Death of a Soldier

On Friday, we had a five hour layover at the Atlanta Airport on our way home from Colorado. We stopped in a smokers lounge for a cigarette. There was a large window on one wall in the room that looked out onto the tarmac so I went toward the window to get some sun and to try to image what the outside would feel like. As I was smoking, I saw two men carrying guidons, flags from military units and another one carrying an American flag. I said aloud, perhaps too loudly, “Why are they carrying guidons on the tarmac?”. Everyone in the room got up and went to the window. We all stood by the window and watched in horror as a small military contingent prepared to receive the body of one of our soldiers. The body came off a plane in a wooden box with a flag on it and was transferred to a baggage transfer car. One women in the room said, “Why don't they bring the troops home? That's what we were promised.” I agreed with her. The sight of this transfer and the reality of the death of someones mother or father, husband or wife, sister or brother, son or daughter was a painful and sad sight. I stood at the window transfixed with the others for a long time and felt my eyes start to tear. I have the same feeling now as I write this. I could no longer enjoy smoking my cigarette and told my partner it was time to leave this room.

I am so angry! My rage fills me and I want everyone to see what I saw. As we left the smokers lounge, we entered the unreality of the airport, shiny, bustling and fake; People are blithely checking their iPhones and Blackberries. They do not know about the fallen solider in the tarmac and they probably did not care to know. People say they support the troops but what to they really support? Do they support the death of our soldiers or the death that the soldiers bring to other people or maybe they support what troops symbolize. I just do not know what people mean when they say they support the troops.

We went to a restaurant for lunch and midway through the meal I burst into tears. I cried for the soldiers and their families. I could not help myself my anger and sadness combined to make me sob uncontrollably.  Later on the plane, I tried to watch the movie Battle for Los Angeles. Fake movie soldiers were getting killed and it reminded me way too much of the real soldiers dying; I started crying again and had to turn the film off. These senseless wars have to end!

This is a second time in my life that soldiers have fought and died in a pointless and seemingly never-ending war. I don't want these wars to continue. Support the troops, bring them all home. The Vietnam War started before I was born and ending when I was eight years old. I remember people who I knew as a little girl who went to war and came back changed. Mentally and physically changed; some of whom really scared me after their return. My memories of the Vietnam war are only through the people in the my life that were changed by this war. I was too young to remember the politics directly.

My ex-husband, who was a Marine and 14 years older than me, was in the war. He had come through the war without physical scars but plenty of mental scars, like many that returned home from Vietnam. He had bad dreams. Unexpected fireworks could cause him to “Hit the Deck” grabbing anyone around him and pulling them down with him. There was the time when he was having surgery and they did not put him under deep enough to completely knock him out. He started flashing back to some incident where he was under attack. He called in air support and beat up the doctors in the operating room. It took five or six men to subdue him, long enough to pump enough anesthesia in him to really knock him out. And on the anniversary of a really bad event that happened to him there, he was quite suicidal, mainly because he was alive and his friends were dead. There were a couple to times that we stayed up all night and it was my job to keep him alive until the next morning.

I support the troops and I want them with us and their families alive and well.

Here is a link to the Military times that lists all the soldiers that have died in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 10 years, with pictures of their faces and information on their lives. Look at them, read about them and then think about the reasons they died. Then think about the thousands of soldiers, that have been wounded and maimed for life; we never really see those people. I am sure there are plenty of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan who have mental scars and are not the people they use to be. We need to demand, that the killing and maiming of our fellow countryman stop.

Starting October 6, 2011 on Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C., there will be an on-going protest to end the wars. Check out the website http://october2011.org/statement and consider going there. I will be there, if I can get together the money to go there.

Stop the wars, bring our women and men home.

Peace, 

Fobbsie

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