Eliot Scott's homecoming from Iraq ends tragically (OR)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonia ... xml&coll=7

A soldier's homecoming
Harrowing duty in Iraq turned a Grant High alum into a man, but one wild night home from the war ended his life

ELIOT WESLEY DOERGE SCOTT
Sunday, November 04, 2007
AMY MARTINEZ STARKE
The Oregonian Staff
E liot Scott had it all planned out. He was going to bum around Hawaii for a while, and then come back to Portland. After that, he'd go to school across the country, working toward a physical therapy degree at Boston University.

This was a new Eliot, someone his friends from Grant High School would barely recognize. He'd been an indifferent student who would rather play soccer or pole vault -- the two sports that kept him in school to graduate with his class in 2002.

But he had something to prove. On the day after Sept. 11, 2001, Eliot joined the Explorers Post 631 Search and Rescue unit. The next spring, he enlisted in the Army, and he picked the infantry. He wanted, he said, to "go places, do things, shoot guns and jump out of planes."

Basic training made the athlete even stronger. But it was two tours of duty in Iraq totaling 29 months -- with plenty of harrowing duty as a fire team leader in charge of three other soldiers -- that made Eliot into a grown man.

He spent six birthdays on duty and went on 400 to 500 combat patrols and 40 engagements, all the time hearing from friends about college life. Now, at 24, he was eager to go to college.

"Deployment changed me a lot," Sgt. Eliot Scott wrote in his application essays to Boston University.

On Oct. 11, he returned to his home base, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, to big welcome-home hugs from his mother.

"Life is perfect," he said.

Eliot had long planned a coming-home party during his second tour that would make "Rio's Carnivale look like a board meeting," he wrote on his MySpace page. "I've got a lot of unwinding to do."

Eliot was out with his buddies in downtown Waikiki, still on an adrenaline high from Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are barred from drinking alcohol. All of them were partying, and all were intoxicated. But it was Eliot who had either a seizure or an aneurysm, and died later the same night, Oct. 13, 2007, at age 24. Autopsy results are pending. He was from Iraq only 48 hours.


Discovering his duty

Eliot as a child was a daredevil, always pushing the boundaries: climbing, jumping, swimming, running and skiing.

"If you want to go with me," he told his friends, "you gotta keep up with me."

Around fifth grade at Sabin Elementary, school started to get harder for him. His time at Beaumont Middle School was terrible: His parents split up, and he lived with his mother.

Eliot went out for pole vaulting as a broad-shouldered freshman. His grades weren't good enough, but he was willing to show up for academic probation at 7:15 a.m. three days a week in order to compete. He also played varsity soccer.

He enjoyed Explorer search and rescue missions. A few months later, he told his family and friends, "I'm thinking about joining the Army."

His friends either laughed it off or were horrified. But Eliot's mind was set. In March 2002, he signed papers for a four-year enlistment and in September left for basic training at Fort Benning, Ga.

He was home for Christmas. He had, his friends noted, learned in the Army what he never learned in high school: how to suck it up. But the bigger change in his confidence came after his first tour in Iraq. He told his friends about war: firefights, marching with 60 pounds of gear in 120-degree heat, clearing IEDs, patrols, bullets, ambushes, MREs and losing platoon members.

His second tour was worse. There were missions every day, rarely a day off, and lots of near-misses.

"It's a funny thing, being in charge of people," he wrote in September 2006. "I am the authority figure in my soldiers' lives right now. I am the person they come to with questions about equipment and tactics. Whenever they (mess) something up, it's my fault, because a soldier is a reflection of his leadership."

He got a shrapnel wound in his shoulder in October 2006. "I gotta get back to my kids" (his men), he immediately declared.

There wasn't much to do off-duty in Iraq: watching DVDs of "Entourage" and "Scrubs," working out, practicing with the air guitar band "Plunder," teaching Iraqi kids to play soccer. But Eliot, never much of a reader before, now always had his nose in a book, headlamp on at night.

His buddies teased him for his receding hairline, his haircuts that were always just too long for regs, and his attempts to eat healthy ("Don't send any junk food," he wrote home), although he was always first in line for a Twinkie.

Eliot tried out for the Army's Special Forces, just to see whether he could get in. He was chosen, but turned it down. He wanted to go to college.

It had been a very dangerous year, and Eliot was relieved to get "his kids" all back to Hawaii safely.

Once there, he was going to party with his buddies, get a luxury apartment in Waikiki, meet some girls -- he said he planned to "live outside my means for several months" -- and count the 90 days left in Hawaii before his discharge. Then he would move back to Portland in January, take road trips, and run with the bulls in Spain.

Then start college in Boston next fall, and go on with the rest of his life.

Amy Martinez Starke: 503-221-8534; amystarke@news.oregonian.com

[baggettpv]

Elliot was a member of WSTC while at grant high school. Very nice kid! Condolences to his mom who was very supportive of her son during those years of Pole Vaulting and to all that knew him.

Rick Baggett
WSTC LLC