A Marine Remembers

[nhboy]

The following is an excerpt from an email from a Marine to blogger Dvorak:

" I wanted to share with you what we saw in Washington DC last week. After the mid-term brief we toured the Mall and made the usual stops at the WWII Memorial, the Wall, Lincoln Memorial, etc. At the Vietnam Wall we saw something unbelievable. We noticed three small index cards at the base of the Wall. I knelt down for a closer look and noticed that a 4-star general’s rank was pinned to each card. The cards were personally addressed and said something like:

These are Yours- not mine!
With Love and Respect,
Your Platoon Leader,
Pete Pace
1 Oct 2007"

 

[markskn]

Thats freakin awesome!

Good stuff...good stuff.

 

[nachomama]

For some reason, this reminds me of a trip I took on the Metro a couple weeks ago. Nothing unusual, just a typical afternoon commute back to my car. There was a Marine sitting in one of the seats and an older lady sitting close to him. They were engaging in conversation, and I couldn't help but overhear him talking about how he got back from Iraq last Spring and how he had just come from a visit with his doctor. He had visible injuries and walked with the aide of a walker. The lady was asking him if he suffered injuries while serving our country.

By this time, most of the people around me were obviously paying attention to this one conversation.

The marine explained that he had served a tour of duty in Afganistan, had come home, only to be sent to Iraq. I think he said he spent 18 months in Iraq. He came home last Spring and took his girlfriend (now fiance) to dinner. He said the date was like May 2, and he had planned to ask her to marry him. They were driving along to their dinner date, he was trying to build up the nerve to ask her to marry him when they were broadsided by a drunk driver. He bore the brunt of the accident; however, she too was seriously hurt. He proposed to her while they were both in the hospital. He said his goal now is to walk his wife back up the aisle and dance the first dance with her at their wedding.

You have to wonder sometimes why God does the things he does. This man survived a tour of duty in both Afganistan and Iraq, probably spent 2 years of his life overseas fighting for our freedom, to come home and be permanently disabled at the hands of a drunk driver.