Retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Hubert “Bert” Caloud. Caloud is a native of Clutier and a North Tama Class of 1972 graduate. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

CLUTIER – Clutier native Retired Marine SgtMaj Hubert “Bert” Caloud was assistant superintendent at the Manila American Cemetery several years ago when I made an inquiry to him for Iwo Jima veteran Al Jennings about a flamethrower he served with, saw him die and thought he’d been hastily buried in an unmarked grave and never recovered.

Not long afterward, I was in Manila, and Bert took me to the man’s grave, interred among the 17,000 American and Filipino men and women who died throughout the Pacific in World War II. I took a photo of the grave marker and sent it to Jennings.

“I’ve thought about him every day since he was killed,” Jennings said when he learned the man was buried in Manila, “wondering where he was. Now I know. At least he had an honorable burial in a military cemetery. That’s a relief to know.”

Caloud has served with integrity since he entered the Marine Corps in October 1973 and retired in January 2004 and began working with the American Battle Monuments Commission in October 2004. He has provided treasured information for others wanting to know about the service of veterans or their family members. He found much information for me about my cousin who had landed on Omaha Beach in the early morning of June 6, 1944.

Besides the Manila American Cemetery, Caloud has been assistant superintendent of the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium, the superintendent of the Flanders Field Cemetery in Belgium, the Aisne-Marne and Oise-Aisne-American Cemeteries in France, and now Caloud is superintendent of Ardennes Cemetery in Belgium.

Retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Hubert “Bert” Caloud. Caloud is a native of Clutier and a North Tama Class of 1972 graduate. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Before those years, he served around the world with specific duties and rank. Near the end of his career, he served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as sergeant major of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. His unit was training in Australia on 9/11 and a short time later was watching Tomahawks launched into Afghanistan from a Navy gun line off Pakistan.

From the USS Peleliu, the sergeant major’s unit flew into Pakistan to man search and rescue (SAR) sites during the bombing phase in case an aircraft went down. In early December 2001, Caloud said a Special Forces team headed toward Kandahar with a new controller, and he entered their coordinates, not “the bad guy’s,” and a B52 dropped a 15,000 “Daisy Cutter” bomb on them.

“It blew the American and Afghan Freedom Fighters all over the hill,” Caloud said. “Two American Marines and a sergeant first class were killed from the bomb. Another Marine made it to the triage tent where he later died. We put the body in a C-130 for his last ride that night.”

In November 2003, the unit was inserted in Afghanistan. Eventually, they went into South Afghanistan and worked their way up to Kandahar with other Marines, Spec Ops forces, Delta, SEALS, Aussie Special Air Service, and elements of the 26th MEU. More than 100 Taliban were killed in a night ambush on Route 1.

He said they watched B-52 strikes “light up the sky,” and kept Johhny Walker Lindh, the turncoat Taliban, in a Conex box. Not long after that, he became Gen James Mattis’ SgtMaj of Task Force 58 and after burying some freedom fighters, he became known by the general as “The Cemetery Man.”

The Hummves also had problems operating on the Afghanistan ground. They were light and had traction problems. To help that, sand bags were added. Then they’d have problems moving, trying to travel in sand dunes.

“During this time,” Caloud said, “a ‘Code H’ was needed for one of the Hummves that was not operating well in the sand dunes. It was buried in a huge pit with the Heavy Guns Marines cheering and pissing in the hole.

“We were in a pretty desolate area, on the way to an ambush site trying to find a way and had to cross a stream. We parlayed with the village elders, trying to find a fording site, and they said they would mark it. They did with young kids standing in the water like aiming stakes. I remember going by one whose lips were blue.”

On the other side, the Marines asked them what they would like. They pointed at our boot laces and “writing sticks.” This was real backwoods, he said. A few days later a CH-46 Sea Knight transport helicopter was sent back to the area with some Number 210 pencils and a bunch of boot laces.

Then there was the Iraq War, often referred to as the Second Persian Gulf War. Caloud said, “In the early days of the war when we were fighting the Iraq Army in uniform and the Fedayeen hadn’t really gotten identified as one of the major intel failures that Echo/2/1 had.”

During a fire fight later in an urban area, the sergeant major went down to Fox Company where a platoon sergeant explained to him that they were taking fire from a building and when it stopped, an Iraqi would walk out of one door of a building where fire had been coming from and walk across to another where firing would start again. They were basically feeling out the Rules of Engagement the Marines crossed the border with.

Caloud asked an NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) officer to get the Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle and told him next time that guy in civilian clothes crossed to another house “to put a couple .50 caliber rounds into the door.” He wasn’t there when that happened, but the shooting stopped.

It was the same berm where Caloud said he and his men watched CNN film an F-14 dropping a 500-pound bomb on nearby buildings. “It missed the right building,” he said, “but there was a spectacular explosion and dust signature so the narration left out that part and aired it. Later a pair of Abrams tanks cleared those buildings with its main gun and sent helmets and body parts flying out of trench with its .50 cal. coaxial machine gun.

In An Nasiriyah, Caloud spent several days with Echo Company and the company gunny while they and several other units made diversionary attacks for the Special Operations guys to get Army Pfc Jessica Lynch out of Sadaam Hospital.

“Lynch’s convoy was ambushed by Iraqi forces on March 23, 2003,” he recalled, “resulting in her being seriously injured and captured. She was held as a prisoner of war for nine days until a joint U.S. Special Operations team rescued her from an Iraqi hospital on April 1, 2003. Her rescue was highly publicized and made headlines as the first successful rescue of an American prisoner of war since World War II. We took the hospital grounds, then moved out the compound to a western bridge, and I moved over to Golf Company the next day.”

A day or two later, the Echo Company gunny and his Command Cell were pushing ammo up while clearing houses and one stepped on a mine. On a temporary duty assignment, Caloud went over to the field hospital to check on some other casualties where the man was “evaced” and went looking for him. He had puncture wounds in his back from shrapnel and some cement debris that ricocheted off a masonry wall.

“It was a busy day in Iraq,” Caloud said. “Some patients were doing self-aid-buddy-aid.”

He found the gunny getting worked on by a paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne after being shot through the chin by an AK round down by Tallil. The gunny seemed ambulatory. So Caloud asked him if he was willing to go back to Echo. He said yes, but since the hospital had taken his boots, the sergeant major took his own off and gave the man his socks to wear, put his boots back on and got him back in the fight.

Retired SgtMaj Hubert “Bert” Caloud left the Marine Corps after “30 years, 2 months, and 29 days,” he said. “Best job I ever had.”

There’s much more to his life and service during those 30 years in the Marine Corps than is reported here. He’s had many assignments, still working at a job he likes, believes in what he does, and provides his service to this country as he has since he left the farm in Tama County, Iowa, in 1973.

This story first appeared in Ray Elliott’s blog (www.talespress.com). Elliott grew up in a small Southern Illinois town and longed to see the world. He’s worked on farms and in oilfields, served in the Marine Corps, been a prison counselor, and was a high school and college English and journalism teacher for more than 25 years.