I received an e-mail yesterday from Cassidy, one of the regular Venomites who is also serving our country in the Armed Forces. He’d just returned from a funeral for a fellow soldier, a young man wholly unknown to him, who lived and died without the two having ever met. His death touched Cassidy, and because Cassidy shared it with me, it has touched me now as well.

I’ve gone to those funerals, too. That’s what you do when you’re in the military, or when you’ve married someone who is. You go to funerals to honor the fallen and to give heart to those they’ve left behind. When your life is tied up with the countless lives of others who’ve dedicated themselves to serving their country and fighting for the freedoms of others, you are part of a big family. Any loss is your loss. Any loss could have been yours.

But it’s different, I know, for those who aren’t involved in the service. For those who go about their daily lives, their jobs, their normal way of living. The headlines blare about WMDs and lies. Politicians sling mud and implications in their never-ending posturing designed for mass appeal. Taxes and welfare and social security reform get the attention now.

It’s easy to forget that the war wages on, and that the very word war means that someone, somewhere is dying for the pursuit of freedom. That they have chosen the risk of such a death because, unlike taxes or welfare or the serving size of convenience foods – freedom is a matter of life and death.

His name was Robbie. He was nineteen.

There are thousands of Robbies in Iraq and throughout the world. They are barely old enough to vote, not even old enough to drink. But they are old enough to be heroes.

Tuesday, July 1st, 2003, 8:05 pm   |   War Bites  |  RSS feed Comments and pings are currently closed.