Letters to Home

If you haven't read the latest issue of Newsweek, read it! Using emails, letters, and recordings from our (now deceased) servicemen and -women, Newsweek chronicles the major events in the Iraq war. It's not an anti-war type thing, but rather showing war outside of stale (maybe even biased) news reports. One part of a letter was particularly impacting. It's from Army 2nd Lt. Brian Smith writing in April, 2004 from Fallujah:

Try not to kill somebody at night. It is difficult to grasp the experience at night. Tank commanders have a thick layer of technology, and often other soldiers, between them and their targets at all times but after sunset, acquiring, engaging and destroying targets (i.e. people, vehicles,buildings, livestock, what have you) takes on the feel of a video game.

Hosing down person-shaped, gritty green blobs scampering around in the gunner's sight does not really allow for full appreciation of the impact of the act of ending the
life of another human being. Add another layer of separation by ordering someone else to actually perform the act. In the end, I felt and feel nothing. Not a d***** thing.

I was not sure what I expected to feel, much less what I wanted to feel. This is one of the questions about myself I hoped to answer by joining the Army. I am really not satisfied with the answer I found. How can I even appreciate the humanity of the person I had killed if all I ever saw was a green mass lying in the grass? I gave the fire command, the gunner lased then engaged with [the] coax[ial] and the target disintegrated.

I think this is a powerful look into what our brave men and women are facing in Iraq right now. I hope that we don't withdraw prematurely so that service of people like 2nd Lt Smith are in vain.

Also, as I read through these letters--many are from young guys, 18-22--I think back to the six or so New Jerseyens, fresh out of high school, Teresa and I flew back with in Aug, 06 from Denver to OKC. They had enlisted in the Army and were going to Ft. Sill for Basic. They were so young...they didn't even look like they could be much over 16. But there they were, cocksure of themselves, while at the same time a bit nervous...their northeast accents ringing through the cabin with excitement at what awaited them when they stepped off of the military transport bus into the sweltering Oklahoma sun. I wonder what has become of those guys...I expect they're out of Basic...probably in Iraq--into a different kind of sweltering sun. I hope they make it back to home safely.