Lest We Forget

Just a blurb on the nightly news to most of us? Twenty seconds of footage and then on to the next story? Hell, i'm just as guilty of it as anybody -- taking for granted what our guys are going through over there. Back here on the home front, we're so easily distracted by the election follies. We're bored. We have short attention spans.

Ironically, the mainstream media, often criticized for sensasionalizing the news, is partly to blame. Stories like this seem so sterile, mundane. Oh no, more fighting, we think. A soldier died. Damn, we were going good there for a few days. Maybe we say a prayer. Maybe we don't. Either way our ass is still on that comfy couch while it's someone else's in a sweat soaked DCU.

But then a blog like CBFTW's will jolt me back to reality.

I'm not going to lie, I didn't want to go back. Fuck that shit, I don't want to get killed. That was the last place on earth I wanted to be. I was scared to death. But we had to go back, and we did.

Shit. Holy shit. And now i remember -- that while i sit here in air conditioned comfort, sipping a coke and wondering how next to avoid that boring work project i've been putting off, and if i should return that guy's call later -- out there in some god-forsaken desert, men's hands grow numb from gripping the handles of a rattling .50 cal, and yeah maybe from fear too, but they fight like hell anyway and sometimes die too, though more often it's the enemy (the one's who would just as easily kill me if they could) that does the dying, and by the truckload, thank God.

And thank the United States Army and Marines.

Via Blackfive, who else?

Update: The story is much more personal for Sarah.