More Reasons I'm Proud to be Part of This

I am constantly given more reasons to be proud of the US military. The stories and attitudes of the men who have been deployed are often awe inspiring.

There is a very obvious difference between us and those we fight and this was illustrated in the stories from the medics who came to drill to teach us. All of our instructors have been deployed to either Iraq and Afghanistan and I'm sure they could sit and tell stories for days. I usually give names but I don't know how to spell some of them so I'll just refer to all of them in general terms to avoid messing them up.

The most striking story was that of one of the guys one of our medics served with. There is a video of him being shot in the butt and scrambling behind a Humvee which I'm sure is simply seen as either sad or comical to most who see it. However, what the video doesn't show is what happened later. Shortly after the medic was shot, the other guys who were with him found and shot his assailant. He was wounded but did not die and the medic who got shot treated the man who had just shot him in an attempt to kill him. If that isn't noble I don't know what is. SFC Stace says he has a picture of the two at their aid station. I don't believe anyone could argue with SFC Stace when he said that although we kick butt, we do it in an honorable way.

On the flip side, one of the other combat medics that came in and taught us told a story about a young (I think he said 10yr old) kid that he worked on over in Afghanistan. The Army was test firing a weapon in a huge open field and an insurgent group decided to take advantage of it and mortared a local village nearby in hopes of blaming it on the Americans. Where we save as many lives as we can while still providing security, they repeatedly show their willingness to slaughter anyone and everyone if they can possibly use it to make a point. If we are unwilling to stand up against that grade of men, I would hate to meet the people who would be a war worth fighting.

That same medic told a story of a local man who's entire family was killed by the Taliban. He ended up becoming a gate guard at the American base and was fiercely pro-US. He carried around a stick which the Sergeant motioned to be about 5 inches across and would promptly take care of any of the locals who would come to the base and do things they weren't supposed to. He said he often had to go out and treat locals who he had bopped on the head. Stories like that are the reason I believe both these wars were winnable from the start. In general, our soldiers are admirable men and women and our way of life and our ideals are good. I have a hard time believing the Afghan people would rather live under the Taliban or the Iraqis under Saddam.

We had one other experience with another soldier who was there on other business when we were in the chow hall. He came up behind us in line for chow and when told that he was welcome to go ahead of us (there were probably more than 40 of us ahead of him) he responded that he had all the time in the world. He was on post to request another deployment. He has bee on three voluntary deployments thus far and told us that he has another one in him before he retires. He said though, that the army doesn't seem to agree which is "why they game [him] that stupid purple heart." He commented that for some reason, "when your vehicle explodes and you wake up naked in a Blackhawk (I'm guessing MEDEVAC) the army thinks its a bad thing. To me that just sounds like a good Friday night." One deployment is honorable, volunteering for more is admirable, doing so despite being a casualty, shows a level of commitment that few people have to anything.