War-zone shaving cream saving lives in Sangin - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

War-zone shaving cream saving lives in Sangin

Residents in northeast Georgia have rallied to send cases of shaving cream to Marines downrange, and it’s not to help the first sergeant enforce grooming standards.

Members of Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, now deployed to the Sangin district of Helmand province, Afghanistan, are using the “beard-busting” cream to mark improvised explosive devices and save lives.

First Lt. Paul Herdener, from the Gainesville, Ga., area, is deployed with 1/5’s Cherokee Company as a heavy weapons platoon commander. He recently wrote his dad, Tony Herdener, asking for a steady stream of shaving cream to better protect Marines in his unit. The Marine dad got help from his community and a local grocery chain, and “Operation Shaving Cream” was born.

The lifesaving idea goes back at least 40 years, when then-Lt. Col. Norman Schwarzkopf and some of his soldiers were caught in a minefield in Vietnam. Schwarzkopf, now a retired general, ordered some shaving cream flown in to where they were trapped, according to his autobiography “It Doesn’t Take a Hero.” They used it to mark the mines around them and created a path to safety.

Herdener’s Marine unit uses shaving cream in much the same way, to mark mines and roadside bombs in Afghanistan. The shaving cream eventually evaporates, so Taliban forces can’t come along later and change the markings or see where the Marines have been.

Lt. Col. Tom Savage, 1/5’s commander, told Marine Corps Times earlier this summer that there are “literally thousands of IEDs” in the area.

“We find some but not all, and they keep putting in more,” he said.

When 1st Lt. Herdener wrote his dad for some more shaving cream, the elder Herdener, the chief financial officer of the Northeast Georgia Health System, put out a call to the community and sought support from his local Rotary Club.

J&J Foods set up “Operation Shaving Cream” displays at three area grocery stores. Customers can pay $12 for a case of a dozen cans, with no tax or shipping costs.

Store manager Gregory Dobbins said some customers seem puzzled at first.

“Once we explain it, they’re more than willing to help,” Dobbins said.

In a letter to his parents, 1st Lt. Herdener, thanked the community for their efforts.

“Without the shaving cream that keeps flying in from Gainesville, this task and constant patrolling would be much more difficult and dangerous,” he wrote.

The plan is to raise enough money to buy 850 cases, or more than 10,000 cans of shaving cream. Tony Herdener said they want to send enough to supply all of 1/5, plus enough to support the unit that replaces it in the fall, expected to be 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, out of Twentynine Palms, Calif.

The North Georgia Community Foundation website, www.ngcf.org, is accepting donations for the operation. All contributions are tax-deductible.

Tony Herdener said the public must remember that service members in Sangin are risking lives and limbs.

“If we can prevent that from happening with a can of shaving cream, we need to get as much over there as we can,” he said.