'Mr. Wilson' Finally Gets Out of Ramadi
RAMADI, Iraq -- "Mr. Wilson" is gone. When U.S. tanks first rolled into this most violent of Iraqi cities, the Iraqi family man stayed put. He hung in there for three more years as neighboring shops and buildings were pounded into rubble. He stayed even after U.S. Marines, failing to recognize him as he drove home one day, opened fire and injured him in the leg.
When virtually everyone else fled the heart of downtown Ramadi, he stood his ground. He became a rare familiar face to young U.S. Marine lookouts who knew little about him by a nickname of unknown origin, inherited from past deployments: "Mr. Wilson."
The Marines would target him in their sights as he approached their base -- then ease off when they realized it was just Mr. Wilson coming home. They came to respect him as a harmless, stubborn man who wanted to stay put in a white, single-story house that unfortunately lay across the street from government offices besieged by insurgents.
Marines heading home would brief their replacements to be alert for strangers but leave Mr. Wilson alone, and, when they left, to pass on his story to the next batch of troops.
No more. About two months ago Mr. Wilson, his wife and daughters left for safer parts of the city of 400,000, leaving behind blocks of shattered homes from which hundreds more had already fled.
Marines think the family still lives in Ramadi since the daughters have been back several times to recover leftover possessions from their former home.
In the vast scale of suffering and displacement the country has experienced, Mr. Wilson's departure is the tiniest of blips. But it's a vivid symbol of the hardships faced by the U.S.-led coalition and the elected Iraqi government in restoring peace and quiet for the countless other Mr. Wilsons of Iraq.
"I think he just got sick of living here with all the attacks," said Lance Cpl. Sean Fitzgerald, 21, of Osteen, Fla., who used to regularly see him from a rooftop post. "He had young daughters. He probably didn't want them to live in danger anymore."
There could have been many things making up his mind -- the rumors of an imminent coalition onslaught to drive out the insurgents, or the militants using his block to launch attacks on continued