 "Photo: Shannon Cross")
After cross training with the Israel Defense Forces earlier this year, one university student will be working double-time to finish his third semester of school - and prepare for combat in Iraq.
Lance Cpl. Tyler Blaker, an assault-squad rifleman in the U.S. Marine Corps, will begin serving a nine-month active tour of duty in November. Until then, he will learn Iraqi customs and language and practice military techniques while studying political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
This spring, he and his unit of 350 to 400 fellow Marines became one of the first to do "conscription service" with the IDF, the Israeli Navy Seals and the Shin Beth, Israel's domestic security department.
Blaker stayed in Israel for two months, studying house-to-house and counterterrorism fighting at Camp Adams - between the Gaza Strip and West Bank - and swapping military techniques with militia he calls the "elite of the elite in Israel."
He grew close and still exchanges e-mails with about a dozen of the Israeli military officers he met in training, many of whom are infantrymen in active combat against Hezbollah fighters in the Golan Heights area along the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
"I can't really tell you what they've been doing, but they are having fun," he said.
Although he left Israel just a short time before the situation there escalated, he said the tension was certainly noticeable throughout the war-torn nation.
"(The Israelis) live in a war zone…their malls have security that's better than our airports," he said. "For a lot of people, it would freak them out to see mall security guards carrying Uzis."
He will be entering similar conditions in Iraq later this year, and many of the tactics his unit picked up in Israel could be applicable. As for the way he will be received by Iraqi citizens, Blaker had a positive outlook.
"You always have to live on the brighter side of things," he said. "I mean, there are people … who want Iraq to be a democratic country."
Nebraska Wesleyan student Cody Dryben, a close friend of Blaker's for about eight years, said he hasn't asked Blaker many questions about combat and the potentially dangerous situation he will be entering.
"You kind of try and stay off that subject a little bit," he said. "It's not depressing, it's just kind of an eye-opening subject … there's been way more deaths in Iraq than in the Israel area."
The current crisis in Israel, which erupted just months after Blaker's return to America, was sparked by the abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
Since then, numerous attempts have been made by the U.S. and United Nations to send peacekeeping forces into Lebanon.
"It's kinda like, 'Ah, shit, what would have happened if we (the Marines) had been there?'" Blaker said.
The Marines have evacuated American citizens and tourists from the war zone since it was discovered that a number of U.S. citizens were trapped and in danger. Blaker said he has trained with many of those Marines in the past, although he doesn't have a close relationship with any of them.
