MUSKEGON, Mich. - For one Marine Corps reservist from Michigan, service in Iraq meant identifying and processing the bodies of dozens of U.S. war dead.
Sgt. Branden Gemzer said he believed in preserving the dignity of the victims, even in the most gruesome of circumstances, and providing their families with prompt closure.
Finding his own closure is another matter.
"I guess I haven't allowed myself to process it," Gemzer told The Muskegon Chronicle for a recent story. "I just don't have that in me right now. It will be incredibly hard to process out three years of your life where you spent every single day thinking about death. ...
"If I kept dwelling on it, it would shut me down."Gemzer, 24, is a 1999 graduate of Muskegon Oakridge High School. He signed up for the Marine Corps Reserve while at Wittenberg University in Ohio.
He joined a unit in nearby Dayton, Ohio, which happened to be home of the Marine Reserve Mortuary Affairs Platoon. Gemzer said he found himself being steered toward death detail.
"I was volun-told," he said.
Gemzer's unit arrived in Kuwait in February 2003. About a month later, his platoon entered Iraq, a few miles behind the U.S. invasion force pushing toward Baghdad.
The first dead soldier he helped process drowned when his Humvee overturned in water. Sorting through the dead man's personal effects, Gemzer found photos of a wife and small child."When I think about (the soldier), I don't picture him; I picture his wife and kid," Gemzer said.
He returned from his first tour of duty in June 2003, graduated from Wittenberg in May 2005 and began a second, voluntary tour in Iraq three months later.
This time, his platoon was stationed near Fallujah, where it waited for Americans' bodies to arrive.
The unit also handled the bodies of several dozen Iraqi fighters.
"We buried them as closely as possible to Muslim tradition, as told to us by an interpreter," Gemzer said.Unlike the first tour, the second included lots of idle time, which increased the stress, Gemzer said.
Then came what he said was one of the worst days of his life.
On Dec. 1, 2005, some Marines held a promotion ceremony in an area that turned out to be mined.
"There were 10 bodies, but more than 200 pieces," Gemzer said. "Usually, the bodies were intact to some extent. But these guys were in pieces. It was definitely the worst I had to deal with. They kept coming in and coming in."
Gemzer opened one body bag and saw the face of a very young soldier. His eyes were open, and much of the back of his head was missing."He was a very young guy," Gemzer said. "You get some of these people who are 19, but look like they're 12. He was one of those."
Back in Muskegon since June, Gemzer has been staying at his mother's house, looking for work, visiting friends and trying to stay fit. He said he has come to see the importance of what he and other Americans did and are doing in Iraq.
But the emotional aftermath of his tours continues to haunt Gemzer.
"Sometimes I ask myself how this is going to end," he said. "Is it going to be something like, boom, I just break down, or will I just get over it?
"There are times I really feel like crying. I try to cry, but it just doesn't come. It's like I've got some sort of emotional block going on."I've got a feeling that when I finally can cry, I'm going to just ... bawl my eyes out," Gemzer said.
from AP