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Ubi bene ibi patria
Comrades speak of fallen marine and ties that bind"
"CAMP VICTORY, Iraq: As a cold wind swept across much of the Middle East on Thursday, bringing snow to northern Iraq and subfreezing temperatures to Baghdad, about 100 soldiers and marines gathered for a ceremony to rename a small helicopter landing zone on this huge American base in honor of a fallen comrade.
The man for whom the helipad was being named, Major Douglas Zembiec, a marine, was killed last May in a firefight in Baghdad. On a dark night in an alley, he told his troops to get down before getting down himself, and he was the one hit by enemy fire. His men survived.
But Thursday's ceremony at the military base here at Baghdad International Airport was less a memorial for Zembiec — who has been honored many times for his heroism, and not just in Baghdad but in Falluja as well — than it was a moment for reflection by the men and women gathered here.
The four speakers, who included a Naval Academy friend of Zembiec and General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, spoke in unvarnished language, sometimes awkwardly, as if trying to explain to themselves why a man comes to this wind-raked patch of desert to fight an enemy he cannot see and what can be learned from his death."
Comrades speak of fallen marine and ties that bind - International Herald Tribune
"CAMP VICTORY, Iraq: As a cold wind swept across much of the Middle East on Thursday, bringing snow to northern Iraq and subfreezing temperatures to Baghdad, about 100 soldiers and marines gathered for a ceremony to rename a small helicopter landing zone on this huge American base in honor of a fallen comrade.
The man for whom the helipad was being named, Major Douglas Zembiec, a marine, was killed last May in a firefight in Baghdad. On a dark night in an alley, he told his troops to get down before getting down himself, and he was the one hit by enemy fire. His men survived.
But Thursday's ceremony at the military base here at Baghdad International Airport was less a memorial for Zembiec — who has been honored many times for his heroism, and not just in Baghdad but in Falluja as well — than it was a moment for reflection by the men and women gathered here.
The four speakers, who included a Naval Academy friend of Zembiec and General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, spoke in unvarnished language, sometimes awkwardly, as if trying to explain to themselves why a man comes to this wind-raked patch of desert to fight an enemy he cannot see and what can be learned from his death."
Comrades speak of fallen marine and ties that bind - International Herald Tribune
