Before Thomas Rowland even graduated from high school, he knew he wanted to join the United States Marine Corps.
“My dad was a Marine, and he and I were never really close,” he admits. “I guess I wanted to prove to him that I was worthy of the title too. I signed up in 1993 and told them I wanted to leave as soon as I graduated.”
Immediately after graduating from Benton Academy, the Marines came to collect. And Rowland was on his way towards a path that would lead him to comradery and training but also to a combat zone in East Africa and a military intervention in Haiti.
“The recruiter came and got me from my house,” he said. “You spend the first night in a hotel. But the next morning, you’re gone. Next thing you know, you are on a plane.”
Rowland headed to training at Camp Johnson and Parris Island, both located in South Carolina.
“Training was easy because I was in shape,” Rowland said. “But for the people who were not in shape, it could get pretty bad. The yelling and all that didn’t bother me. But you only sleep about four hours a night then you are training the rest of the time. You will soon forget your left from your right pretty quick.”
Rowland said he enjoyed the structure and the routine that came with military training. But he admits it was hard to work under different personalities in upper management.
“You have to respect the rank but that doesn’t mean you have to respect the man,” he said. “You always have that ten percent.”
Rowland found himself training with his fellow Marines every day, ten to 12 hours a day. Those long hours together developed into respect, friendship.
“When you go into a combat situation, you would rather die than see them die,” he said. “He’s a marine. You’re a marine. You will save them before yourself.”
And combat was coming for Rowland. In 1993, he headed to Somali, East Africa. A full military operation was being conducted in Somalia by American military forces during the Somali Civil War. What began as a United Nations effort to provide humanitarian relief and restoration of order led to conflict and bloodshed.
Those operations were depicted in Black Hawk Down.
“We were supposed to go in there, get this warlord and be out in three hours,” Rowland said. “Seven days later, we were still in a fire fight. We hadn’t slept in seven days. We had no food, no water, no nothing.”
The warlord was Mohamed Farrah Aidid, one of Somalia's most dangerous and aggressive warlords.
Rowland said they ran out of ammunition after three days.
“You had to get their ammunition and their weapons to try to stay alive,” Rowland said. “It was supposed to last three hours, and we were there seven days. It was pretty intense.”
Rowland said 18 Marines were killed, a few who he knew personally. And the warlord?
“We never got him,” Rowland said, looking down. “The people you are sent to look for in these countries are nomadic, moving all over the place, all the time. They never stay in the same place two days in row. Your intelligence had to be on point. You would have people in the villages who would help you. But you got to pay them.”
Rowland said the Somali mission was supposed to be “light artillery.”
“Intelligence was really bad on that one,” he said. “During those first three hours, I bet you had thousands coming out of the woodwork.”
Although Rowland was in a combat zone, he admits the country was beautiful, filled with an abundance of natural resources.
“It would get so hot there that we would open doors and hold them open with these big black rocks we found,” he said. “Come to find out those black rocks were gold.”
About six months after returning from Somali, Rowland headed to Haiti, where there was a multinational military intervention. The intervention was designed to remove the military regime led and installed by Raoul Cédras after the 1991 coup d'état overthrew the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The operation was effectively authorized by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 940, which approved the use of force to restore the Aristide government.
In Haiti, Rowland was with the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marines, Scout Sniper Platoon.
“In Haiti, you had mountains and a tough terrain to endure,” Rowland said. “We were there for security and military policing. Once you secure the towns and villages, you would move into the mountains. We were to basically keep the peace there.”
Rowland recalls the living conditions of the Haitians. Haiti has long struggled with poor living. Poverty in Haiti is regarded as among the most severe in the Western Hemisphere.
“It is a pretty country, but it’s poverty,” Rowland said. “There are mostly fishing towns. All the homes have dirt floors. People make their houses out of stuff that washes up on the beaches.”
Rowland remembers when food missions and banks would arrive in the villages. The crowds became so large that often desperation would lead to chaos.
“You start to see how far man will go,” he said. “These people are hungry, and they are desperate. It doesn’t take long for it to turn.”
And there was also a serious cultural difference that Rowland noticed one night in the mountains.
“We had a four-man team, and we started setting up camp,” he said. “All of a sudden, we noticed a fire over there that was a lot bigger than what we were doing. We thought something wasn’t right, so we went to investigate. We came up on group of Haitians around a big bonfire, and they were having some kind of voodoo ceremony.”
“I know you’ve probably seen it on television, but in person…” Rowland said, taking a moment. “We had enough of that. We headed back down that mountain.”
Rowland said the situation in Haiti was peaceful…until it wasn’t.
“It was going good until they wanted us to take the Haitians’ weapons,” he said. “We had a Haitian interpreter helping us who went into a Haitian police station to tell them they had to give up their weapons. Later, after he came running out, the Haitians shot him. They didn’t kill him, but we had to unleash on that building. It got bad. I think 12 people got killed. It was always an unpredictable situation.”
After eight months, Rowland returned home from Haiti. He would eventually pursue another path, opting not to continue a military career. But he never regrets that day he signed up for service.
“I always thought the Marines were a different breed of people,” he said. “I knew I wanted to join the Marines. I considered it a calling. I wanted to serve my country. If I were allowed to do it over again, I would 100 percent join the Marines again…absolutely.
