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Sgt. Shelvy says he's still a fighter, but feels more 'seasoned' than the young man on this cover.
Four years ago, as a 21-year-old Marine corporal, Eric Shelvy led a platoon in the Battle of Fallujah and landed on the Nov. 22, 2004, cover |
The Time magazine cover, framed and signed by President George W. Bush, hangs unobtrusively on the living-room wall in Eric Shelvy's Stafford County apartment.
In the photo, Shelvy is the archetypal fighting man, mouth open in a shout, face tensed, eyes trained on a distant point.
He was 21 then, a corporal, when a civilian freelance photographer shot the image during the Battle of Fallujah. It appeared on Time's cover Nov. 22, 2004.
Four years later, Shelvy is home safe, an older, more sophisticated version of that young Marine.
He's a sergeant stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico, and he's married. He and wife Nataliia Shelvy expect their first child in January, and they just found out it's a girl.
Shelvy doesn't dwell on the two tours of duty in Iraq that made him a combat veteran before other men his age had imbibed their first legal beer.
It's just a fact of his life--one he's proud of, to be sure, but one he speaks of with reserve.
The Fallujah moment in the photograph happened during his second deployment, as he led a squad of a dozen Marines helping to roust out insurgents.
They cleared homes one at a time, searching "every room, behind every door, in every closet," Shelvy recalled.
"There was more gunfire than you can possibly imagine. It was
Civilian freelance photographer Max Becherer was embedded with Shelvy's squad, transmitting photographs by satellite.
The Time issue hit newsstands, and suddenly Shelvy's family members in St. Louis, Mo., were besieged with media requests.
Shelvy himself seems more comfortable talking about recent noncombat assignments as an embassy security guard.
He has been stationed in Moscow, the Hague and Kuala Lumpur, returning to the United States and moving to Stafford only last month.
Shelvy met the president during one of those embassy assignments. He handed his commander in chief a copy of the Time magazine cover to sign.
The president asked his name, and Shelvy made sure to spell it out--an act of boldness his fellow Marines enjoyed ribbing him about later.
During his Marine security guard days, Shelvy earned a bachelor's degree and did some travel on his own, visiting 25 countries in 3 years.
He met Nataliia in Kuala Lumpur, where she was a professional ballet dancer. She's 22 and a native of Kiev, Ukraine.
While Shelvy said he would absolutely be ready to return to combat if ordered, his marriage and impending fatherhood make him happy, for now, to be at home in the United States.
He plans to leave the Marine Corps soon and go to work as a civilian in diplomatic security overseas.
That suits the couple's international bent, and it fits Shelvy's fearless inclinations. He still has the fighting attitude of the young man on the Time cover, but four years have made a difference, Shelvy said.
"I'm a little more educated," he said. "A little more experienced. Seasoned."
Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com
