Page 30 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2021- Online Magazine

Panamanians to surrender;
capturing over 250 enemy POWs.
“On the way back, we
encountered a mob of
Panamanians who were about to
string up a Noriega sympathizer.
I convinced them to let us take
him to the enemy POW camp and
let a tribunal decide his fate. I put
him in my HMMWV. As we left,
we encountered a Light Armored
Reconnaissance unit. They
needed help capturing a high-
value target who'd been spotted Warrant Officer Guerrero graduates an officer as the Honor Graduate
in the area. He showed me a
picture of Noriega’s right-hand Iranian tanker. In Jan. ’95, the UN was ready to be
man. I asked, ‘You mean the guy in my back seat?’ extracted out of Somalia. On Feb. 27, we got the
I was in trouble for leaving my patrol to answer green light and hit the beach under fire. It took us
the distress signal, but before it was over, I was
meritoriously promoted. The Panamanians thought
I was a hero because they saw my name ‘Guerrero’
on my pack. In Spanish, Guerrero means ‘warrior’.”
2nd Deployment: August 1990, Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait. “I served on a security mission
from Dec. ’90 to Feb. ’91.”

3rd and 4th deployment: 1991 Okinawa. “When
you're at war, there is kind of an adrenaline rush.
It's good to take a break from that.” The Philippines
was a deployment within a deployment. “We were
there to provide training to the Filipino Marines,
but Mt. Pinatubo erupted in June causing so much
devastation. Our mission changed to humanitarian.
I found that helping people soothed my soul.”

5th deployment: 1992. “I was back at Pendleton.
Gen. Aidid attacked UN troops in Somalia. October
'92 to March '93, I was deployed to Somalia for
Operation Restore Hope. My experience in Panama
helped me when counseling black Marines who
faced the same moral dilemma I had faced when
fighting people who looked like me. I was able to
counsel them, ‘We're all Americans.’”

6th deployment: ’94-’95. “We were assigned to the
13th Marine Expeditionary aboard the USS Ogden
– a floating unit. During that assignment, we were
in 14 different countries, including capturing an

30 Lubbock Senior Link