Marine died ‘with his boots on’

In the Greek epic "The Iliad," hero Achilles faces a choice between a short life ending in a glorious death or a long, peaceful life without the glory.

Ultimately, Achilles chose the glory.

Matt Ingham and his fellow Marines would understand.

Staff Sgt. Ingham, 25, died Monday in Afghanistan in an ambush, saving the lives of 12 fellow Marines by crawling, while wounded, to a radio to call in air support, exposing himself to additional fire, which killed him, according to reports from his platoon commander, his family and friends.

"That's the way you want to go," said Marine Sgt. Greg Wenzel, an Altoona native awaiting his sixth deployment to the Middle East war zone. "Taking the fight to the enemy."

No one wants to die, said Justin Slep, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who along with Wenzel and Ingham was one of 10 Altoona Area High School graduates from 2002 to join the Corps.

But such a death is "one of the things people like us live for," Slep said. "If I did [die], I'd want it to be just like that."

Slep has imagined what it would be like afterwards: a heroic medal citation that people read again and again, wondering "What was that guy made of? ... How the hell did he do that?"

Ingham "went out with his boots on," Wenzel said. "[Doing] what we all loved doing."

It's the kind of death that's enviable to those who join the Marines for the "right reasons" - which don't include money for school or because their dad wanted them to go, Slep and Wenzel said.

His action was potentially "big, big stuff" and medal-worthy, according to Slep.

Based on preliminary reports, squad-leader Ingham may have suspected he was fatally injured when he crawled to the body of his comrade carrying the radio pack, Slep said.

One could argue that believing you're going to die makes it easier to risk getting shot again.

But Slep and Wenzel don't look at it that way.

They see Ingham simply ignoring his personal concerns to focus on helping his comrades - something he would have done whether he was already hit or not.

"You have to stay in the fight," said Ron Heller, Logan Township police chief and former Marine, who was wounded several times in Vietnam. "You cannot give up."

Maybe Ingham could have increased his survival odds by attending to his own injuries and remaining under cover, Slep said.

But that wasn't his role as leader.

Injured or not, it couldn't have been easy to work his way to the fallen radioman, calm himself with "rounds snapping past his head," then provide the helicopter pilots the precise location coordinates, while explaining the positions of his men and the enemy in detail, so the pilots would know what they were getting into, Slep said.

A partial, hurried picture risked making things much worse, he said.

It's absolutely unnatural for people to willingly enter hostile fire, he said.

Some can't do it and end up "sitting in corners crying or physically sick," he said.

But for most, the intense training and the momentum of battle take over, Wenzel said.

Anger, too - as you realize the enemy is shooting at you, Heller said.

"It's the biggest adrenaline rush," Wenzel said.

Everyone is afraid, but you can reach a place where normal perceptions vanish, said Heller, who recalls that firefights initially sounded loud, but sometimes faded so in retrospect he recalled hearing nothing.

When it's over, you think "Holy s---, I don't believe I did that," Wenzel said.

Ingham may have died an enviable death, but children aren't supposed to precede their parents, said Leanne Sidney, who taught him at the Greater Altoona Career & Technology Center.

She has a 19-year-old daughter and can't "wrap [her] mind around" losing a child.

Still, he was doing what he loved.

"It's what Marines do," Heller said. "For each other."

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.