Posted on 12/13/2003 9:59:29 PM PST by redrock
"The Bodybags of Iraq and Afghanistan" (Roger's Story)
He had an old mans walk.
Slow steady pace...deliberate.
He would walk the neighbourhood 2...3....4 times a day with his aged beagle Fred at his side...always ending up for a least a few moments at the bottom of the hill in the graveyard sitting by his wife who had passed on a few years before.
He didn't talk much to the rest of us. But he was friendly enough to always say "Hi!!".
He was friendly enough...and patient as he would stand still as the neighborhood children gathered around Fred.(That beagle had the biggest ears I have ever seen on a beagle......)
Then one day, and I don't know why to this day, but he stopped and began to talk with me as I was working in the front yard.
Just small talk really...but as if he was searching for something...some connection ...something that maybe we had in common.
He started to talk a little more each time...adding bits and peices of his life. Born here....married in this place...1 son...1 daughter.
Then one day....he sat down and began to talk. Of when he was 19....and a rifleman in the 29th Division...frightened..heading towards a beach in France.
He told me of how once in a great while (he was in the middle of the landing craft) you could actually see the beach.....and the huge explosions that were happening there....and how he hoped that no Germans would left. He told me of the sound of the shells going overhead....sometimes so loud that you couldn't hear the guy next to you...of how you could always tell the rounds from the Battleships...as they sounded like boxcars going by.
...and when the ramp lowered of how the men in the front half were killed in a blink of an eye...of how the machine guns would concentrate on the front of the craft. Of how men to the side of him...climbed over the sides of the landing craft...and drowned ...they were so weighted down with equipment.
...of how he tried to step sideways to avoid the machine guns....of how somehow he ran and found a tiny bit of safety behind a small bluff....his rifle left somewhere 'back there'. Of how he tried to make himself just as small as he could.....and tried to pretend that he wasn't where he was.
On a beach...with the dead and the dying.
And how,gradually, he became more and more aware of what was going on .
The repeated attempts to get past the beach.
The number of men huddled, just like he was, against that small bluff...or hiding behind the beach obstacles....or ,sometimes, trying to hide behind the body of someone already dead.
Of how the Germans would keep firing into the dead and dying...just to make sure.
He said he became gradually aware of one of the officers telling them that they would have to get off the beach. That those without weapons would have to find one....that they had some killing to do. He knew who the officer was.....he had seen him before but he couldn't remember his name at that time and place.
He told me of how he found a rifle....and got ready.
I asked him how, in the middle of all that death, could find the heart and courage to want to keep on fighting.
He said that one of the things he noticed was how,even in the middle of battle, the dead were being laid in a row...with whatever cover those doing the placing could find...covering their heads and faces. Sometimes just the helmet.
And then he said that the officer told the men getting ready to make a last ditch effort to get off the beach...that they were going to get back into the fight if for no other reason than for those men laying there with their faces covered in death....that NO man of the 29th ...NO American.....would be allowed to die in vain....for nothing. That they all had come here to fight and defeat evil....and that for 'Those men'....for 'Them'...they would have to continue on. ********************************************************************************** "This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. I don't.....this hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an army going out to set other men free."
Joshua Chamberlain
**********************************************************************************
So...here we are.
In a war...fighting to set other men free....and to fight another facet of the Evil that ,once again, is trying to enslave us. Fighting against an Evil that sends men out to kill small children on a bus......or to crash aircraft into tall buildings in an effort to dishearten us...to make us afraid.
...and each night we are visited by the news that more of our sons or brothers or fathers are dead in that war. That they are being put into bodybags (lets not sentimentalize it...lets be abrupt about it) and sent home to their loved ones....to their wives or parents or children.
And each night we are visited with the notion (put out by those who co-operate with that Evil) that we need to withdraw...to place ourselves at the mercy of the appeasers...at the mercy of the Evil...that it is too difficult a task for us to continue on with.
And each night we are visited with the idea that it is us...who are at fault. That somehow it is our love of Freedom...and our desire to pass that love of Freedom down to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that makes us wrong...that somehow makes it our fault. That somehow we have created those who would send bombs to schoolyards or Synagogues or Business Centres to kill and maim.
That somehow...we must end this war against the Evil.....that we are not strong enough to withstand any more deaths.
And when I think of this...I think of Roger's story.
Of the bodies of his friends...lying in a row...and of how the sight of them helped him, and others, to continue the fight. I can imagine him telling me that all you have to do is to think of all those Americans in bodybags....and how we must go on with the battle if for no other reason then for 'them'.
So that none of them died in vain.....
That none of them have died for nothing.
That we must continue on in the war against the Evil.....if for nothing more than for 'Them'.
I miss the talks we had.The long,sometimes rambling,talks of how we got here as a Nation...and perhaps where we will end up at.
The long talks of the desire of a people wanting to be Free...and the Iron Will that must be attached to that desire.....if for no other reason than for all of those who have been laid out...their faces covered.
For them.
P.S....I miss my friend...although,sometimes late at night ,I think I can still see him walking his old man walk...with that darn long eared beagle attached to his side.
redrock
redrock
redrock
Good night friend.
5.56mm
I shall never surrender either.
The terrorists (The Evil) must be defeated.
redrock
A couple of documents everyone should be aware of:
Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology By Lee Harris
Good post..
Please put me on your ping list- I would consider it an honor.
With my best regards,
Joshua Chamberlain
Did Chamberlain really say that?
redrock
"Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came in mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to.Many of us came.....because it was the right thing to do. All of us have seen men die. Most of us never saw a black man back home.We think on that too.But freedom.....is not just a word.
This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. I don't.....this hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an army going out to set other men free.
This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land--there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other."
redrock
He remained in sustained combat against the Germans, there, and then with elements of Patton's break out, where he continued in sustained combat until one week before the Battle of the Bulge.
On the eve of the Battle of the Bulge, he was "discovered" by the staff, to have been in sustained combat since his arrival in France, and they ordered him to the rear.
He took a truck, and then for a little bit, a train, to Paris.
He arrived in Paris at the moment of the German surprise attack.
He was ordered back to the front lines, but another staff sergeant intervened again, and they ordered him to a small unit held in reserve.
Then again, in January 1945, he was back in the thick of it, sustained combat until the end of the war, situated in western Czchechoslavkia (sp?) and also Austria.
I never new any of this until I happened to ask him one day in 1995, what did he do during World War II?
He was my oldest sister's husband, and nobody had ever mentioned that he had been a soldier in the U.S. Army. Only she knew; and a younger brother of his, knew.
I asked, what did he remember the most?
Answer: "The dead mothers and babies and children, in the ditches along the roads, all the way across France, from Cherbourg to the German border."
He returned home to New York after the end of the war, in time for his 19th birthday.
God bless him.
With Roger's story....and the capture of Saddam ...(by some of Roger's Brothers)....it has been one awesome day.
redrock
And each night we are visited with the idea that it is us...who are at fault. That somehow it is our love of Freedom...and our desire to pass that love of Freedom down to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that makes us wrong...
That somehow...we must end this war against the Evil.....that we are not strong enough to withstand any more deaths.
And when I think of this...I think of Roger's story.
Of the bodies of his friends...lying in a row...and of how the sight of them helped him, and others, to continue the fight. I can imagine him telling me that all you have to do is to think of all those Americans in bodybags....and how we must go on with the battle if for no other reason then for 'them'.
So that none of them died in vain.....
That none of them have died for nothing.
That we must continue on in the war against the Evil.....if for nothing more than for 'Them'.
It is a good day to honor your friend, and to remember.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8 Ground Zero, Iraq ~ World On the Web | 12/20/03 issue | Mindy Belz
Mindy Belz writes respectfully about the suffering of our wounded troops being treated at the medical clinic at Camp Anaconda, Balad. Many are paying a high price for our freedom today, and the Veterans who gave so much already, continue to support the younger troops, and need our help, now....and for the rest of our lifetimes.
Our Nation is full of the proverbial 'little old men'....who most people overlook but, at sometime and somewhere, those 'little old men' did the most amazing things in the defense of their Nation and their Families.
redrock
redrock
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.