viva la revolution
By kwkpost

1/2/09 at 9:53 p.m.

Suggest removal

It's unfortunate that this soldiers tale has turned into a conspiracy theory "point-lack of a point" tin foil hat brigade party.....
As a fellow veteran, I honor this young man's service. However, in my opinion, he needs counseling in a positive manner and soon. Any reasonably intelligent person who serves in the military for any respectable period of time should know exactly what this country is capable of.... and what it is not..... A conspiracy of this magnitude can only exist in the minds of loons... and forever there it will stay... Unfettered and unchanged by cold, hard facts and common sense, conspiracy theorists exist and persist only because man is not perfect and no explanation of the events of that day, as chaotic as it was, will ever meet anyone's definition of perfect.... It must be a sad personal world to dwell in, day after day, thinking only that that this most despicable and criminal act was committed by anyone else that the Muslim extremists we know so well.....
The Sun's publishing of this biased, pandering piece confirms their tailspin continuing ever downward, now approaching supermarket tabloid territory.

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