Cpl Delello: From Euphrates to Blue Ridge

TWO GENERATIONS OF MARINES -- Jared Delello sits with his grandfather who taught in Officer Candidates School and was also a machine gunner.

In the daily bustle of campus life, many students may not realize that they are sharing their classrooms with heroes.

Cpl Jared Delello is one of those students.

Upon finishing high school, the California native followed his grandfather’s example and joined the Marine Corps. Delello trained as a mortarman with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, Weapons Company and became a machine gunner when the unit shipped to Al Anbar Province, Iraq during the troop surge in 2007.

“A deployment is an adventure,” Delello said. “A lot of horrible things can happen, but you see God’s hand through it.”

Delello said the Iraqis were very hospitable; families would often invite his squad over to meet them and would cook breakfast or tea for everyone. A “foreign exchange” type of system was set up where the squad would go to a village and stay in someone’s house for three days.

The Marines would pay rent, fortify the house and patrol the neighborhood while getting to know the family.

“Misconceptions can go around, but if you’re living right there next to them and talking to them daily, they see just another person,” he said. “It’s kind of cool.”

Returning home after seven months overseas felt like waking up from a long dream, he said. Delello described the time like parole: with only a limited amount of freedom, the Marines would try to cram as much as they could in their short time off. He said that all the impulses are kind of extreme; war is extreme, and it makes people extreme.

After a brief time back in the U.S., the 7th Marines shipped out again, this time to Afghanistan. The battalion was hit hard, but Delello said God helped him through it.

“When I got back from Afghanistan, everything started to feel more real,” he said. “After my second deployment, all my life more easily blended together.”

Now at Liberty, Delello is studying government and politics with the intention of running for office in South Carolina where his relatives live. He is involved on campus as a prayer leader and the president of the Student Veterans Group.

“I got to see God overseas in a warzone, and I can bring that same urgency into everything I do,” he said. “I’m really thankful that I have these experiences — it helps me keep everything in perspective.”

Speaking of other veterans, Delello asked that people just walk up and say thank you or shake their hand.

He said that no one knows how many friends they had to leave behind or what hardships they went through, and asking about their experiences validates what they did.

“When you go ask (a veteran) about his experiences, he’s thinking more about his friends that either went through harder times or are not there anymore,” he said. “That probably means a lot to a lot of guys.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *