Remembering Cpl. Jennifer Marie Parcell, A Marine, and A Lioness
It is the worry of every Gold Star Parent that the ultimate sacrifice of their son or daughter will be forgotten. But, we who have served in combat have made an unspoken promise to our brother and sister warriors that we will never forget. In fact, those who fell at our sides in battle are still with us in our daily thoughts and prayers.
With this video, we remember one who fell; Cpl. Jennifer Marie Parcell. She was a Marine and by all accounts a damn good Marine at that.
Like many teenagers, when she graduated from high school she was still trying to find some direction. It was when she attended her brother’s Marine Corps boot camp graduation ceremonies at MCRD Parris Island, S.C., that she found what she wanted to do.
She wanted to be a Marine, too.
Cpl. Jennifer Marie Parcell’s first assignment as a Marine was in Okinawa, Japan.
Just as her brother did before her, Parcell went through MCRD Parris Island and upon graduation her first assignment as a Landing Support Specialist stationed in Okinawa, Japan. She was a scrappy, hard working Marine. She was recognized as being tough, not afraid to try anything. She would prove herself to her fellow Marines.
When she was sent to Pakistan as a Pfc. to help out with earthquake relief she especially impressed the Pakistani men who had never seen a woman doing the kinds of things she was able to do there.
She made it evident to them that women are equally capable at getting a job done.
At 5’2” her brother Marines called her “the biggest little girt they had ever met.”
Jennifer Marie Parcell joined the Marines after watching her brother graduate . at Parris Island, S.C.
She trained along with them to be prepared for deployment when those orders would come. Those orders came in 2006. She was a 20 year old Cpl when she went to Iraq. At the time she arrived her brother was just ending his deployment there.
After arriving in Iraq she volunteered to work with the Lioness program, where female Marines would deal with the Muslim women in towns and villages while the Marines were on patrol.
She did so without letting her family know.
Cpl. Jennifer Marie Parcell.
On February 7, 2007 only weeks before she was to go home, she was on guard duty at her base when a female suicide bomber approached and detonated her bomb. Parcell was severely wounded in the attack.
She succumbed to those wounds a short time later.
The Veterans Site makes a commitment to all who serve in all of our Armed Forces, and especially to those who have fallen, who have given their last full measure, in service to the country. It is our honored duty to remember Cpl Jennifer Marie Parcell and to let her family know that she will never be forgotten.
Semper Fidelis, Marine.
