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CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (8/23/2012) – Cpl. Joshua Brooks
coordinates machinegun fire, trains with foreign militaries and has
met the president.
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Cpl. Joshua Brooks, a machine gunner from
Petoskey, Mich., with Charlie Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st
Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit,
fires an M-2 .50 cal. machine gun, Aug. 12, 2012, on Udairi Range,
Kuwait. The Marines are in Kuwait as part of a 24th MEU sustainment
training package. The 24th MEU is deployed with the Iwo Jima
Amphibious Ready Group as a U.S. Central Command theater reserve
force providing support for maritime security operations and theater
security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of
responsibility. Photo by USMC Sgt. Richard Blumenstein
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The 24-year-old Petoskey, Mich., native serves as a machine gunner
and currently holds the billet of machinegun section leader for
Weapons Platoon, Charlie Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st
Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Machine gunners work as teams in combat to lay down suppressive
fire, or decimate enemy forces. Brooks' job centers on directing
those teams onto targets and controlling their rate of fire.
“Basically, my job as the section leader for the company is to
control machinegun fire support at the company level,” he said.
“What we would do is move into a position and mass fires onto an
objective.”
He is also responsible for ensuring all the company's machine
gunners are combat ready.
“I go around to each and every
platoon and check on the Marines to see how they are
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doing and see how their morale is,” he said. “I also keep
accountability of all their gear and ensure they have everything
they need to work successfully.” |
Brooks said he enlisted in the Marine Corps because he
wanted a change in his life that would set him apart from
everyone around him; he wanted to be different.
“It
was boredom mostly,” he said. “I was bored with being like
everyone else.”
Brooks worked for UPS and lived in
an apartment after graduating from Petoskey High School.
“It was a good paying job, it just was not very
fulfilling,” he said.
A letter in the mail from his local Marine Corps recruiting
station and a few commercials on TV convinced him the Marine Corps
might have the fulfillment he desired.
Five years and eight
months later, he is on his second enlistment and fourth deployment.
He deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice. During those
deployments he saw foreign countries, engaged in fire fights, and
received the Purple Heart medal.
He was wounded on June 1,
2009, when an IED blew him from the gun-turret of his Humvee during
his second deployment.
“We were conducting a QRF (quick
reaction force) mission to go pull a battalion Humvee out of a ditch
because they rolled a truck,” he said. “We hit an IED on June 1,
around 1 o'clock in the morning.”
On June 6, 2009, President
Barack Obama personally awarded him the Purple Heart medal at a
hospital in Germany.
“It was pretty intense because I didn't
know it was happening,” he said. “He hit the medical ward and then
they said ‘VIP on deck.' The Secret Service was searching my room
like 30 seconds later and after that he was walking in.”
“He
is much taller than he looks on TV,” he said.
Currently, Brooks is on Camp Buehring, Kuwait, conducting
sustainment training along other Marines from the 24th MEU who were
previously aboard the USS Gunston Hall.
Brooks said his time
in Kuwait has allowed his Marines to come together as a section and
sharpen their skills in coordinating machinegun fire. He added the
training in Kuwait will help better prepare them for whatever
challenges they may face in the future.
“It has been a lot
of fun,” he said.
So far on the deployment Brooks has
participated in a number of bilateral training events in Jordan and
Spain with numerous foreign militaries.
“I am doing stuff
completely different than my first three deployments,” he said. “I
have learned a lot from it. It is a really unique experience.”
With all of Brooks' experiences: traveling thousands of miles
away from home to numerous countries, seeing combat, training with
foreign militaries, and meeting the president – it is easy for him
to say he is not the same as everyone else.
By USMC Sgt. Richard Blumenstein
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2012
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