In an anonymous letter from a Marine reprinted in Time magazine, a soldier asks his readers: “How’d you like a job that required you to defuse bombs in a hole in the middle of the road that very likely are booby-trapped or connected by wire to a bad guy who’s just waiting for you to get close to the bomb before he clicks the detonator? Every day.”
He then adds, “Sanitation workers in New York City get paid more than these guys. Talk about courage and commitment.”
The letter, which can be found at Time magazine’s Web site (www.time.com), was originally sent to friends and family of the soldier, and gives readers brief descriptions the horror, disgust, pride and homesickness soldiers in Iraq are experiencing.
For example, here is what the Marine calls the “Most Memorable Scene” during his current tour of duty: “In the middle of the night, on a dusty airfield, watching the better part of a battalion of Marines packed up and ready to go home after over six months in al-Anbar, the relief etched in their young faces even in the moonlight.”
He continues, “Then watching these same Marines exchange glances with a similar number of grunts loaded down with gear file past – their replacements. Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said.”
A first-person emotionally moving account like this one is very long overdue and hard to find without excessive censorship.
Here at Guilford, we hear about the war in Iraq all the time in the form of protests, admonitions of George W. Bush, political fodder about the upcoming elections and so on.
But when have we really taken the time to try to get to know who is actually sacrificing their lives in Iraq for the rest of us?
Those soldiers are our peers. Often they are men and women our age or younger who have just chosen to serve their country by performing dangerous and psychologically damaging jobs for menial pay.
They have their own personal reasons for enlisting that are just as legitimate and important as our reasons for deciding to go to college.
My best friend’s boyfriend is a Marine who returned home from Iraq three months ago. He is 21, and can no longer sleep through thunderstorms or watch fireworks because of his post-traumatic stress disorder.
Still, he says that if he is asked to take another tour of duty, he would do it in a heartbeat.
His positive attitude and conviction to protect his country are shared by many of the men and women overseas and the very reason they decided to become a part of the armed forces. Soldiers also decide to enlist for the sense of camaraderie and brotherhood.
“All the danger, all the hardship, all the time away from home, all the horror, all the frustrations with the fight here – all are outweighed by the desire for young men to be part of a band of brothers who will die for one another,” said the soldier in the letter.
Soldiers like these are no less passionate about their work than we are about ours. Whether we believe in the war or not, we need to understand and respect the people who are fighting. It was the decision of the government, not the soldiers, to fight where they are and for which reasons. People have no right to accuse these men and women of making poor decisions for our country or belittle the occupation soldiers have chosen, just because they do not agree with it.