Marine service all in the family.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

You'd think Sherry McConnell would be worried about her stepson, Vincent Cho Suetos.

The 22-year-old Marine - a Churchill High School graduate - shipped over to Iraq last June to join the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines Regiment, India Company. Those soldiers have seen their share of firefights - and casualties - since the war began.

She knows better than most exactly what Suetos faces. A Eugene lawyer, McConnell is also a Marine reservist, called up last January to serve her country, first at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and since July from a base in Kuwait.

But McConnell says the Marines take care of their own, even in wartime.

"Actually, I was probably less concerned about him patrolling the streets of Iraq than I was when he was a teen-ager out at night in Eugene," McConnell said in an e-mail interview. "The Marine Corps provides young Marines with leadership, training and supervision, and he was very well armed with permission to shoot."

Nobody knows how many mother-son teams have served in the Iraq war, said Capt. Shawn Turner, a U.S. Marine Corps spokesman. The Marines track only couples in their data, not other family relationships.

"I can say unequivocally that it's rare to have a mother and son serving in a war together," Turner said. More common would be siblings or a father and son, he said.

They aren't the only Devil Dogs - a nickname conferred on Marines during World War I by German soldiers, legend has it - in the family. Vince's dad, Vincent Suetos Sr., served for 20 years and now teaches at Springfield's alternative school Gateways Learning Center.

It's a strange role reversal for the 54-year-old Suetos: keeping the home fires burning while his wife and son take up arms in a far-off land.

But it's one that spouses, parents and children of servicemen and women are becoming all too familiar with. This week, U.S. Defense Department officials announced that National Guard and reservists now in Iraq will serve 12-month tours. Tours previously ranged from six to eight months. Oregon National Guard troops affected include Bravo Company 52nd engineers from Albany, the 82nd Rear Operation Center from Lake Oswego and the 162nd Infantry from Forest Grove.

Vincent Suetos Sr. received an invitation from the Marines to return to duty last year, but declined. He retired as a major a decade ago. His wife - 44 and a longtime Marine - joined the reserves after leaving the military to attend law school.

The service might have remained a part of their past if not for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. McConnell was called up for six weeks of duty at Camp Pendleton.

Then last fall, Vince, one of Suetos' five sons, decided to enlist. At the time, the national news was full of the bluster of pending war - ultimatums from the United States, belligerence from Saddam Hussein - but it didn't deter him, Vince said in a telephone interview.

He had been attending junior college in California, mainly so he could play baseball, his favorite sport. But last year he came back to Eugene for the summer, worked awhile at his stepmother's law firm, but couldn't figure out his next move, he said.

He had always assumed that at some point he'd join the Marines. "What I saw from my dad, he had the time of his life in the Marines," Vince said.

So on Dec. 2, he enlisted and spent the next 11 weeks in boot camp, followed by 10 weeks of infantry training. By the time he finished in April, the war was winding down.

"I was hoping he wouldn't have to go," his father said.

Missed wedding

In fact, Vince was so confident he wouldn't be shipped out to the Persian Gulf right away that he and his fiancee, Jessica Dore, scheduled their wedding for the Memorial Day weekend against the advice of his parents.

"We warned him not to make plans," Suetos said. "We told him the Marines are at war, and you don't know where you're going."

But Vince thought that even if he did get orders to go, Marines would all get the holiday weekend off.

Three days before his wedding, he received his assignment for Iraq and was restricted to the base with the rest of his unit for a battery of last-minute preparations.

"I cried," said Dore, who met Vince while he was a student at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka. "We were going to have it down at San Diego on a yacht in the harbor. Everything was paid for. Everyone had plane tickets," she said.

He thought he could talk his sergeant into letting him slip away for the wedding, she said.

"They pretty much told him it doesn't matter. No one's leaving," she said. She later learned that three others in his unit also missed their weddings.

A week later, Vince was in Kuwait, a surreal desert world of intense heat, blowing sand and little else near the military bases, he said. When he first stepped off the plane at 3 a.m., it was already 90 degrees.

A week after that, he went to Iraq, a lush environment by comparison with the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and swaying palm trees.

They sent him to Ad Diwaniyah, a city south of Bagdad where he and other members of India Company guarded banks and patrolled the streets to deter looters.

By July, his stepmother was in Kuwait, too, working as a logistics officer coordinating the return of equipment from battle onto ships headed home. McConnell had to make three forays into Iraq, for briefings with officers and carved time out of her schedule to visit Vince once.

He took some good-natured ribbing from other Marines about having his mom show up, but he was proud of her, too, especially since she ribbed the enlisted men right back as well as inspiring them to do their best.

"It was good to have a mother figure around," he said.

When Vince returned to Kuwait, she was able to give him his first promotion, to lance corporal, on Sept. 1.

Like his fiancee, McConnell wrote Vince almost every day, an indispensable morale booster, he said. "Mail is the best, especially pictures," he said.

Risky business

Like his stepmother, Vince downplayed the worries and dangers he faced. He said he was never shot at during his time there, nor ever fired his own weapon.

The worst moment came when he and other Marines investigated a sheep auction where they'd learned weapons were being sold.

They arrived to see a bunch of sheep and a few thousand people, many of them with AK-47s. As Vince got ready to jump off the back of the truck he was riding in, it lurched forward and he fell, the only Marine on the ground surrounded by armed Iraqis.

But the Iraqis scattered, he said. They didn't want to fight. They just wanted to get away from the Marines so they wouldn't have to give up their weapons, which they wanted more for personal protection than anything else, he said.

But the elder Suetos knows there are real risks and worries for both his son and wife. As an officer, McConnell has access to the daily casualty reports that tell which soldiers have been injured or killed in fighting or accidents.

Checking those reports was hard for her and something no mother should have to see, her husband said.

But homefront life goes on in his southwest Eugene house decorated with Marine Corps flags, a U.S. flag and a yellow ribbon around the tree in the front yard. Suetos takes care of the two family cats and another son preparing for a term at Western Oregon University.

He tries not to worry, tries to stay busy, but it's hard, especially when an e-mail from McConnell warns that she'll be in Iraq for a few days or when news of the latest shooting comes across the television.

And he waits for the phone to ring.

It did Monday about 2 a.m. Vince was on the line reporting that he was back safe at Camp Pendleton and planning to fly up to Penn Valley, Calif., where his fiancee lives, this weekend.

Suetos headed down Friday to be there, too, play a little golf with the son who has trumped him in one life experience. Suetos has never been to war.

"I almost feel like my son got a jump on me," he said.

Now the clock is ticking down toward McConnell's return. He expects her back sometime in November, he said.

She sometimes sends Suetos pictures from the desert camp in Kuwait that alarm him because she's not wearing her flak jacket or helmet. But she assures him that Kuwait is safe, that whenever she crosses the border she's in all her protective gear and fully prepared.

"She always has her pistol unholstered, locked, cocked and ready," he said.

ONE FAMILY ON WAR

Lance Cpl. Vincent Cho Suetos: "When I was going over, I was confused on what our job would be there. But I thought our being there was definitely a help to that country, to try and build a new infrastructure."

Lt. Col. Sherry McConnell: "A vast majority of the population is glad we are here. They run into the streets and wave at passing vehicles or helicopters overhead. Even the adults and teen-agers smile and wave."

Retired Maj. Vincent Suetos: "The U.N. wants to help us, but they want some say. Give them a little more power in the decision making process so they'll be willing to help us."

CAPTION(S):

Lt. Col. Sherry McConnell of the Marine Reserve, Lance Cpl. Vincent Cho Suetos (center) and retired Marine Maj. Vincent Suetos make up the Marine family. Lt. Col. Sherry McConnell, Lance Cpl. Vincent Cho Suetos (center) and retired Maj. Vincent Suetos, all of Eugene, are a family of Marines.