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FROM BAGDAD, KY
TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ (AND BACK) |
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ACTUAL EXCERPTS FROM THE BOOK "RETURNING SON"
From
Private Cassedy’s daily war journal: March 28. Moved to what was going to be
RP 24. Punched ahead of division. Mortar and artillery fire all around us.
We punched out from our truck about 30 meters for security. Sgt. H. and I
punched out about 300 meters from our truck to recon the area. We had mortar
fire shot at us. Landed about 80 meters away. We got covered in dust. Our
division behind us fired back. Bodies all over the place. We got back to the
truck after the incoming fire stopped. We jumped out to provide security. 2
dead Iraqis right next to our truck. Bloated and blown up from the shelling
from our troops. We punched out about 100 meters from the road. Bodies all
over the place. The area we moved to had been an area which the Iraqi army
tried to ambush our convoy. They were dug in and heavily armed.
You
never really know that death is a teacher until you see it face to face. You
never truly appreciate the preciousness of life until the teacher shows you
the ugly permanence of death. Life lets you change. It lets your skin
change, your hair change, your eyes and your mind. It is being able to feel
that change that is life. It is going through life’s processes--growing,
maturing, thinking and loving--that allows life to explode before us. It
explodes with feeling and change. It is feeling the growth of a family. It
is feeling even pain, like the pain of being court-martialed by the very
military service you love so dearly. It is learning to suffer the insults of
boot camp. It is falling in love and feeling so completely immersed in that
love only to have to live with the loneliness of a forced separation from
your lover. Life is the entire gamut of human emotions. It is all of the
processes. It is both winning and losing; it is pain and pleasure. It is
even just barely making it. |
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