General attends to wounded GIs

FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas — He keeps the list in his shirt pocket, close to his heart.

There are about 60,000 Marines under the command of Lt. Gen. James F. Amos. He just welcomed 17,000 back from Iraq, a homecoming sobered by the impending departure of 13,000 for a war now in its fourth year.

Most will return. Some will not.

An uncertain number will end up on Amos' list: A handwritten index card updated daily with the number of Marines under his command wounded in combat.

"When we send them off to do the nation's bidding in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq and they're wounded, we're not returning the same individual," Amos said. "When we send them back wounded there is a piece of me that says I haven't kept my bargain. What's left for me to do is to continue taking care of them."

It starts with a visit — to as many as he can.

"It's a function of loyalty," the 59-year-old general said. "In Marine speak, it means fidelity. It's a wonderful word not used very often — except in the Marine Corps. It means faithful. It implies faithful almost to a fault. . . .

"I owe it to them."

And so, Shannon Jacobs isn't surprised anymore when Amos shows up at Brooke Army Medical Center outside San Antonio. She cheerily hugs the general, who has arrived to visit her husband — Marine Staff Sgt. Damien Jacobs, a 30-year-old from Hamilton, Ohio, burned 18 months ago while trying to defuse a roadside bomb that exploded — and several dozen other Marines recovering at the Army hospital at Fort Sam Houston.

"Gen. Amos was actually here for my husband's Purple Heart ceremony about a month ago," said Jacobs, 26. "He's a regular person. The sheer fact that he cares so much about his Marines and gets personal with them, it means a heck of a lot."

As the head of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, the three-star general is in charge of one of the Corps' main fighting commands — a massive group of infantry and aircraft based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. In a job that can be a stepping stone to commandant of the Marine Corps, Amos' mission is to prepare thousands of troops for duty in Iraq and to watch over some 5,000 Marines from 2nd MEF now there.

"Our focus is constantly on training, getting the force back home or deploying the force," Amos said.