This Memorial Day is getting strange for us (it is 4:15 AM…I have been awake for over two hours…at this hour I should be in bed and fast asleep…I am unsettled). Over 30 years of experience, we have learned not to travel on the Holidays. It is too hard a road. However, while most are grilling dogs and burgers, we leave today for a 10 hours drive away from home to Ft. Bragg, NC where on Thursday my oldest son Ben, former U. S. Marine and current U.S. Army Paratrooper, heads back for 15 months on his third tour to Iraq.
As a new Marine on his first tour to Iraq when this war commenced, he was a member of the Commanding General’s battlefield security detail. The aftermath of our aerial assault and tank firepower is something only he and his infantrymen comrades will truly know.
On his second tour, the war became personal. Twice he was knocked out by near-miss IEDs. Later terrorists found their mark and through an ugly series of events, while securing a section of buildings in Baghdad, he was wounded and several of his comrades were killed.
I can’t “see” into his heart and know what lies there. I hear his words and know he loves his family, wife, infant son, and unborn child. There have never been any truly difficult words between us. I know he didn’t want to return to Iraq. He re-enlisted into the Army for job skills that they don’t teach you in the Marines. IMO, at 23, his “thinking cap” still has some rewiring and maturing to do but when he finally settles down, he will have done it his own way.
Hoist a cold one for our soldiers today boys, both with us and gone. I will be with you in that in spirit. We will be traveling a long hard road today. Pray for Peace.
