Thursday, April 17, 2008
(Purposely?) Unsung Heroes

I was in front of the Operation Iraqi Freedom Memorial inspecting it, since that is my duty after all, and I was lost. The wind was stilled, as if paying homage, in this sanctuary of hallowed walls embossed in the names of the fallen. People burned in the memories of their comrades, in limbo forever to be remembered as youthfully burning souls even after the rememberers are old and withered. I remember watching them sandblast the names on the walls and seeing how dirty the ground around the memorial was. As I approached the memorial today, I noticed four 5 gallon jugs of water, which I removed, as they were unsightly. Then I noticed some black dust, coarse and dense. It was the fragments of the wall, which had been eroded from the memorial. As I tried to collect some I realized there wasn't much around, which is a good thing, and I gave up only to turn around. I turned around to see windswept patterns of black dust all over the ground. It reminded me of a sandstorm. Suiting enough, I guess. It just goes to show, that even after the sand is blown away and the dust clears, we will always remember, and the corrupt officials responsible for the maintenance of this illegal occupation will always be unworthy of the blood of our heroes and patriots on their hands.

As I have already covered in one of my previous blogs, many of our nation's fallen are all too often ruled out of body counts due to semantic technicalities. A specific citation is Specialist Marisol Heredia. I became suspicious when I saw a casualty list without her name on it. I was assured that her name would make the memorial that was recently erected on Cooper Field in front of the 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters. Here we are, a few weeks later, and the names from Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08 have recently been unveiled on the 1st Cavalry Division Monument and guess who isn't there.

I should go through the normal channels to fix this, and I have access to them, but I believe the world should know, since (call me a conspiracy theorist) I believe certain regulations have been set in effect to establish ways of memorializing our fallen brothers and sisters which involve "seeing things on the bright side" if you will.

I am sure the people I work with will not like this, but if you want to throw the 7 army values at me, be prepared for some rhetoric. I encourage you all to call the 1st Cavalry Division Honor Guard at (254)287-3283 and encourage them to guard the honor of our generations own unsung heroes by listing all the casualties of Operation Iraqi Freedom, even if they die outside of Iraq. Active duty folks may want to use the active duty line, which is the same number preceded by *67, haha! I rock.
Posted by Soldier Interrupted at 5:08 PM