Camp Fallujah Marines Need Help!

A friend of mine at Camp Fallujah forwarded this to me today:

Subject: Marines Need Help:

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

Hey Everyone. Today we had an incident here in Fallujah, and our sister units berthing area caught fire and burned to the ground. It spread so fast and with 120 temps here today, there was no way they could contain the fire in time. These Marines lost everything that they had, all of their military issued gear as well as personal gear. The area was a complete loss, and now these Marines have little means to come up with items to live a somewhat comfortable life out here.

As most of you know, or have heard, getting clothing items and hygiene items out here is very hard, and once it does get here it's a battle between everyone to buy as much as you can at one time. Everyone has been so good supporting us with the comforts of home, and now we are asking for people to help out our fellow Marines. Anything that you could send, hygiene items or clothing items (PT style clothing shorts/t-shirts/black socks/white socks/Boxers/shower shoes (sandals) would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all very much for your continued support...you guys keep us going. Here is my address, you can address it to me, or to Sgt Marilyn Gomez, and we will take it to the unit so it can be distributed out to them. Somewhere on the package, list "C/O RCT-1" that way we know what it is.


Cpl Espinoza, B.C.
(or)
Sgt Gomez, M.J.

I MEF CE FWD G-4
MDDOC/MCC-I Unit 42540
FPO-AP 96426-2540
Al-Fallujah, IRAQ


Brandon C. Espinoza
CPL/USMC
Multi National Force-West
MAGTF Deployment Dist. OPS Center
Movement Coordination Center, Fallujah Iraq

There were about 20 Marines living in this particular building, so there is a significant immediate need here. According to my friend there, things have kind of gone to shit on base. When I first got to Camp Fallujah, the Army was in charge of the chow hall and the chow was about as good as in my college cafeteria. (Some of us still had to eat a lot of MREs.) But when the Marines took over the operation the food went to shit. At least the PX was still run by AAFES and was pretty reliable. But now, according to my friend, "Yeah it is very hard to get stuff here, the shipments have really slowed down. We pretty much resort to people back in the states sending us shaving cream and shit like that, or wait until someone goes to BIAP and they bring it back in bulk. You cant even buy skivee shirts and what not. It blows. Yeah, the Marines are in charge of the one here and it sucks. I feel bad for these guys, they literally lost every fucking thing they had..."

I will be taking up a collection at the IVAW house in DC if anyone in the area would like to donate something. Please call me at (202)505-6435 if you can come by before noon on Friday when I will be sending it out, otherwise, put together your own package!

To find out more about our DC operation, check out this video that Erica Anderson just did for the MTV Street Team.